Jury Duty Scam

Greetings. I recieved the following from an email list and it looks to be for real. If you get a call requesting the listed information, proceed with caution. As always, please excuse any formatting errors.

So far, this jury duty scam has been reported in Michigan, Ohio,
Texas, Arizona, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington state.

NOTE: It's easy to see why this works. The victim is clearly caught
off guard, and is understandably upset at the prospect of a warrant
being issued for his or her arrest. So, the victim is much less
likely to be vigilant about protecting their confidential
information. See details below.

Most of us take those summons for jury duty seriously, but enough
people skip out on their civic duty so that a new and ominous kind of
scam has surfaced. Fall for it and your identity could be stolen, reports CBS.

In this con, someone calls pretending to be a court official who
threateningly says a warrant has been issued for your arrest because
you didn't show up for jury duty. 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. Sometimes they even ask for credit card numbers. Give out
any of this information and bingo! Your identity just got stolen.

The scam has been reported so far in 11 states, including Oklahoma,
Illinois, and Colorado.

This (scam) is particularly insidious because they use intimidation
over the phone to try and bully people into giving information by
pretending they're with the court system.

The FBI and the federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on
their websites, warning consumers about the fraud.