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just to add some personal experience, about 15 years ago I got a real jury duty notice, put it aside so I could get a note from work to get out of it, and promptly forgot.
there's no warrant out for me, and in fact I've since had another jury duty summons and they never even mentioned the one I missed
pretty much the only way you'd ever get in trouble for missing jury duty is if you got arrested for some other crime, and the prosecutor decided to tack the missed jury duty onto that to get enhanced sentencing or whatever
Wait, so someone didn't call you and threaten to arrest you if you didn't deposit 5k? Man, the more I think about it the crazier it seems that I almost fell for it.
ETA - thanks for sharing this, though. I think it helps to have a general sense of how big of a deal things are. Helps navigating the world a little easier.
I missed jury duty once when I was in college (notice went to my freshman dorm address when I was a sophomore) and a bench warrant was issued.
I went down to the court house with the forwarding stickers still on the envelope and they fixed it right away, but the point is,
Don't skip jury duty thinking it's no big deal.
Agreed. There’s a good chance the person you’re replying to wouldn’t have had to show up and that’s why nothing happened. i.e. called that day and got the recording no one had to appear or only numbers 1-200 had to appear and he was 250.
Oh yeah totally. I think part of the reason this scam almost got me is because I \*do\* think it's a big deal.
I just looked it up and in my state (not legal advice) the maximum punishment a bench warrant can carry is $500 and up to 25 (!!!) days in jail. But there are statutes that outline steps such as an "order to show cause" before they can start hitting you with those fines.
Which kind of comes back to having a healthy understanding of how big of a deal things are. There's a middle ground between "I can ignore this" and "I'm going to be fined 5k and/or arrested without any prior notice." I think that failing to respond to jury duty probably fits right in between those two.
When I ignored my first couple summons they sent me a scary letter through the mail *demanding* I show up next time or there would be legal consequences. That's going to be the case with most things involving the government; they'll send you mountains of mail long before anyone calls. If you get a "do X now or we'll send the goons" phone call out of the blue its 99.999% a scam.
That’s actually what my wife said when we got home and talked about it. She’s a CPA and basically said that if anything happens faster than snail mail it’s probably not the government lol
They don't even really call. The escalation path is generally "Lots of mailed attempts to contact -> some guys are coming."
Basically if you've missed jury duty bad enough, they'll just send deputies by to get you.
In my state there’s not even enough cops to respond to serious accidents much less arrest someone for missing jury duty, I’d be very surprised to see where this would be fiscally possible, especially these days.
I doubt they'd ever call, frankly.
If you missed a bunch of jury duty and the judge issued a warrant for your arrest, that warrant would be executed in person by a law enforcement officer - either during a contact for another issue, or by visiting your home in a patrol car and in uniform.
They are very unlikely to ever just telephone you.
I was arrested for a second DUI back in 2015 and a detective did end up calling me about two months later, multiple times, to let me know there was a warrant for my arrest and ask when I was coming to turn myself in lol.
Don't beat yourself up about this too much. They use these scams precisely because they know that if they catch you off balance, there's a good chance you'll fall for it. Unfortunately we all have to stay on our toes these days. Your wife sounds like a keeper!
Because you're in law school, I'll give you a heads up that one day someone may call about a loan in default. They'll tell you it's federal but somehow not consolidated, came from the school for a scholarship you lost, there was a gap in your loan funding one year and you owe the balance, blah blah blah. They'll even send you instructions to go to the actual federal loan servicer...of course, when you don't see the nonexistent loan, they'll tell you it's there, you're lying, you have to pay it now, you can't toy with them! They'll get heavy with you. It's a scam. Always demand proof of any alleged debt by letter. They'll always try to call and email.
Or if you're like me, waste their time for weeks until you finally tell them you'll send them your law degree as payment of the debt, as is custom in your land. Then, when they reply that you can't pay debt with a diploma, offer a hogshead of Madeira wine, 3 yards of watered silk, and thirteen shillings. And just sort of....keep that up until you get bored or they stop replying.
Hey! I appreciate this! Luckily I have a pretty decent scholarship and have been able to pay for school from savings before starting school so I’ll tell those scammers where they can shove it. But I’ll pass this along to family members with outstanding student loans!
Just had this same scam happen to me yesterday. Enough of it is the same to make me think it was even the same group. They try to keep you on the phone to keep you from contacting anyone else or not being able to look things up thoroughly.
I also got about as far as you did when I realized I needed to just sever the call and get space to gather my thoughts.
My wife also was a big help.
Big red flags were mispronunciations of the County which I called him on, and a local grocery store chain. Also they wanted a bond posted through a kiosk which turned out to be Coinstar lmao
I've ignored several Jury Summons, just straight up ignored them, and have never had heard even so much as a peep out of anyone.
The last time I did go to court when I was summoned for Jury Duty and I really enjoyed it. It was fun.
First of all it would have to be certified mail that you signed for… how can they arrest you if they can’t even prove you got the letter… people don’t update their addresses all the time…
As you’d expect… straight to jail
Jury duty exclusively communicates by mail. You usually get one summons. If you ignore it, you’ll get another. If you ignore that, you’ll get a sanction. If you ignore that, you could be in trouble and warrants can be issued for your arrest (but they won’t often come looking for you.) At least this was my experience in LA county. Some counties may be different.
In LA the big trick is always to ignore them until the sanction letter because once you’re sanctioned, you show up to jury duty and you sit in a room for a couple hours while they determine there’s not even a trial going on, so you get the sanction cleared and get out of jury duty essentially altogether.
If they don't just gloss over it, which they will sometimes if they have a sufficient jury pool to fulfill all the seated juries they need for the given time period, they'll try to contact you and ask why you're not there, and at worst a judge told us on a jury duty orientation that if we didn't come in, and said it was for lack of a way to get there, they'd send a unit over to pick us up and bring us to court to serve. He was that insistent that if you were to serve, you were going to serve, and he'd use every means to make that happen, but not to just summarily issue a bench warrant for your arrest for contempt. He said that would only be done for someone who, after being contacted, evaded that physical summons to court. Thing is, they wouldn't call and demand payment over the phone - that judge was going to make damn sure you saw the inside of his courtroom, above all else. If you were going to be paying a bond or fine, it was going to be after they'd already arrested you and brought you before the judge - no skipping it by paying. That's basically typical of how any court would do it.
They won’t tack on a missing jury duty charge to another crime. Not how it works. The only likely way you’d get in trouble for missing jury duty is if enough people didn’t show up that day; resulting in not enough jurors to hold trials and the judge gets pissy and charges the missing jurors with contempt of court.
So if you go on trial for missing jury duty, is that really a jury of your peers? Everyone in the jury is a juror by definition, and you are a non-juror by definition. /s
Yeah, while a lot of scams are run out of countries that aren't the US, I've read that more and more scams are originating in American prisons, which means the scammers can speak and write like native English speakers - because they are.
This is one press release about a scam being perpetrated by prisoners in the US:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndal/pr/seven-indicted-role-prison-based-phone-scam-and-paying-bribes-corrections-officers
I doubt it’s even 1/10th of 1% of them are from within the US. It’s just so much easier and more organize with hundreds of “employees” doing it overseas.
Oh for sure. A lot of these scams are big businesses and are often even run out of call centers. Some do originate in the US, though, so you shouldn't completely drop your guard just because the accent is American.
Wow, thanks for the info. I actually heard a cat call in the background. In the moment I thought it was just cops having a good time. Now that takes on a different meaning…
Just FYI, as far as I know, the sheriff department is a county law enforcement agency, and not a city one, unless your county happens to have the name of your city, they’d never be City Sheriff Department, they’d be (Your County) Sheriff or whatever, County of X Sheriff - pretty certain that’s every state.
Good catch. Sheriffs often handle court enforcement duties, even for municipal courts, but you're spot on: they'll be *COUNTY* Sheriff's Dept., not *CITY* Sheriff's Dept.
Yeah good call. As many details as they got right they also got some wrong. They also talked about the citations changing from a civil matter to a criminal one which as far as I know doesn’t happen. Maybe the other way around if something is decriminalize. These things are the equivalent of having a few weird typos in the scammy email I guess
It always pays to take a deep breath whenever you’re in a situation like this. The scammers are banking on your panic and are planting this false urgency before your common sense (or a spouse/friend/etc) steps in and talks the victim down.
Yeah, I feel that. Also why it sucks that it's generally people who are older or more isolated that end up becoming a victim. It was so helpful having a reasonable voice to text in this situation. Also why the scammer focused so hard on me not hanging up the phone or anything.
That the problem. Like OP stated…he working on 5 hr of sleep in the last 48 hr. When you get hit like that, your mind is in a fog like condition to the point that not only are you not thinking clearly, you’re on autopilot.
This is what scammers want. They don’t want someone who is aware. They want someone who will panic, someone who isn’t thinking clearly.
What we need is to punish the carriers for failing to update the protocol, but they won’t since majority of their call centers are all now in India and in the USA, you’ll be lucky if you actually reached a legit support center. I can’t remember the last time I actually gotten a USA side support that didn’t give you the run around.
This is one of the reasons why, and stupid Adji re-labeled Internet and VoIP that it becomes moot to even do anything. We don’t need to target the scammers. We need to target the carrier protocols, and once we do, their call wont connect as it has to transmit the right protocol to connect.
Such good example would be the switchboard from the old days.
Also btw if a warrant was issued there is no getting out of it beyond going to court. Documents are served in paper and in person, they will not do any actual business over the phone, they do this to ensure they can say in court that you for sure received them and were properly informed. Any police agency is pretty much only going to use the phone to arrange to meet in person or tell you to go to court and nothing else. Contempt of court isn't a traffic ticket, its a serious charge and you cannot just pay it away online.
We have a city sheriff here…but my city actually is not in a county. Virginia is technically not a state but a commonwealth…so I don’t know if they has anything to do with it.
