25 September 2005

Jury Duty Scam

From an email my father sent me about social engineering scams:
Here's a new twist scammers are using to commit identity theft: the jury duty scam. Here's how it works:

The scammer calls claiming to work for the local court and claims you've failed to report for jury duty. He tells you that a warrant has been issued for your arrest.

The victim will often rightly claim they never received the jury duty notification. The scammer then asks the victim for confidential information for "verification" purposes.

Specifically, the scammer asks for the victim's Social Security number, birth date, and sometimes even for credit card numbers and other private information -- exactly what the scammer needs to commit identity theft.

So far, this jury duty scam has been reported in Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington state.
I don't know if it's for real or not but I can see it happening. Of course, if anybody called me to say I had a warrant and then started asking for my credit card number I might be a wee bit suspicious.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They wouldn't say "What's your social security number and, by the way, I need your credit card number too." They'd say something like "Well, you can come in and explain it to the judge or if you were sick or out of town you can pay a filing charge and you'll be let off until the next time you're called."

"Gosh, I think I *was* sick that day! I'll pay the filing charge. Here are my credit card details!"

jds