Identity Theft: Jury Duty Scam

There seems to be a new identity theft scam every day. One of the latest scams in a series of identity theft attempts via telephone is the jury duty scam where scammers are attempting to get people to reveal their Social Security number, credit card numbers or other personal confidential information.

This is how it works. Someone calls claiming to work for the local court and claims you've failed to report for jury duty. They tell you that a warrant has or will be issued for your arrest. In most cases, the victim will claim they never received the jury duty notification, so the scammer proceeds by asking the victim for confidential information for "verification" purposes.

Specifically, the scammers are collecting Social Security numbers, birth dates, and sometimes even credit card numbers and other private information. These are the exact pieces of information that the scammer needs to commit identity theft.

To date, it is reported that this jury duty scam has victimized residents in Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington state.

You can easily see why this particular scam is effective. The victim is caught off guard and is understandably upset at the prospect of potentially being arrested. The victim is much less likely to be considering the protection of their confidential information.

Please be aware that court workers should never call you to ask for social security numbers or other private information. Most courts, in fact, would follow up via regular mail and would rarely contact prospective jurors.

Protecting yourself is easy. Regardless of the scam type, the following recommendation will spare you the possible theft of your identity. NEVER give out your Social Security number, credit card numbers or other personal confidential information over the phone, especially when you did not initiate the call. It doesn't matter "who" is calling or "why" they are calling, these reasons are just different variations of the same scam. Don't be their next victim.