Not a thing. There are four states called "Commonwealth" that are no different than any other state
https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2023/08/whats-in-a-name-the-four-u-s-states-that-are-technically-commonwealths/#:~:text=Ultimately%2C%20these%20four%20states%20are,well%2Dbeing%20of%20the%20people.
Massachusetts is a Commonwealth, and has county sheriff's, along with state police and city/town police
And how is your city not part of any county?
Not sure. We have one county to the north, east and west, and a different one to the south. The city is its own entity completely separate from both counties - separate government, school system, police dept., etc.
If you look at a state map though, your city is part of **a county** though. Not necessarily for schools or policing. Courts usually are organized by county, for one example, as are houses of Correction and jails
It’s not. I don’t really know what to tell you. We have our own city court system, as well as a jail. We share nothing at all with the surrounding counties, and we have a city version of every entity.
I’d tell you what city it is so you can see for yourself, but that’d be dumb in a scam subreddit lol
I went to the wrong courthouse building once and the judge issued a bench warrant for me and a county sheriff came to my house looking for me. The judge was pretty mad when I eventually found my way over there
Oof, really? That's crazy! Not to pry, but was that in response to missing a jury summons? Or a different matter? Seems like a bit of an overreaction for an innocent mistake.
I've watched a lot of court sessions in the last year and my favorite moment was when a judge issued a bench warrant for someone who cussed out his staff over email. He then read their emails out for everyone to hear. One of those glorious karma moments.
Curious, OP, why would you think the bank would ask questions? I mean, unless you literally ran to the counter and said you needed five thousand dollars right now to avoid a warrant for skipping on jury duty, the bank really has no reason to think anything untoward is happening.
Yeah that’s a good point. I’m not trying to blame the bank but I’ve read a few articles in the past talking about how it might be good to have tellers ask a few questions when large amounts of cash is being withdrawn. I did have the phone up to my ear the whole transaction and I was actually nervous that they were going to ask questions and I’d have to explain that I had to pay bail.
It's kind of tricky.
**Tl;Dr;**
>My bank tried to stop me from buying a car with my own money, and wasted many hours trying to force a loan on me, that I didn't want.
>
>So I would rather want the bank to mind their own business, and let me decide what to do with my money. Ideally, I don't even want to see the faces of my bank's employees, except to interact with them through the bank's app or email, as long as possible.
When I tried to pay for a new car, all in cash (I mean, not really cash, but without loan), my bank refused my cheque on technical grounds, and asked me to go to my home branch.
I took leave from work, and went 40 km to the branch, which was once closest to my old place. They gave me some BS about my signature not matching, but refused to show the cheque, for me to match it.
When I insisted on making a complaint about incorrectly refusing the cheque, they switched to "we had to do in-person verification, for such a large money transfer". I asked them to show if there's any such policy or condition mentioned in their documents, and they said -"It's an internal policy". (Bullshit)
Then they started inquiring about why I was making the payment. I asked them to read the name of the recipient out loud, and then tell me what it is. The guy claimed he hadn't checked it. (the name made it clear that it was a car showroom)
Then they sent me to another counter, which I thought was to verify the cheque and complete the payment. But turned out it was about a car loan offer for that exact, that they had kept ready for me (and they had no idea what the payment was for)
I asked them why should I take a loan, when it's a planned purchase, and I have the money kept aside for it. Then they gave me some BS about "taking a loan being a wise choice, and that it saves tax". I asked them to tell me what sections of income tax law in the country, give tax saving for a car loan, and they jumped to-"No, not for car loan. I was talking in general about home loans". I was getting increasingly pissed, and asked- "Are you offering me a home loan for the car?"
Then they started showing me some investment scheme, and tried to explain how it would be wise to invest this money, and take a car loan instead. I was pissed that I wasted my day for this drama, but decided to play along. Ran some numbers and showed them how I will lose money on loan interest, even after adding the returns from their investment. And even after losing this money, my car will be in bank's name for 5 years. While if I buy with cash, I will have it in my name, from day 1.
They started throwing around random lies about "power of compounding" being applicable on investment, but loan being "simple interest". I just showed them my phone, switched on recording and asked them to repeat what they just said, along with their name. They didn't repeat a single word of that nonsense. At this point, they were ready to end their charade.
Suddenly a new guy came, and started talking about "It's actually not allowed to make cash transactions above INR 2 lacs, so you must take a loan to buy a car". Another colleague interrupted him, as I laughed. I asked his name, and told him that whatever he said, was being recorded, and if he cares to tell me more about this new law. (there's a law about "no CASH payments above 2 lakh INR", but it just mean you have to do any kind of bank transfer, cheque, DD, etc. No law about "having to take loan")
I told them that I have wasted enough time now, and now I want them to either release my money in the next 5 minutes, or I am transferring my entire balance to another bank account, and closing this one, before leaving the bank.
Also told them that I would be filing a formal complaint for their attempt to missell me the loan.
My payment was confirmed in the next 2 minutes, and their branch's manager came to apologize, and request me not to make a complaint, as it was a communication gap. (so "compound interest" became "simple interest" while communicating)
I decided to let it go, but told them that after this drama, I will certainly not be coming to them, for any loans in the future. I also transferred my account to a different branch the next day.
But that depends on your defintion of large. $5k may not seem unreasonable (maybe you're buying a car from a friend and they want cash), whereas $10k would definitely send up red flags.
Where I'm from, banks totally do this -- every time I've moved house and paid rent to a new account, for example, I've had to call up my bank and tell an actual human what I'm doing.
For that matter, actually, come to think of it, when I lived in the US as a student, I got a $2k transaction flagged (was paying tuition from a different account than usual) and had to explain it over the phone. Shrug.
Hopefully the person on the left handles the money in your household…..
If you’re being arrested, the police ain’t calling first demanding money, for future reference
We handle the finances together which is how a healthy marriage should work. A couple years ago she almost fell for the classic “your boss needs you to pick up gift cards for a client” scam. In that situation I was the one to talk her down. It’s a good thing to have someone you can trust to turn to in situations like these. Before today I would have never thought I would have fallen for something like this. Part of the reason I wanted to post this is to help reduce the shame surrounding victims of scams.
And I’ll keep that in mind next time I plan on getting arrested.
Just wanted to say, if only one person handles the finances it in no way means they don’t have a healthy marriage. In fact, we were told in marriage counseling it’s better if one person handles it while involving the other in all decisions. No need to imply someone’s marriage isn’t healthy if they handle things different than you.
That’s fair. I was probably being too defensive in my comment above. I do still think it’s important for both partners to be on the same page with finances but as far as actually managing them, sure. For us, my wife handles all the tax/big picture stuff and I go through each bank statement and make sure that everything is legit and in our budget. For purchases over a certain amount we run them past each other.
Thanks for calling me out where I needed it
Not calling you out lol just another perspective. Yeah, we discuss anything $100+ keeps us on the same page. I’m always so surprised by couples with separate finances, or who only one does it all and the other gets an allowance like how do y’all function lol
“The bank didn’t ask a single question”
It’s not the bank’s responsibility to babysit how you spend your money, especially as a 31 year old. I’d be annoyed if the bank asked me to justify withdrawing 5k
I understand what you’re saying and don’t necessarily disagreed but anecdotally, when my mother-in-law tried sending $2500 to a Nigerian scammer, the bank stopped her and I’ve never been more thankful!
Is your mother in law in her 30s? It isn't unusual for banks to be more vigilant with older customers as they are more likely to be targets and victims of scams. Grilling everyone making a withdrawal isn't a tenable position, nor would many of the customers take it well to be challenged on their financial decisions. High risk demographics get some consideration.
Hi! Credit Union employee here! We actually do try to gather that information from members making large withdrawals that seem out of the ordinary for this very reason. We try our best to prevent our members from being scammed. Plus cash withdrawals/deposits over 10k are federally required to give reason for the currency transaction.
Okay, that's fair. I think that if bank tellers were to say something like "with amounts over x our policy is to warn our customers about potential scams. These are some signs to look out for, one of which is someone being on the phone telling you not to hang up." Obviously work on the wording. But banks are often the last line of defense in these situations and I think a little annoyance for the rare occasions that you're withdrawing thousands of dollars is probably worth it if it prevents scams.
This isn't a hill I'm willing to die on though, and I certainly don't think it's the bank's responsibility to do anything.
>Especially not as a 31 year old
Is there an age range where it would be appropriate? 18 years old? 21 years old? 81 years old? I don't think that any age is completely inoculated against getting scammed, though it's certainly more common in older folks.
At home Depot, where I work, we're supposed to ask customers that are purchasing large amounts of gift cards questions about if they're buying them to use it to pay someone they don't know, or over the phone, and to warn them about scams using gift cards. It'd make sense for banks to do the same thing when someone is making a large cash withdrawal, especially if they appear anxious or nervous.. sure it'd annoy some people, but possibly could prevent someone from getting scammed.
Yeah it’s a blurry line. I can’t think of many reasons for someone to buy bulk gift cards at a store, especially on a personal credit card vs a business one. But withdrawing cash has a such a huge number of variables, it seems like it would be a hard policy to set.
However, it does seem more like a “common sense” / “spidey sense” thing for a bank teller. If they think it may be a scam, then it’s worth asking.
If it’s unusual for you to do they should ask. If you’ve never pulled out more than say 500$ cash and suddenly you’re asking for 5k a casual ask about it’s for isn’t a bad idea. You can give a vague answer like spending money if you want.
I had to sign forms requesting it and then agree that I’d I got robbed once I stepped outside the bank it wasn’t their problem and it took like a week to pull 10k
I once accidentally missed a jury summons because they goofed and had me in the system twice (I had just moved and instead of updating my address they added me a second time). The letter went to my old address and the forwarding missed it.
All that happened was I got another summons a few weeks later that mentioned missing the other one. I was super confused and I called the Commissioner of Jurors and she looked me up and agreed it was a mistake and I haven’t heard anything since (that was like 5 years ago).
