Jury Duty Scam

SNOPES concurs that this is genuine. Their website is below.

JURY DUTY SCAM. PLEASE READ!

This is actually a real one. And it is nice that the person sending it included the verifying links to prove it. Anyway, what a great scam to get your social security number. This has been verified on Snopes.com (link listed below) and by
the FBI (their link is also included below). Please pass this on to everyone in your email address book. It is spreading fast, so be prepared should you get this call.

Someone calls pretending to be a court official who threateningly says a warrant has been issued for your arrest because you didn't show up for jury duty. The caller claims to be a jury coordinator. If you protest that you never received a summons for jury duty, the scammer asks you for your Social Security number and date of birth so he or she can verify the information and cancel the arrest warrant. Give out any of this information and bingo! Your identity just got stolen. The scam has been reported so far in 11 states, including Oklahoma , Illinois and Colorado.

This (scam) is particularly insidious because they use intimidation over the phone to try to bully people into giving information by pretending they're with the court system. The FBI and the Federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their websites, warning consumers about the fraud. This has been around for over a year. Just tell the callers to put their warrant where the sun don't shine. Such matters are not handled by telephone. Check it out here:

http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp
http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel05/092805.htm

(Thanks to Maribee Butler.)
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