Police Warn of Fraudulent Calls About Jury Duty
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Conmen have allegedly been calling unsuspecting citizens and threatening them with prosecution for failing to comply with jury service. The callers use the threat to coax their targets into disclosing personal information that could lead to theft of their identity.
The U.S. Courts Web site posted this information in August, and it made its way first to the coordinator of the New York Police Department’s private-public liaison program. Eventually, security directors in New York City companies received emails about the threat and passed them on to the companies’ employees yesterday.
A spokesman for the U.S. Courts, Dick Carelli, said that in late July, at least 12 people living in the vicinity of the United States District Court for Northern Ohio and the District of Nebraska in Omaha were receiving this kind of telephone call from people claiming to be court employees.
The scammers homed in on the victims’ Social Security numbers and information about their financial accounts, Mr. Carelli said.
At least six state courts were dealing with the same problem, Mr. Carelli said. It was not immediately clear if such cons were occurring in New York City.