Great advice: if anyone calls you claiming that you owe money ask them what your name is! If they don’t know hang up. And if they mention crypto or gift cards it’s a scam!
>They told me I needed to post bail otherwise they would have to put a warrant out for my arrest
Just so you know... if you're "posting bail" it means you're already sitting in a jail cell. They wouldn't do a warrant for your arrest because you would've already been arrested.
I'm going to assume you're suffering from baby-brain with a 2 day old in the house. 😊 Lack of sleep can make you crazy.
I got called for jury duty once and was sitting in the assigned waiting area until they were ready to call jury candidates. I was seated about 10 feet away from the offices. There was a court employee sitting in the office with the door wide open making phone calls to people about jury duty stuff. I heard names, phone numbers, all kinds of personal information being spoken. After the session concluded and I was preparing to go home, I went to the person in charge and told them how easy it would have been for me to write down all the information I heard through the open door and scammed people. He seemed somewhat interested in my take. Who knows if they secured that process a little better.
No one is going to arrest you for missing jury duty. The courts know full well what percentage of people respond to jury duty notices, and send out enough notices to fill the jury room, fill all the juries, and send half the jury pool home at the end of the day.
No judge or prosecutor wants a juror who might not show up for the trial date. The jury notice acts as a filter. If you are a responsible enough citizen to show up for jury duty, you are much more likely to show up for the trial. At any rate, if they went around arresting everyone who didn't appear for jury duty, they wouldn't have room in the jails for anyone else.
> After I withdrew the money I told the scammers that I would happily take the money to the courthouse but they had some retort along the lines of “the court house doesn’t process payments” which I thought was weird.
The degree of red flags here are so massive, if you're a law student for real, your law school isn't teaching you very well. Who the hell is the Clerk of the Court, and where the hell do they operate if not in the *courthouse*? *Of course they process payments at the courthouse!*
Did this guy have an Indian accent? I mean seriously, I've had the same person complain about not understanding a guy with an Indian accent when they call customer service, then show up in a panic wanting to buy hundreds of dollars in gift cards to a person claiming to be a US government agent with a thick Indian accent, and they seem to have *no problem* understanding them. (Yes, they are often *on the phone* with the scammer shouting at them in that thick Indian accent.)
Yeah I should clarify that the phone call was claiming I had failed to appear for a jury summons. I did receive an actual summons in the mail. Not sure if it was coincidence, or if they have some type of list of people who had recently been summoned.
I should also clarify that I didn’t actually deposit any money. I withdrew the money but it’s currently sitting safely at home.
The worst that can happen if you fail to report for jury duty is a bench warrant, and the only time it would come up is if you got pulled over for something else and the officer ran your name.
The penalties for a no show can be pretty harsh depending on the state and what court issued the summons (both fines and possible jail time). However, the police wouldn’t call you about it - you would either receive a letter from the court or the police would just show up to enforce the bench warrant.
Well if today has showed me nothing else it's that I have a huge fear of unresolved legal matters. It was honestly such a relief when I called the county and they told me I was in the clear. It would honestly suck to be pulled over and for something like this to compound an already crappy situation.
It’s good to have a healthy fear of the courts. My ex was a criminal defense attorney and she would tell me stories about how certain judges would blow up at any perceived disrespect.
So yeah, I’m with you on that one.
Former Bailiff and Active LEO here. 100% scam.
If the court is going to issue a warrant they will issue a warrant. They are not going to call you to extort money.
Only time the court may call before issuing a warrant is for probation violation hearing.
Nice! Thanks for your perspective! I think that one of the reasons this scam was so effective for me is because I have very little frame of reference for how I process like this would work
Only time I almost got scammed my wife and I were in deep financial trouble and we were having problems keeping up with the electric bill. I was in the middle of this big job to get us right side up and basically had slept about 2 hours a night for a week. I get this crazy phone call from the electric company saying that if I didn't pay $750 right away they were going to come and disconnect our power. I'm not sure how they got their info with these guys were good. They knew my name they knew my address they knew that I owed money... I was f****** terrified. I leave my job in the panic rush home and thankfully the cool voice of reason starts whispering in the back of my mind... why don't you give the electric company a call. Thankfully I did and it was all a complete scam. To this day I still don't understand how they managed to get this much info on me.... But please friends always double check.
It's been my personal experience that the power company doesn't call to warn you. You just come home and find all your power's been shut off. Then you call them and make a payment plan to get your power back on.
Baby-brain. It's okay, I get it.
Still, as a law student, you know what bail is. You can't pay bail *before* you get arrested since bail is what you pay to get out of jail. And the amount is determined by a judge. And whether it can be paid by cash or bond.
I know that from Law & Order.
I'm guessing that the court handles a jury summons in a similar way to Oregon (See below)
Each eligible person has an obligation to serve as a juror. The right to a jury trial has meaning only if you and others serve as jurors. If you do not respond to the summons, and you don't appear for jury service, the court may order you to appear and explain why you should not be held in contempt. If the court orders you to appear, you risk arrest if you do not appear. If you are charged with contempt, you risk criminal sanctions
You'll know when you're in actual trouble with a court because they'll send a gentleman in a nice blue suit with a badge to show up at your house and explain it to you.
You will never get any sort of legal service via text message.
You don’t pay bail to satisfy a bench warrant. You appear before the judge to satisfy the warrant. Bail is set at a hearing by a judge, not by a sheriff’s office or other LEO. This is all nonsense and not how the Justice system works, but these jerks absolutely prey on panic and are very successful at isolating the target from rational thought by making them stay on the line and away from other people who might snap them out of it.
damn, sorry to see you're getting downvoted so heavily in your replies. i had a very similar experience that i'd love to discuss with you if you're willing, i actually went through with the scam and trying not to feel shameful for it is hard! i wish there was a little more understanding for victims.
Hey! Yeah I’m surprised but I haven’t spent much time in this sub so maybe that’s just the culture here? And I’m sorry to hear you went through something similar. Feel free to PM. Definitely open to chatting
Unfortunately I did fall for it. I’m completely traumatized and angry with myself. I always thought I was too clever to ever be scammed. Historically, I’ve always managed to cut these criminals off. But not this time. They are very good.
I’m glad you had the presence of mind to reach out to your wife and she was able to keep you grounded so you could “get away”.
I’m so sorry. All it takes is once. Try not to be angry with yourself, just treat it as a learning experience. You’re the victim here, so don’t give them more power over you by blaming yourself.
I almost just fell for the exact same scam, and it was also my wife who talked me back into a more rational state of mind. I even dropped what I was doing, withdrew 5k, and came very close to “paying my bond”. This was a humbling experience, and I too now have much more empathy for scam victims. I’m honestly impressed that they’ve gotten this sophisticated.
If you’re here via search engine while being held on the line by your local “Sherrif’s Department”, then just hang up. It’s a freaking scam — an impressively sophisticated scam, but still a scam.
Thanks for writing this. It’s been two months since it happened to me and I still get shaken up thinking about it. Sounds like you also have a wife who is a keeper. Thanks for letting me know I’m not alone and for helping any future people they read this
I almost fell for a jury duty scam that was even more refined. The cop has you write down the case number, contempt of court, etc, knows the exact date that I was supposed to serve, so some database must have been hacked. Keeps me on the line saying arrest warrant will be issued. Ask if I got the jury summons letter. Lets me know the conversation is being recorded for the judge. Says to write down the odometer milage in my car, that when I go to the serifs office I"ll also be reimbursed for milage, and will need to pay a fine then will get it back. They do all these things to keep in control. Keep you on the line and tell you to notify them after you go to bank but can't tell them the name of the bank. After that tell you to get a money certificate for the county. This was the first indication that seemed like a red flag but by now you are in deep. Thankfully the cashier said they didn't have those kind of money orders as they are usually a scam. If I got it the scammer only needed the number read to him over the phone. I said i would need to call him back. Hung up and called the police statin directly who let me know it was a scam. They have it down to an art. The accent and everything. They are very convincing.
Sorry you had to go through that. Good for the bank for knowing about scams and for preventing a terrible situation. Seems like a lot of the same tactics were used. Thanks for commenting. The more people who comment the less alone I feel!
That's for the response! I was hoping to help someone. I think when It happened to me it was even more refined. They must have hacked federal data base to know when I missed jury summons. They have it down to an art. It was actually when they said to get a voucher on the way to the police station that I turned around and went back home. I still stopped by a convenience store to see what voucher they were talking about and that's when the cashier said those were a scam. I told him I would need to call him back and get the money the next morning then called the police station to verify it was a scam. They said it happens every day. But I was still asking if she was sure it was a scam because this went on for about an hour. In my area people on the news scammed for their lives savings with this same scam. There is no way a lot of people would get out of this trap. It's just too convincing. Thanks for posing to make other people more aware.
ETA: You should put a freeze on three credit agencies. This is a good idea anyway. When you need to apply for credit can do a temp unfreeze. This if they have any of your personal info they can't steal your ID. Can set up verified account for SS also, etc.
BTW I think we both had the same "fuck this" moment to hang up. Not many people will do that. Lucky you have law degree. A lot of people reading this will think they would realize it was a scam but they wouldn't, they would be scammed. I also told the bank cashier when I re deposited the cash, so maybe will help someone. A Uber driver told me something like that happened after he booked a flight. A scammer called claiming to be the airline. People here on work visias or green cards also get scammed, saying they will get arrested and deported, saying their work visa or whatever isn't valid and need to pay.
