We’ve been getting contacted by individuals concerned that they are being criminally charged or held in contempt for missing jury duty.
These individuals have gotten called from someone identifying themselves as a court or police officer. They advise that someone failed to report for jury duty and as a result a warrant for their arrest has been issued. This can be cleared up if they pay a fine.
This is, almost certainly, a scam.
In fact, this is such a common scam that it is featured on the Lexington County and FBI website.
No one from the police or the court is going to call you about missing jury duty and ask you for money. That’s not how the legal system works.
The callers can be very convincing. They make these calls over and over again to people around the country. They have learned what to say and how to say it to make people the most panicked, to increase the likelihood of getting paid. They might give you names of real government employees (information they learned from a website), along with details like phony badge or case numbers. They do this for a living, and can be very good at their job.
We recommend that anyone who receives this type of call hang up the phone. Don’t provide or verify any of your personal information. Certainly do not pay. They might try to call you from different phone numbers, so you may want to just not answer unknown numbers. Also keep in mind that it is very easy to fake a caller-id number, so the caller-id information might show a local number (even if the scammer is located out of state or out of the country).
Unfortunately, if you have already paid there is almost 0% chance of getting your money back.
This scam is closely related to many other popular ones, such as:
- You e-mailed\spoke to my underage daughter and now must pay for counseling or a damaged computer
- The IRS is going to arrest you if you don’t make an immediate tax payment
- A relative is trapped in a foreign country and needs emergency money wired to them
- You won a billion dollars in the Nigerian lottery, but must pay a processing fee to claim your winnings
If you’re still really concerned after reading this article you can contact your local courthouse yourself to verify your situation, or we do offer fee based consultations with a criminal defense attorney.