Jury duty failure to appear scam (original) (raw)

February 10, 2025, 5:48pm 1

Not sure this really is a Cyber thing but be careful out there.

I was out of town for 6 weeks at the end of last year. I received a call just now from a private number claiming to be with the county court house where I live now. The said that they had two summons out for me as I was a no show for jury duty. The first was an FTA, failure to appear, the second was a CoC, contempt of court. Then then had me write down the summons number. I informed them that I had never received a jury duty notification, and they gave me the address they sent it to, which was my address. Okay so now I’m slightly worried but still wary of this because my recollection is they don’t call you about this stuff on the phone. So we continue, and he’s like we would need you to come down today yada yada, and they might hold you for a while etc. Then we get to the first one has a citation of $7500 and I said okay here we go. All of this smells of fraud here. You called me from a private number, you’re telling me I might be detained, and now there’s money involved.

Well sir I can have my captain place a identity verification number from our offices so that you can see where it’s coming from. I said yes, let’s do that.

I get a call from the number for the County Sheriff, for a different county. Hell sir this is captain so and so badge so and so.

I said you know, your buddy called me from county A, you’re calling me from county B, you two really should get your stories straight before you run this scam.

They hung up.

This is a known running scam in the area. The court house will never call you about this stuff.

What sucks is they read me off my address as to where the “summons” went, and it was correct, so these idiots have my address and phone, not that it’s hard to find, but they are a step up from the average fraudster.

StoneyD (StoneyD) February 10, 2025, 5:53pm 2

Would have been interesting to see what kind of payment or penalty that wanted for the No Show and Contempt.

Thanks for the warning. The bad guys know way too much.

randomparts (Random Parts) February 10, 2025, 6:29pm 4

I bet if you had agreed they would have worked out a deal and you pay them x number of dollars and they’ll drop the citation.

merlinyoda (MerlinYoda) February 10, 2025, 6:50pm 5

No doubt. Also, they’re certainly not going to direct you send the money via certified check to the county treasurer but probably via a money order to some other 3rd party, possibly even a business that they have registered so that they can pick up all the funds sent to it.

Now that I think about it, it could be fun to keep them on the call just to get those payment details so as to report them so that you could have the business shut down as a front for fraud.

donges (donges) February 10, 2025, 7:14pm 6

$7500 would be a lot of gift cards to buy!

PatrickFarrell (PatrickFarrell) February 10, 2025, 7:56pm 7

That was just for the failure to appear, I didn’t let him get to the contempt of court charge.

ich-ni-san (ich.ni.san) February 10, 2025, 8:18pm 8

Lawbreaker!

adrian_ych (adrian_ych) February 11, 2025, 7:47am 9

If you remember that a few years back, over 310,000,000 records with approx 27 fields were “leaked”
Then in 2023 another leak from the US Marshalls Service…on top of the numerous attacks on US govt agencies, ISPs, Telco, VPN services and schools & Churches etc…

So now if there are fines etc…sadly I would go down to the office and pay in cash…never online from any letter or on the phone

jameswalker20 (jameswalker20) February 11, 2025, 2:48pm 10

My answer, “I want you to send me a certified letter with a copy of the original summons enclosed. Then, in a separate certified letter, provide me the notices for the Failure to Appear and Contempt of Court signed by the issuing judge.”

Click

PatrickFarrell (PatrickFarrell) February 11, 2025, 3:17pm 11

I have no doubt that my and every other persons information has been leaked dozens of times. There are no repercussions. Big tech wants to collect everyone’s info but then not be accountable for securing it.

craigmorris (CraigMorris614) February 11, 2025, 4:17pm 12

I’d also ask for a notarized copy. That also gets them to hang up.

spiceuser-ty2u6 (spiceuser-ty2u6) February 11, 2025, 4:18pm 13

Let’s not get pissy for no reason. This may be “old school” but does anyone remember ‘The White Pages’? Ma Bell published everyone’s name, address and phone number (for years) in a book that was dropped off at everyone’s house… Now, one can use the interwebs to check out the names, addresses and phone numbers of an area/city/county for free!
No reason to wail at “big tech” when “we” have been giving up PII for decades because “what’s it going to hurt”…

Now, scammers like that deserve to meet Old Sparky or some other device.

PatrickFarrell (PatrickFarrell) February 11, 2025, 4:28pm 14

White pages didn’t have my SSN, my credit card numbers, my medical info, full credit history, etc.

I absolutely will wail on big tech because they have earned it.

spiceuser-ty2u6 (spiceuser-ty2u6) February 11, 2025, 4:53pm 15

Not saying that the White Pages do have all you PII - and you didn’t state that these scammers used your SSN, etc. to ID you and try to steal money from you - just that it’s easy to get basic contact information to try to steal from you that doesn’t include data breaches.

Should “Big Tech” be held responsible for data breaches? Yes - everyone in the chain of responsibility should be held personally responsible, from the schmuck who let the breach to happen to the C-suite for allowing the culture to fester. That said, it is also on us to push pack on giving out PII for any reason - how many apps on your phone have access to everything on your device? How many times do we have to give up PII for really no reason? I remember way back when, I went to my cell provider to get an upgrade on a device. I was paying in full for the device yet the sales guy wanted my SSN for the upgrade. When I asked why, he told me it was procedure. I told him no. He didn’t need my SSN for me to buy a mobile phone outright. He got pissy and started to cajole. I told him I was leaving when his boss showed up and asked what was going on. TL;DR, Boss said SSN is not required and apologized to me.

We can rage against the way things are but we have to acknowledge that we are partially to blame for it.

neal2314 (Neal2314) February 11, 2025, 5:11pm 16

Thanks for posting. We’re alerting our users to this.

merlinyoda (MerlinYoda) February 11, 2025, 5:58pm 17

Unfortunately, it’s not just “Big Tech” that is failing here. Our own government agencies that store information on us and have this information stored, not on systems on air-gapped networks, but rather on systems connected to the Internet is where a lot of our problems stem from. There’s a lot of information you can abstain from providing to private companies … there’s not so much information you can refrain from divulging to local, state, and federal government agencies (even to the point of having it collected without your explicit consent).

Suzanne-Spiceworks (Suzanne (Spiceworks)) Split this topic February 11, 2025, 7:02pm 18

I’ve gotten a few calls about a warrant or something like that from a county that isn’t my county. Anytime the courts are involved it gets your blood pumping. I ended up just ignoring the calls and they stopped.

Jeffthetech (Jeffthetech) February 11, 2025, 7:55pm 20

I used to tell them to come get me.

I spoke to an FBI agent a few years ago. I remember asking him how they handle situations when they want to talk to someone versus when they want to arrest someone. He told me that if they wanted someone, they were going to come get you. They’re aren’t about to give someone a heads up like this.

It is unfortunate for people that do fall for these types of scams.