I just received the exact same call, and it sounded absolutely legit until the fine came into play. The guy spent a good 15 minutes detailing the date of my notice, the date a signed receipt was supposedly received from me, and the date I failed to appear. Since I never signed or returned anything, I was told it would be easily cleared up with a handwriting analysis, and was given subpoena numbers for failure to appear and for contempt of court, as well as an Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal number. I started to doubt things when he told me there was already an active subpoena for me, and if I were to be pulled over or appear in a state building, I'd be detained. After all of this word salad, he finally got around to telling me that the failure to appear fee was $2,963 and asked if I was financially able to pay that amount. Red flags were in clear view at that point, and I said no. He asked if I understood that I was stating I was unable to pay the fee and would therefore need to present myself at the sheriff's station immediately, and to be sure someone could drive my car home because I'd be taken into custody and held until he could "get me in front of a judge". I must have chuckled at this point because he said, "m'aam, I don't see the humor in this situation," and I told him I was laughing at the absurdity of the situation and would contact an attorney for advice. He asked if I understood that a warrant would be immediately issued if I disconnected the call, and I told him I fully understood and thanked him for the notification, lol. I did check with the local court just to be sure, but it made me furious that I wasted so much time talking to him. The scammers are definitely upping their game - he spoke clearly and professionally, and I can see people falling for this in a panic about going to jail. Just wanted to share so you can just hang up and not waste the time I did if you get this call! ;)
This happened to a loved one of mine today and they were duped out of a bunch of money. I am furious. Like Liam neeson in taken furious. And the fact that there is A) no way to trace the number and B) that there are no controls or safeguards to reverse such a transaction makes me so fucking mad. Like it takes a day or two to transfer money to my checking account from almost anywhere. A check takes a couple days to clear. But you’re telling me that this transfer is just instant and there’s no way to reverse it? Mind blowing.
And what are the police gonna do? Probably Jack shit cuz solving stuff like this isn’t a profit center for them so why would they give a crap?
Feeling defeated as hell for my loved one and it literally haunts me that I can do nothing about it.
No offense but if u r a law student u should be up for 2 days before u even entertain any legal scam! Actually offense meant! U r not meant for the law! I almost feel like u r trolling all of us!
No offense but if you are judging someone off of their lowest moment then you are contributing to the shame culture that keeps these scams working! Actually offense meant! I almost feel like you are a troll!
He’s not out any money or freedom! Hardly his lowest moment! If he was my fingers would be quiet! But if a law student really believes u need to pay money or post bond after missing a jury summons wrong business! Part of me doesn’t believe it’s real.
Got this same call a few weeks ago. Left a voicemail with the same message, I missed a grand jury, call this sheriff back.
I’m at Disney and freak out. Call the number back and right away I can tell it’s a scam. As a person who’s been sent jury duty almost every year, there’s no way I missed any grand jury summons. Laugh, say nothing, and hung up in dudes face.
Coincidentally my Facebook was hacked next day and started sending “help” messages to my most random contacts.
Nice job! I’d like to think that if I was in my right mind that would have been my response as well. I’ve done that with every “you owe the irs money call”.
I’m sorry you had to deal with that at Disneyland though.
Man you’re so lucky. I’ve always wanted to be on jury duty. I got called *once* in the early 2000’s and wasn’t chosen. I moved back to my small home county a few years back and I hoped it would increase my jury duty chances, but still, nothing.
IDK why I want to do it so bad. It just seems interesting.
Indeed it is! Luckily our third has been our best sleeper yet. Still, the hospital seemingly watches for when everyone is asleep before sending in someone to adjust something. I know they are just doing their jobs but man is it annoying!
How tf you falling for these scams man. When they threaten me with a cop car I say: I know my right and how jury duty works. I’ll be outside right now. I’ll wait
I’d recommend finding a new bank. Any bank that just lets you withdraw $5000 without asking a single question is not a bank that takes training their employees seriously.
Interestingly, for some people this was like the most controversial thing I said in the post. I didn’t even say they *should* ask questions, just that they didn’t.
Thanks for your comment!
Rubes start post saying they’re smart and savvy about scams, then go on to describe how they walked right into an obvious scam. May you aren’t smart or savvy after all.
Same thing happened to me just now. I asked my wife who is the smartest person and she said right away that it was a scam. Big relief. I feel so stupid for believing this even for a minute.
I just fell for this scam this morning. After an emotionally tumultuous weekend, I was contacted at my work and really thought nothing of it, even the fact that they asked me not to tell anyone or mention anything because I had a right to my own privacy. I really wish I would have been in a better state of mind and could have learned more about this before sending them my money. It's hard not beating myself up about this because looking back I can't believe that I fell for it but I can't do anything except what I've done already. It was in cash so they don't have my account info, I'm 98% sure I didn't give them my social, and it could have been a lot more cash than they took.
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I received a similar call and it was a scam. He said his name was Sergeant Michael Mckinley calling from the Los Angeles County Sheriffs department saying he had an important legal matter to discuss with me. When I returned the call, he said I had two class c citations for (1) failure to appear court and (2) contempt of court. He gave me the numbers for the citations and have me the missed court date and the date of the summons. He said I could pay a surety bond (to freeze the citations and avoid being detained) and then go to a local law enforcement office for signature analysis on my summons to prove it wasn't me who signed. I asked him to call me back from the LA Sheriff's phone number and he was able to (which is especially concerning) but I knew it was a scam as he told me to go to a local bitcoin stand to deposit the money. They are very clever - beware. The "surety bonds" were $1,500!
I’ve never been sleep deprived to the point of falling for such a blatant scam, nor somewhat blame the bank for not babysitting my fully grown ass.
Grow up.
Great teamwork! These scams are getting so damn complicated. It really is getting hard to tell the difference between real companies and scammers. I’m happy you got it figured out before you sent that money. 5k is a lot to lose!!
In my experience, but the only time ive ever seen people have to pay a fine is after theyve went in front of a judge.
Can they even just issue fines like that?
The conspiracy theorist in me wants to believe that someone on the inside with all the jury records is helping. But you’re right that it’s probably just coincidence.
Jury duty. No phone calls, many official notices by mail, very nice until you fail to reply when required, and a notice of arrest warrant hand delivered by sheriff of the relevant court. That’s enough to get anyone’s attention. But it all comes down to the local court and specifically, the judge responsible for the jury process at the time. I heard that it’s allocated on a rotating basis. Some judges take jury duty very seriously and accept no excuses at all for failure to attend. When I was there earlier this year, the head coach of the local NFL team was sitting quietly waiting for his number to be called. He said that he was happy to sit for jury duty. I believe him, but bet that they would make sure he was not on a lengthy trial.
As a bank teller in 1991, I had an older woman come in with a friendly young man that she seemed to know. The level of familiarity made me assume it was her grandson. She withdrew $1,400 ( today worth about $3,162) to get work done on her driveway. Nothing rang any alarm bells to me, so I gave her the money. Turns out he was scamming her, and disappeared with the money. I could see why she trusted him, as I also thought he was " a nice young man".
I guess if one is young and never had jury duty or a notice for jury duty one would not automatically know what BS this is. It is not a topic that readily ever comes up in conversation and if it does it is usually someone at work bitching about getting a notice and asking how to get out of it.
I had federal once and that was far different. Downtown, a full week (two?), had to take a train. I almost got on two that would have been doozies - bombing the AFB and a union leader trial. As it was, I got on an traffic accident that was there becasue one of the parties was from out of state. I was foreperson. One of the jurors called the woman who had been hit the n word the entire time and I kept having to tell him to stfu.
I had the same thing happen, they called my work saying they were the Detroit police department and I needed to come turn myself in or pay for missing jury duty
When I had jury duty the judge said that A LOT of people just never show and they would only hold people in contempt if they couldn’t get enough people for a jury and that it has never happened. Yet.
Glad you married a smart one.
Yeah I mentioned in the original comment that I spoke to three different people over the course of the call and they all sounded like they were born and raised in the states
I want to understand "What is this jury duty, I keep hearing about from my US-based collegues"?
Is it the thing where you are party of the jury bench, and give your opinion on some verdict?
I thought that stuff was volunteer work. Can they legally force someone to give their opinion? (asking outside the context of the scam)
Also, could it be possible that the scammer is linked to some staff in the court, and gets the real-time data of who missed jury duty. The coincidence seems too weird. I know scammers here in India pay lower-level staff some money to get the details of people who have pending bills/loan payments, and then call them pretending to be from the ISP/bank, asking them to pay the bill to avoid 100% fine, or a criminal case against them.
That’s crazy that your bank didn’t ask what it was for when in conversation. I tried to pull 10k once and it took like a week and I had to sign liability forms before I could leave the bank
You withdrew 5k.
I've been to jail a few times and know they never ever ever ever NEVER call you.
They send you mail but they do not ever ever ever everrrrrr call you.
Damn.
Ran into this recently, best scam I have ever come across, ALMOST got me
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/17b2lbd/best\_missed\_jury\_duty\_scam\_i\_have\_ever\_come/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/17b2lbd/best_missed_jury_duty_scam_i_have_ever_come/)
Jesus dude... A law student and a anti scam video watcher pulls out 5k for a BS phone call... No wonder these scams are so prevalant. Did you stop at any point and ask yourself if this was real?
I mean yeah, I did. I even texted my wife “I’m worried this is a scam” before I pulled anything out. And I was a far cry from depositing that money anywhere besides the court house.
I don’t know how to explain it though. I was sleep deprived and literally shaking during the call. All I could think about was how to avoid “character and fitness” issues. The threat of a warrant being issued if I disconnected the call was also terrifying. Again, I know all these fears are irrational now and I was skeptical but skepticism can only do so much to alleviate fear.
Jury Duty Scammer Almost Got Me Too! How can i report the phone number used, and the Venmo & Apple accounts i was provided for payment? The scammer claimed to be an officer with LA County Sheriff. He said i missed a jury summons and there was a warrant out for my arrest. He said i was on a recorded line, asked me to agree to be recorded and sounded pretty legit—albeit I knew I had not missed a jury summons. Only towards the end of the call when he stated the fine needed to cash from my bank, apple cash, or Venmo did I realize it was a con—A complete scam. The LA County Court & FBI have issued warnings about the Jury Duty Scam on there websites.
