Decatur Police Issue Scam/Fraud Alert
Decatur Metro | August 11, 2015 | 4:26 pm
From Decatur Police Lt. Jennifer Ross…
Please be aware of a current fraud scam taking place around DeKalb County. The scam involves you receiving a phone call from a person identifying themselves as a deputy with the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office. The scammer will claim that you failed to report for grand jury and are being charged with failure to appear and contempt of court and now owe fines. You will be instructed to use cash to obtain a “Pay Pal my cash voucher” and further be told that if you hang up or do not pay the money that deputies will come to your house and arrest you. A Decatur city resident contacted Decatur Police on 08-10-15 to report such a call. He became suspicious and contacted the DeKalb County Court Jury Division and was told the calls were a scam. If you receive this type of phone call, notify your local police department.
These scammers. I wonder what their success rate is. I’ve received robo-calls from the “IRS” claiming they were about to sue me. I have simply hung up and it didn’t occur to me to report them. In the future I will pay more attention and make a report. Sleazy little con. Preying on people’s fears.
Despite widespread publicity, they must get some hits or else they wouldn’t keep it up. Same idea as spam.
A Facebook post by a reasonable, smart professional that I know described being almost taken in by this particular scam so I guess it’s pretty convincing. The idea that maybe you missed or forgot about one of those small jury duty notice postcards is totally plausible.
Yeah, but you can’t be arrested, much less fined, unless a judge issues a contempt order, which I think you must be served in person. And you certainly wouldn’t be asked to pay a fine with PayPal or a Green Dot card.
Obviously, you’re right about the second statement. They are not going to call, and they are not going to demand payment that way. But a judge can order a FTA bench warrant and you don’t get “served” it. You get arrested and hauled before the court. It’s rare for that to happen in the case of someone who missed jury duty, but it can. A few years ago, Fulton County started sending Sheriff’s deputies and Marshals out to drag people in because there was such a chronically high no-show rate for jury duty.
I’d argue that your average law-abiding citizen who is not in the legal profession is neither familiar with how judges execute contempt orders nor how one should pay fines related to them. Usually, I wonder how folks can be so easily fooled by foreign dignitary or send-in-$250-to-claim-your-prize scams. But in this case, the scam message is said to be particularly convincing. Just about everyone can relate to the concept of having misplaced or forgotten about one of those recurrent, pesky, small jury duty postcards that are not followed up with a reminder.
How do you make a report on a robocall? We have a cheap landline for our alarm system (yeah, it’s the cheapest way I can currently have monitoring). Cannot stand getting these calls.
I’m not sure. I think it depends on whom they are impersonating. If I get another from “the IRS” I’ll report it, with the call back number, to the IRS. I suspect that impersonating a federal officer is some kind of a crime. For the grand jury example I’d follow DM’s advice above, and report it locally.
Once I received an email death threat; that one I reported to the FBI. While I never heard back from them, I’m still here, so I guess he changed his mind or lost interest.
Who in God’s name would want to kill Parker Cross?!
+1
Thank you, both. That was sort of how I felt.
If I received a phone call from DeKalb County in attempt to shake me down for some “unpaid fee” I’d be apt to believe it. Sounds like the most DeKalb County thing ever.
I live in N. Fulton and got this call yesterday. Scared me to death and he said I could either give them a credit card and nothing will be charged to it but they just need to be sure it will hold the $500 fine or I could get a Kroger blue card. He also said my license is now suspended. But while I was on the phone with “Sgt. Jackson” my neighbor came by and she knew immediately it was a scam. She got on the phone and said she was legal counsel for me and how can she help him. He said he called to talk to me, not my lawyer. She didn’t stop asking questions and he eventually hung up.
If they ask for a Kroger blue card, it is a scam. The IRS doesn’t accept gift cards.
Oops. Still talking jury duty. Regardless, the courts don’t accept them either.
Speaking of scams, I received a call earlier this week from someone pretending to be my credit card company. When the call started out with “Hello, this is YOUR credit card company”, I knew it was bogus when they didn’t specify which one. It went on “We aren’t calling about a fraud alert or a bill. You are eligible for an interest rate deduction. If you are interested, press “7”. That is all I heard before I hung up. But, if I had pressed 7, I am confident an eager “customer service rep” would have been ready to take my credit card number, SSN, DOB, etc.
“NCI” keeps leaving messages on our answering machine. The message is to call back but the rest is so vague and boring that I always delete it before I figure out what it’s about. Anyone else get those?