Identity Theft--The Jury Duty Scam

Wednesday, Feb 20, 2008

The following is one of those items that widely gets circulated via e-mail, but this one is legitimate and I think that warrants posting to the blog:
"Be prepared should you get this call. Most of us take those summonses for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on their civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of fraud has surfaced.

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 was just stolen.

The fraud has been reported so far in 11 states, including Oklahoma, Illinois, and Colorado. This swindle is particularly insidious because they use intimidation over the phone to try to bully people into giving information by pretending they are with the court system. The FBI and the federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their web sites, warning consumers about the fraud."

Here is the FBI's web page about the scam

Here is confirmation on its authenticity at Snopes.

Any SurvivalBlog readers that do not yet have identity fraud protection should get it. This is just one aspect of well-rounded preparedness. The service that I recommend is Comprehensive Risk Solutions. (One of our advertisers.)