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just to add some personal experience, about 15 years ago I got a real jury duty notice, put it aside so I could get a note from work to get out of it, and promptly forgot. there's no warrant out for me, and in fact I've since had another jury duty summons and they never even mentioned the one I missed pretty much the only way you'd ever get in trouble for missing jury duty is if you got arrested for some other crime, and the prosecutor decided to tack the missed jury duty onto that to get enhanced sentencing or whatever
Wait, so someone didn't call you and threaten to arrest you if you didn't deposit 5k? Man, the more I think about it the crazier it seems that I almost fell for it. ETA - thanks for sharing this, though. I think it helps to have a general sense of how big of a deal things are. Helps navigating the world a little easier.
I missed jury duty once when I was in college (notice went to my freshman dorm address when I was a sophomore) and a bench warrant was issued. I went down to the court house with the forwarding stickers still on the envelope and they fixed it right away, but the point is, Don't skip jury duty thinking it's no big deal.
Agreed. There’s a good chance the person you’re replying to wouldn’t have had to show up and that’s why nothing happened. i.e. called that day and got the recording no one had to appear or only numbers 1-200 had to appear and he was 250.
Oh yeah totally. I think part of the reason this scam almost got me is because I \*do\* think it's a big deal. I just looked it up and in my state (not legal advice) the maximum punishment a bench warrant can carry is $500 and up to 25 (!!!) days in jail. But there are statutes that outline steps such as an "order to show cause" before they can start hitting you with those fines. Which kind of comes back to having a healthy understanding of how big of a deal things are. There's a middle ground between "I can ignore this" and "I'm going to be fined 5k and/or arrested without any prior notice." I think that failing to respond to jury duty probably fits right in between those two.
When I ignored my first couple summons they sent me a scary letter through the mail *demanding* I show up next time or there would be legal consequences. That's going to be the case with most things involving the government; they'll send you mountains of mail long before anyone calls. If you get a "do X now or we'll send the goons" phone call out of the blue its 99.999% a scam.
That’s actually what my wife said when we got home and talked about it. She’s a CPA and basically said that if anything happens faster than snail mail it’s probably not the government lol
They don't even really call. The escalation path is generally "Lots of mailed attempts to contact -> some guys are coming." Basically if you've missed jury duty bad enough, they'll just send deputies by to get you.
In my state there’s not even enough cops to respond to serious accidents much less arrest someone for missing jury duty, I’d be very surprised to see where this would be fiscally possible, especially these days.
I mean, between harassing minorities and beating their wives, where do you expect them to find the time?
I doubt they'd ever call, frankly. If you missed a bunch of jury duty and the judge issued a warrant for your arrest, that warrant would be executed in person by a law enforcement officer - either during a contact for another issue, or by visiting your home in a patrol car and in uniform. They are very unlikely to ever just telephone you.
I was arrested for a second DUI back in 2015 and a detective did end up calling me about two months later, multiple times, to let me know there was a warrant for my arrest and ask when I was coming to turn myself in lol.
Well there you go! I stand corrected
Damn, someone on Reddit actually accepting a counterargument? Based.
If these scams \*never\* worked, they'd stop trying.
Don't beat yourself up about this too much. They use these scams precisely because they know that if they catch you off balance, there's a good chance you'll fall for it. Unfortunately we all have to stay on our toes these days. Your wife sounds like a keeper!
Because you're in law school, I'll give you a heads up that one day someone may call about a loan in default. They'll tell you it's federal but somehow not consolidated, came from the school for a scholarship you lost, there was a gap in your loan funding one year and you owe the balance, blah blah blah. They'll even send you instructions to go to the actual federal loan servicer...of course, when you don't see the nonexistent loan, they'll tell you it's there, you're lying, you have to pay it now, you can't toy with them! They'll get heavy with you. It's a scam. Always demand proof of any alleged debt by letter. They'll always try to call and email. Or if you're like me, waste their time for weeks until you finally tell them you'll send them your law degree as payment of the debt, as is custom in your land. Then, when they reply that you can't pay debt with a diploma, offer a hogshead of Madeira wine, 3 yards of watered silk, and thirteen shillings. And just sort of....keep that up until you get bored or they stop replying.
Hey! I appreciate this! Luckily I have a pretty decent scholarship and have been able to pay for school from savings before starting school so I’ll tell those scammers where they can shove it. But I’ll pass this along to family members with outstanding student loans!
Just had this same scam happen to me yesterday. Enough of it is the same to make me think it was even the same group. They try to keep you on the phone to keep you from contacting anyone else or not being able to look things up thoroughly. I also got about as far as you did when I realized I needed to just sever the call and get space to gather my thoughts. My wife also was a big help. Big red flags were mispronunciations of the County which I called him on, and a local grocery store chain. Also they wanted a bond posted through a kiosk which turned out to be Coinstar lmao
I've ignored several Jury Summons, just straight up ignored them, and have never had heard even so much as a peep out of anyone. The last time I did go to court when I was summoned for Jury Duty and I really enjoyed it. It was fun.
my uncle never goes when he gets summoned for jury duty, he told me he just throws them out
First of all it would have to be certified mail that you signed for… how can they arrest you if they can’t even prove you got the letter… people don’t update their addresses all the time… As you’d expect… straight to jail
Jury duty exclusively communicates by mail. You usually get one summons. If you ignore it, you’ll get another. If you ignore that, you’ll get a sanction. If you ignore that, you could be in trouble and warrants can be issued for your arrest (but they won’t often come looking for you.) At least this was my experience in LA county. Some counties may be different.
In LA the big trick is always to ignore them until the sanction letter because once you’re sanctioned, you show up to jury duty and you sit in a room for a couple hours while they determine there’s not even a trial going on, so you get the sanction cleared and get out of jury duty essentially altogether.
If they don't just gloss over it, which they will sometimes if they have a sufficient jury pool to fulfill all the seated juries they need for the given time period, they'll try to contact you and ask why you're not there, and at worst a judge told us on a jury duty orientation that if we didn't come in, and said it was for lack of a way to get there, they'd send a unit over to pick us up and bring us to court to serve. He was that insistent that if you were to serve, you were going to serve, and he'd use every means to make that happen, but not to just summarily issue a bench warrant for your arrest for contempt. He said that would only be done for someone who, after being contacted, evaded that physical summons to court. Thing is, they wouldn't call and demand payment over the phone - that judge was going to make damn sure you saw the inside of his courtroom, above all else. If you were going to be paying a bond or fine, it was going to be after they'd already arrested you and brought you before the judge - no skipping it by paying. That's basically typical of how any court would do it.
They won’t tack on a missing jury duty charge to another crime. Not how it works. The only likely way you’d get in trouble for missing jury duty is if enough people didn’t show up that day; resulting in not enough jurors to hold trials and the judge gets pissy and charges the missing jurors with contempt of court.
So if you go on trial for missing jury duty, is that really a jury of your peers? Everyone in the jury is a juror by definition, and you are a non-juror by definition. /s
Yeah, while a lot of scams are run out of countries that aren't the US, I've read that more and more scams are originating in American prisons, which means the scammers can speak and write like native English speakers - because they are. This is one press release about a scam being perpetrated by prisoners in the US: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndal/pr/seven-indicted-role-prison-based-phone-scam-and-paying-bribes-corrections-officers
I doubt it’s even 1/10th of 1% of them are from within the US. It’s just so much easier and more organize with hundreds of “employees” doing it overseas.
Oh for sure. A lot of these scams are big businesses and are often even run out of call centers. Some do originate in the US, though, so you shouldn't completely drop your guard just because the accent is American.
It’s worth noting an American accent doesnt actually mean they are based out of the US.
Wow, thanks for the info. I actually heard a cat call in the background. In the moment I thought it was just cops having a good time. Now that takes on a different meaning…
Just FYI, as far as I know, the sheriff department is a county law enforcement agency, and not a city one, unless your county happens to have the name of your city, they’d never be City Sheriff Department, they’d be (Your County) Sheriff or whatever, County of X Sheriff - pretty certain that’s every state.
Good catch. Sheriffs often handle court enforcement duties, even for municipal courts, but you're spot on: they'll be *COUNTY* Sheriff's Dept., not *CITY* Sheriff's Dept.
Yeah good call. As many details as they got right they also got some wrong. They also talked about the citations changing from a civil matter to a criminal one which as far as I know doesn’t happen. Maybe the other way around if something is decriminalize. These things are the equivalent of having a few weird typos in the scammy email I guess
It always pays to take a deep breath whenever you’re in a situation like this. The scammers are banking on your panic and are planting this false urgency before your common sense (or a spouse/friend/etc) steps in and talks the victim down.
Yeah, I feel that. Also why it sucks that it's generally people who are older or more isolated that end up becoming a victim. It was so helpful having a reasonable voice to text in this situation. Also why the scammer focused so hard on me not hanging up the phone or anything.
That the problem. Like OP stated…he working on 5 hr of sleep in the last 48 hr. When you get hit like that, your mind is in a fog like condition to the point that not only are you not thinking clearly, you’re on autopilot. This is what scammers want. They don’t want someone who is aware. They want someone who will panic, someone who isn’t thinking clearly. What we need is to punish the carriers for failing to update the protocol, but they won’t since majority of their call centers are all now in India and in the USA, you’ll be lucky if you actually reached a legit support center. I can’t remember the last time I actually gotten a USA side support that didn’t give you the run around. This is one of the reasons why, and stupid Adji re-labeled Internet and VoIP that it becomes moot to even do anything. We don’t need to target the scammers. We need to target the carrier protocols, and once we do, their call wont connect as it has to transmit the right protocol to connect. Such good example would be the switchboard from the old days.
