The Phone Call you Got About Jury Duty May be From Crooks-Truth!

The Phone Call you Got About Jury Duty May be From CrooksTruth!

Summary of eRumor:

The eRumor warns that you could get a phone call from someone claiming that you failed to show up for jury duty and that a warrant has been issued for your arrest.
The caller then wants to confirm your personal information such as Social Security number and other financial data.
The email says they are actually crooks who are trying to get enough information to commit identity theft.

 

The Truth:


There is evidence that this scam has actually taken place although at this point most of the publicity across the country is about the eRumor, not the scam itself.

TruthOrFiction.com has found that authorities in several states have issued news releases about the scam including in Arizona, Iowa, Washington, Arkansas, Illinois, New Jersey, South Dakota, and Utah as well as Canada.
The Better Business Bureau of North Alabama issued an alert quoting the eRumor word for word.
The interesting part is that many of the releases by state attorney’s-general offices or police say “it hasn’t happened in our state yet” and most of the releases appear to be repeating the information from the eRumor.

Regardless, it’s a good warning to remind us that there is a large variety of methods used right now by identity thieves to try to trick us into revealing our financial information such as Social Security numbers, ATM pin numbers, passwords, etc.

If you get any inquiries for your personal financial information, don’t give it.
Instead, make direct contact with the organization claiming to want it and verify that the request was really from them.

Updated 9/7/05