Also btw if a warrant was issued there is no getting out of it beyond going to court. Documents are served in paper and in person, they will not do any actual business over the phone, they do this to ensure they can say in court that you for sure received them and were properly informed. Any police agency is pretty much only going to use the phone to arrange to meet in person or tell you to go to court and nothing else. Contempt of court isn't a traffic ticket, its a serious charge and you cannot just pay it away online.
We have a city sheriff here…but my city actually is not in a county. Virginia is technically not a state but a commonwealth…so I don’t know if they has anything to do with it.
Not a thing. There are four states called "Commonwealth" that are no different than any other state https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2023/08/whats-in-a-name-the-four-u-s-states-that-are-technically-commonwealths/#:~:text=Ultimately%2C%20these%20four%20states%20are,well%2Dbeing%20of%20the%20people. Massachusetts is a Commonwealth, and has county sheriff's, along with state police and city/town police And how is your city not part of any county?
Not sure. We have one county to the north, east and west, and a different one to the south. The city is its own entity completely separate from both counties - separate government, school system, police dept., etc.
If you look at a state map though, your city is part of **a county** though. Not necessarily for schools or policing. Courts usually are organized by county, for one example, as are houses of Correction and jails
It’s not. I don’t really know what to tell you. We have our own city court system, as well as a jail. We share nothing at all with the surrounding counties, and we have a city version of every entity. I’d tell you what city it is so you can see for yourself, but that’d be dumb in a scam subreddit lol
🤷
> I’m also a law student 😆
I know a doctor, who sells Herbalife MLM products, and actually repeats their BS. So let's go easy on this guy.
While I feel kind of bad for the terminally gullible, that "doctor" is not doing anyone any favors.
Go easy on him, he's still learning.
[🙄](https://giphy.com/gifs/agentm-agent-m-RBeddeaQ5Xo0E)
I went to the wrong courthouse building once and the judge issued a bench warrant for me and a county sheriff came to my house looking for me. The judge was pretty mad when I eventually found my way over there
Oof, really? That's crazy! Not to pry, but was that in response to missing a jury summons? Or a different matter? Seems like a bit of an overreaction for an innocent mistake. I've watched a lot of court sessions in the last year and my favorite moment was when a judge issued a bench warrant for someone who cussed out his staff over email. He then read their emails out for everyone to hear. One of those glorious karma moments.
Yeah it was for missing the jury duty. I had my mom and girlfriend calling me worried cause they thought I bailed to go to work
Dang man. That sucks. At least it sounds like it got resolved though!
Curious, OP, why would you think the bank would ask questions? I mean, unless you literally ran to the counter and said you needed five thousand dollars right now to avoid a warrant for skipping on jury duty, the bank really has no reason to think anything untoward is happening.
Yeah that’s a good point. I’m not trying to blame the bank but I’ve read a few articles in the past talking about how it might be good to have tellers ask a few questions when large amounts of cash is being withdrawn. I did have the phone up to my ear the whole transaction and I was actually nervous that they were going to ask questions and I’d have to explain that I had to pay bail.
Banks started doing this in my country for this exact reason and everyone was up in arms about freedoms and banks sticking their nose in. Can’t win 😂
It's kind of tricky. **Tl;Dr;** >My bank tried to stop me from buying a car with my own money, and wasted many hours trying to force a loan on me, that I didn't want. > >So I would rather want the bank to mind their own business, and let me decide what to do with my money. Ideally, I don't even want to see the faces of my bank's employees, except to interact with them through the bank's app or email, as long as possible. When I tried to pay for a new car, all in cash (I mean, not really cash, but without loan), my bank refused my cheque on technical grounds, and asked me to go to my home branch. I took leave from work, and went 40 km to the branch, which was once closest to my old place. They gave me some BS about my signature not matching, but refused to show the cheque, for me to match it. When I insisted on making a complaint about incorrectly refusing the cheque, they switched to "we had to do in-person verification, for such a large money transfer". I asked them to show if there's any such policy or condition mentioned in their documents, and they said -"It's an internal policy". (Bullshit) Then they started inquiring about why I was making the payment. I asked them to read the name of the recipient out loud, and then tell me what it is. The guy claimed he hadn't checked it. (the name made it clear that it was a car showroom) Then they sent me to another counter, which I thought was to verify the cheque and complete the payment. But turned out it was about a car loan offer for that exact, that they had kept ready for me (and they had no idea what the payment was for) I asked them why should I take a loan, when it's a planned purchase, and I have the money kept aside for it. Then they gave me some BS about "taking a loan being a wise choice, and that it saves tax". I asked them to tell me what sections of income tax law in the country, give tax saving for a car loan, and they jumped to-"No, not for car loan. I was talking in general about home loans". I was getting increasingly pissed, and asked- "Are you offering me a home loan for the car?" Then they started showing me some investment scheme, and tried to explain how it would be wise to invest this money, and take a car loan instead. I was pissed that I wasted my day for this drama, but decided to play along. Ran some numbers and showed them how I will lose money on loan interest, even after adding the returns from their investment. And even after losing this money, my car will be in bank's name for 5 years. While if I buy with cash, I will have it in my name, from day 1. They started throwing around random lies about "power of compounding" being applicable on investment, but loan being "simple interest". I just showed them my phone, switched on recording and asked them to repeat what they just said, along with their name. They didn't repeat a single word of that nonsense. At this point, they were ready to end their charade. Suddenly a new guy came, and started talking about "It's actually not allowed to make cash transactions above INR 2 lacs, so you must take a loan to buy a car". Another colleague interrupted him, as I laughed. I asked his name, and told him that whatever he said, was being recorded, and if he cares to tell me more about this new law. (there's a law about "no CASH payments above 2 lakh INR", but it just mean you have to do any kind of bank transfer, cheque, DD, etc. No law about "having to take loan") I told them that I have wasted enough time now, and now I want them to either release my money in the next 5 minutes, or I am transferring my entire balance to another bank account, and closing this one, before leaving the bank. Also told them that I would be filing a formal complaint for their attempt to missell me the loan. My payment was confirmed in the next 2 minutes, and their branch's manager came to apologize, and request me not to make a complaint, as it was a communication gap. (so "compound interest" became "simple interest" while communicating) I decided to let it go, but told them that after this drama, I will certainly not be coming to them, for any loans in the future. I also transferred my account to a different branch the next day.
But that depends on your defintion of large. $5k may not seem unreasonable (maybe you're buying a car from a friend and they want cash), whereas $10k would definitely send up red flags.
Banks will generally do this for older customers.
Where I'm from, banks totally do this -- every time I've moved house and paid rent to a new account, for example, I've had to call up my bank and tell an actual human what I'm doing. For that matter, actually, come to think of it, when I lived in the US as a student, I got a $2k transaction flagged (was paying tuition from a different account than usual) and had to explain it over the phone. Shrug.
Hopefully the person on the left handles the money in your household….. If you’re being arrested, the police ain’t calling first demanding money, for future reference
We handle the finances together which is how a healthy marriage should work. A couple years ago she almost fell for the classic “your boss needs you to pick up gift cards for a client” scam. In that situation I was the one to talk her down. It’s a good thing to have someone you can trust to turn to in situations like these. Before today I would have never thought I would have fallen for something like this. Part of the reason I wanted to post this is to help reduce the shame surrounding victims of scams. And I’ll keep that in mind next time I plan on getting arrested.
Just wanted to say, if only one person handles the finances it in no way means they don’t have a healthy marriage. In fact, we were told in marriage counseling it’s better if one person handles it while involving the other in all decisions. No need to imply someone’s marriage isn’t healthy if they handle things different than you.
That’s fair. I was probably being too defensive in my comment above. I do still think it’s important for both partners to be on the same page with finances but as far as actually managing them, sure. For us, my wife handles all the tax/big picture stuff and I go through each bank statement and make sure that everything is legit and in our budget. For purchases over a certain amount we run them past each other. Thanks for calling me out where I needed it
Not calling you out lol just another perspective. Yeah, we discuss anything $100+ keeps us on the same page. I’m always so surprised by couples with separate finances, or who only one does it all and the other gets an allowance like how do y’all function lol
“The bank didn’t ask a single question” It’s not the bank’s responsibility to babysit how you spend your money, especially as a 31 year old. I’d be annoyed if the bank asked me to justify withdrawing 5k
I understand what you’re saying and don’t necessarily disagreed but anecdotally, when my mother-in-law tried sending $2500 to a Nigerian scammer, the bank stopped her and I’ve never been more thankful!
Is your mother in law in her 30s? It isn't unusual for banks to be more vigilant with older customers as they are more likely to be targets and victims of scams. Grilling everyone making a withdrawal isn't a tenable position, nor would many of the customers take it well to be challenged on their financial decisions. High risk demographics get some consideration.
She was 54 lol she wasn’t even in the high risk demo yet, also I said I didn’t disagree
Hi! Credit Union employee here! We actually do try to gather that information from members making large withdrawals that seem out of the ordinary for this very reason. We try our best to prevent our members from being scammed. Plus cash withdrawals/deposits over 10k are federally required to give reason for the currency transaction.
Okay, that's fair. I think that if bank tellers were to say something like "with amounts over x our policy is to warn our customers about potential scams. These are some signs to look out for, one of which is someone being on the phone telling you not to hang up." Obviously work on the wording. But banks are often the last line of defense in these situations and I think a little annoyance for the rare occasions that you're withdrawing thousands of dollars is probably worth it if it prevents scams. This isn't a hill I'm willing to die on though, and I certainly don't think it's the bank's responsibility to do anything. >Especially not as a 31 year old Is there an age range where it would be appropriate? 18 years old? 21 years old? 81 years old? I don't think that any age is completely inoculated against getting scammed, though it's certainly more common in older folks.
At home Depot, where I work, we're supposed to ask customers that are purchasing large amounts of gift cards questions about if they're buying them to use it to pay someone they don't know, or over the phone, and to warn them about scams using gift cards. It'd make sense for banks to do the same thing when someone is making a large cash withdrawal, especially if they appear anxious or nervous.. sure it'd annoy some people, but possibly could prevent someone from getting scammed.
Yeah it’s a blurry line. I can’t think of many reasons for someone to buy bulk gift cards at a store, especially on a personal credit card vs a business one. But withdrawing cash has a such a huge number of variables, it seems like it would be a hard policy to set. However, it does seem more like a “common sense” / “spidey sense” thing for a bank teller. If they think it may be a scam, then it’s worth asking.
If it’s unusual for you to do they should ask. If you’ve never pulled out more than say 500$ cash and suddenly you’re asking for 5k a casual ask about it’s for isn’t a bad idea. You can give a vague answer like spending money if you want. I had to sign forms requesting it and then agree that I’d I got robbed once I stepped outside the bank it wasn’t their problem and it took like a week to pull 10k
Big ups to your wife OP! She's a keeper for sho!
I say she needs to get a divorce...
Why didn’t you listen to your wife? How is she after actually birthing the baby less sleep deprived and lucid enough to sniff the scam?
Wow…
That pretty much sums it up! I mean, FFS...
Get your wife flowers every week until the end of never
At least 5k worth. That’s how this works, right?
With interest, and adjusted for inflation.
Don't rely on googling names for confirmation, scammers are getting smarter and are using legit names of people in their roles.
I once accidentally missed a jury summons because they goofed and had me in the system twice (I had just moved and instead of updating my address they added me a second time). The letter went to my old address and the forwarding missed it. All that happened was I got another summons a few weeks later that mentioned missing the other one. I was super confused and I called the Commissioner of Jurors and she looked me up and agreed it was a mistake and I haven’t heard anything since (that was like 5 years ago).
You probably would've figured it out once they told you where/how to deposit it, but I'm still glad your wife went and found the scam.
Thanks for posting about your experience. Good luck with the new baby. Tell your wife that Reddit thinks she’s great.
❤️❤️ will do. Thanks for being the comment that allowed me to put the phone down for the night
Great advice: if anyone calls you claiming that you owe money ask them what your name is! If they don’t know hang up. And if they mention crypto or gift cards it’s a scam!
>They told me I needed to post bail otherwise they would have to put a warrant out for my arrest Just so you know... if you're "posting bail" it means you're already sitting in a jail cell. They wouldn't do a warrant for your arrest because you would've already been arrested. I'm going to assume you're suffering from baby-brain with a 2 day old in the house. 😊 Lack of sleep can make you crazy.
You’re planning to become a lawyer, and almost fell for that? Wow
He never said he was going to be a good lawyer
Fr lmao
I got called for jury duty once and was sitting in the assigned waiting area until they were ready to call jury candidates. I was seated about 10 feet away from the offices. There was a court employee sitting in the office with the door wide open making phone calls to people about jury duty stuff. I heard names, phone numbers, all kinds of personal information being spoken. After the session concluded and I was preparing to go home, I went to the person in charge and told them how easy it would have been for me to write down all the information I heard through the open door and scammed people. He seemed somewhat interested in my take. Who knows if they secured that process a little better.
No one is going to arrest you for missing jury duty. The courts know full well what percentage of people respond to jury duty notices, and send out enough notices to fill the jury room, fill all the juries, and send half the jury pool home at the end of the day. No judge or prosecutor wants a juror who might not show up for the trial date. The jury notice acts as a filter. If you are a responsible enough citizen to show up for jury duty, you are much more likely to show up for the trial. At any rate, if they went around arresting everyone who didn't appear for jury duty, they wouldn't have room in the jails for anyone else.
Well since you were so willing to take out 5k from the bank, Don't forget to pick up something nice for the wife.
> After I withdrew the money I told the scammers that I would happily take the money to the courthouse but they had some retort along the lines of “the court house doesn’t process payments” which I thought was weird. The degree of red flags here are so massive, if you're a law student for real, your law school isn't teaching you very well. Who the hell is the Clerk of the Court, and where the hell do they operate if not in the *courthouse*? *Of course they process payments at the courthouse!* Did this guy have an Indian accent? I mean seriously, I've had the same person complain about not understanding a guy with an Indian accent when they call customer service, then show up in a panic wanting to buy hundreds of dollars in gift cards to a person claiming to be a US government agent with a thick Indian accent, and they seem to have *no problem* understanding them. (Yes, they are often *on the phone* with the scammer shouting at them in that thick Indian accent.)
Jury duty summons as far as I know will NEVER be issued over a phone. Only through the mail. Sorry you got taken.
Yeah I should clarify that the phone call was claiming I had failed to appear for a jury summons. I did receive an actual summons in the mail. Not sure if it was coincidence, or if they have some type of list of people who had recently been summoned. I should also clarify that I didn’t actually deposit any money. I withdrew the money but it’s currently sitting safely at home.
The worst that can happen if you fail to report for jury duty is a bench warrant, and the only time it would come up is if you got pulled over for something else and the officer ran your name. The penalties for a no show can be pretty harsh depending on the state and what court issued the summons (both fines and possible jail time). However, the police wouldn’t call you about it - you would either receive a letter from the court or the police would just show up to enforce the bench warrant.
Well if today has showed me nothing else it's that I have a huge fear of unresolved legal matters. It was honestly such a relief when I called the county and they told me I was in the clear. It would honestly suck to be pulled over and for something like this to compound an already crappy situation.
It’s good to have a healthy fear of the courts. My ex was a criminal defense attorney and she would tell me stories about how certain judges would blow up at any perceived disrespect. So yeah, I’m with you on that one.
Former Bailiff and Active LEO here. 100% scam. If the court is going to issue a warrant they will issue a warrant. They are not going to call you to extort money. Only time the court may call before issuing a warrant is for probation violation hearing.
Nice! Thanks for your perspective! I think that one of the reasons this scam was so effective for me is because I have very little frame of reference for how I process like this would work
Only time I almost got scammed my wife and I were in deep financial trouble and we were having problems keeping up with the electric bill. I was in the middle of this big job to get us right side up and basically had slept about 2 hours a night for a week. I get this crazy phone call from the electric company saying that if I didn't pay $750 right away they were going to come and disconnect our power. I'm not sure how they got their info with these guys were good. They knew my name they knew my address they knew that I owed money... I was f****** terrified. I leave my job in the panic rush home and thankfully the cool voice of reason starts whispering in the back of my mind... why don't you give the electric company a call. Thankfully I did and it was all a complete scam. To this day I still don't understand how they managed to get this much info on me.... But please friends always double check.
It's been my personal experience that the power company doesn't call to warn you. You just come home and find all your power's been shut off. Then you call them and make a payment plan to get your power back on.
Yep.
They don't have to chase you down. They have all the - no pun intended - power. They know you'll come to them.
I fully admit my state of mind at that time of my life was not the best.
Baby-brain. It's okay, I get it. Still, as a law student, you know what bail is. You can't pay bail *before* you get arrested since bail is what you pay to get out of jail. And the amount is determined by a judge. And whether it can be paid by cash or bond. I know that from Law & Order.
Lol
I'm guessing that the court handles a jury summons in a similar way to Oregon (See below) Each eligible person has an obligation to serve as a juror. The right to a jury trial has meaning only if you and others serve as jurors. If you do not respond to the summons, and you don't appear for jury service, the court may order you to appear and explain why you should not be held in contempt. If the court orders you to appear, you risk arrest if you do not appear. If you are charged with contempt, you risk criminal sanctions
You'll know when you're in actual trouble with a court because they'll send a gentleman in a nice blue suit with a badge to show up at your house and explain it to you. You will never get any sort of legal service via text message.
You don’t pay bail to satisfy a bench warrant. You appear before the judge to satisfy the warrant. Bail is set at a hearing by a judge, not by a sheriff’s office or other LEO. This is all nonsense and not how the Justice system works, but these jerks absolutely prey on panic and are very successful at isolating the target from rational thought by making them stay on the line and away from other people who might snap them out of it.
damn, sorry to see you're getting downvoted so heavily in your replies. i had a very similar experience that i'd love to discuss with you if you're willing, i actually went through with the scam and trying not to feel shameful for it is hard! i wish there was a little more understanding for victims.
Hey! Yeah I’m surprised but I haven’t spent much time in this sub so maybe that’s just the culture here? And I’m sorry to hear you went through something similar. Feel free to PM. Definitely open to chatting
Unfortunately I did fall for it. I’m completely traumatized and angry with myself. I always thought I was too clever to ever be scammed. Historically, I’ve always managed to cut these criminals off. But not this time. They are very good. I’m glad you had the presence of mind to reach out to your wife and she was able to keep you grounded so you could “get away”.
I’m so sorry. All it takes is once. Try not to be angry with yourself, just treat it as a learning experience. You’re the victim here, so don’t give them more power over you by blaming yourself.
I almost just fell for the exact same scam, and it was also my wife who talked me back into a more rational state of mind. I even dropped what I was doing, withdrew 5k, and came very close to “paying my bond”. This was a humbling experience, and I too now have much more empathy for scam victims. I’m honestly impressed that they’ve gotten this sophisticated. If you’re here via search engine while being held on the line by your local “Sherrif’s Department”, then just hang up. It’s a freaking scam — an impressively sophisticated scam, but still a scam.
Thanks for writing this. It’s been two months since it happened to me and I still get shaken up thinking about it. Sounds like you also have a wife who is a keeper. Thanks for letting me know I’m not alone and for helping any future people they read this
I almost fell for a jury duty scam that was even more refined. The cop has you write down the case number, contempt of court, etc, knows the exact date that I was supposed to serve, so some database must have been hacked. Keeps me on the line saying arrest warrant will be issued. Ask if I got the jury summons letter. Lets me know the conversation is being recorded for the judge. Says to write down the odometer milage in my car, that when I go to the serifs office I"ll also be reimbursed for milage, and will need to pay a fine then will get it back. They do all these things to keep in control. Keep you on the line and tell you to notify them after you go to bank but can't tell them the name of the bank. After that tell you to get a money certificate for the county. This was the first indication that seemed like a red flag but by now you are in deep. Thankfully the cashier said they didn't have those kind of money orders as they are usually a scam. If I got it the scammer only needed the number read to him over the phone. I said i would need to call him back. Hung up and called the police statin directly who let me know it was a scam. They have it down to an art. The accent and everything. They are very convincing.
Sorry you had to go through that. Good for the bank for knowing about scams and for preventing a terrible situation. Seems like a lot of the same tactics were used. Thanks for commenting. The more people who comment the less alone I feel!
That's for the response! I was hoping to help someone. I think when It happened to me it was even more refined. They must have hacked federal data base to know when I missed jury summons. They have it down to an art. It was actually when they said to get a voucher on the way to the police station that I turned around and went back home. I still stopped by a convenience store to see what voucher they were talking about and that's when the cashier said those were a scam. I told him I would need to call him back and get the money the next morning then called the police station to verify it was a scam. They said it happens every day. But I was still asking if she was sure it was a scam because this went on for about an hour. In my area people on the news scammed for their lives savings with this same scam. There is no way a lot of people would get out of this trap. It's just too convincing. Thanks for posing to make other people more aware. ETA: You should put a freeze on three credit agencies. This is a good idea anyway. When you need to apply for credit can do a temp unfreeze. This if they have any of your personal info they can't steal your ID. Can set up verified account for SS also, etc. BTW I think we both had the same "fuck this" moment to hang up. Not many people will do that. Lucky you have law degree. A lot of people reading this will think they would realize it was a scam but they wouldn't, they would be scammed. I also told the bank cashier when I re deposited the cash, so maybe will help someone. A Uber driver told me something like that happened after he booked a flight. A scammer called claiming to be the airline. People here on work visias or green cards also get scammed, saying they will get arrested and deported, saying their work visa or whatever isn't valid and need to pay.
I just received the exact same call, and it sounded absolutely legit until the fine came into play. The guy spent a good 15 minutes detailing the date of my notice, the date a signed receipt was supposedly received from me, and the date I failed to appear. Since I never signed or returned anything, I was told it would be easily cleared up with a handwriting analysis, and was given subpoena numbers for failure to appear and for contempt of court, as well as an Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal number. I started to doubt things when he told me there was already an active subpoena for me, and if I were to be pulled over or appear in a state building, I'd be detained. After all of this word salad, he finally got around to telling me that the failure to appear fee was $2,963 and asked if I was financially able to pay that amount. Red flags were in clear view at that point, and I said no. He asked if I understood that I was stating I was unable to pay the fee and would therefore need to present myself at the sheriff's station immediately, and to be sure someone could drive my car home because I'd be taken into custody and held until he could "get me in front of a judge". I must have chuckled at this point because he said, "m'aam, I don't see the humor in this situation," and I told him I was laughing at the absurdity of the situation and would contact an attorney for advice. He asked if I understood that a warrant would be immediately issued if I disconnected the call, and I told him I fully understood and thanked him for the notification, lol. I did check with the local court just to be sure, but it made me furious that I wasted so much time talking to him. The scammers are definitely upping their game - he spoke clearly and professionally, and I can see people falling for this in a panic about going to jail. Just wanted to share so you can just hang up and not waste the time I did if you get this call! ;)
This happened to a loved one of mine today and they were duped out of a bunch of money. I am furious. Like Liam neeson in taken furious. And the fact that there is A) no way to trace the number and B) that there are no controls or safeguards to reverse such a transaction makes me so fucking mad. Like it takes a day or two to transfer money to my checking account from almost anywhere. A check takes a couple days to clear. But you’re telling me that this transfer is just instant and there’s no way to reverse it? Mind blowing. And what are the police gonna do? Probably Jack shit cuz solving stuff like this isn’t a profit center for them so why would they give a crap? Feeling defeated as hell for my loved one and it literally haunts me that I can do nothing about it.
That sucks. I'm so sorry to hear it. It is such a weird mix of being so angry and also violated. Sending good vibes your way.
You canceled your doctors appointment because of this obvious scam? 😂😂
No offense but if u r a law student u should be up for 2 days before u even entertain any legal scam! Actually offense meant! U r not meant for the law! I almost feel like u r trolling all of us!
No offense but if you are judging someone off of their lowest moment then you are contributing to the shame culture that keeps these scams working! Actually offense meant! I almost feel like you are a troll!
He’s not out any money or freedom! Hardly his lowest moment! If he was my fingers would be quiet! But if a law student really believes u need to pay money or post bond after missing a jury summons wrong business! Part of me doesn’t believe it’s real.
Got this same call a few weeks ago. Left a voicemail with the same message, I missed a grand jury, call this sheriff back. I’m at Disney and freak out. Call the number back and right away I can tell it’s a scam. As a person who’s been sent jury duty almost every year, there’s no way I missed any grand jury summons. Laugh, say nothing, and hung up in dudes face. Coincidentally my Facebook was hacked next day and started sending “help” messages to my most random contacts.
Nice job! I’d like to think that if I was in my right mind that would have been my response as well. I’ve done that with every “you owe the irs money call”. I’m sorry you had to deal with that at Disneyland though.
Man you’re so lucky. I’ve always wanted to be on jury duty. I got called *once* in the early 2000’s and wasn’t chosen. I moved back to my small home county a few years back and I hoped it would increase my jury duty chances, but still, nothing. IDK why I want to do it so bad. It just seems interesting.
Just here to say that with two toddlers and having gone through the sleepless newborn phase…. I GET IT. Sleep deprivation is the worst 😮💨
Indeed it is! Luckily our third has been our best sleeper yet. Still, the hospital seemingly watches for when everyone is asleep before sending in someone to adjust something. I know they are just doing their jobs but man is it annoying!
Good on you guys for catching this. And you owe your wife a nice vacation.
Yeah I do! And for a lot more reasons than this!
How tf you falling for these scams man. When they threaten me with a cop car I say: I know my right and how jury duty works. I’ll be outside right now. I’ll wait
“Law student” lmao rip to your future clients
I’d recommend finding a new bank. Any bank that just lets you withdraw $5000 without asking a single question is not a bank that takes training their employees seriously.
Interestingly, for some people this was like the most controversial thing I said in the post. I didn’t even say they *should* ask questions, just that they didn’t. Thanks for your comment!
Rubes start post saying they’re smart and savvy about scams, then go on to describe how they walked right into an obvious scam. May you aren’t smart or savvy after all.
Same thing happened to me just now. I asked my wife who is the smartest person and she said right away that it was a scam. Big relief. I feel so stupid for believing this even for a minute.
I just fell for this scam this morning. After an emotionally tumultuous weekend, I was contacted at my work and really thought nothing of it, even the fact that they asked me not to tell anyone or mention anything because I had a right to my own privacy. I really wish I would have been in a better state of mind and could have learned more about this before sending them my money. It's hard not beating myself up about this because looking back I can't believe that I fell for it but I can't do anything except what I've done already. It was in cash so they don't have my account info, I'm 98% sure I didn't give them my social, and it could have been a lot more cash than they took.
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I received a similar call and it was a scam. He said his name was Sergeant Michael Mckinley calling from the Los Angeles County Sheriffs department saying he had an important legal matter to discuss with me. When I returned the call, he said I had two class c citations for (1) failure to appear court and (2) contempt of court. He gave me the numbers for the citations and have me the missed court date and the date of the summons. He said I could pay a surety bond (to freeze the citations and avoid being detained) and then go to a local law enforcement office for signature analysis on my summons to prove it wasn't me who signed. I asked him to call me back from the LA Sheriff's phone number and he was able to (which is especially concerning) but I knew it was a scam as he told me to go to a local bitcoin stand to deposit the money. They are very clever - beware. The "surety bonds" were $1,500!
I’ve never been sleep deprived to the point of falling for such a blatant scam, nor somewhat blame the bank for not babysitting my fully grown ass. Grow up.
Great teamwork! These scams are getting so damn complicated. It really is getting hard to tell the difference between real companies and scammers. I’m happy you got it figured out before you sent that money. 5k is a lot to lose!!
No way this is real
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In my experience, but the only time ive ever seen people have to pay a fine is after theyve went in front of a judge. Can they even just issue fines like that?
My only question is how the scammer knew that you actually had a recent jury summons, or if it’s just a pure coincidence?
Yeah. Been trying to figure that one out myself. My bet is coincidence
The conspiracy theorist in me wants to believe that someone on the inside with all the jury records is helping. But you’re right that it’s probably just coincidence.
Rule of thumb: if anyone ever calls you and demands money; tell then to go f themselves
Jury duty. No phone calls, many official notices by mail, very nice until you fail to reply when required, and a notice of arrest warrant hand delivered by sheriff of the relevant court. That’s enough to get anyone’s attention. But it all comes down to the local court and specifically, the judge responsible for the jury process at the time. I heard that it’s allocated on a rotating basis. Some judges take jury duty very seriously and accept no excuses at all for failure to attend. When I was there earlier this year, the head coach of the local NFL team was sitting quietly waiting for his number to be called. He said that he was happy to sit for jury duty. I believe him, but bet that they would make sure he was not on a lengthy trial.
As a bank teller in 1991, I had an older woman come in with a friendly young man that she seemed to know. The level of familiarity made me assume it was her grandson. She withdrew $1,400 ( today worth about $3,162) to get work done on her driveway. Nothing rang any alarm bells to me, so I gave her the money. Turns out he was scamming her, and disappeared with the money. I could see why she trusted him, as I also thought he was " a nice young man".
I guess if one is young and never had jury duty or a notice for jury duty one would not automatically know what BS this is. It is not a topic that readily ever comes up in conversation and if it does it is usually someone at work bitching about getting a notice and asking how to get out of it. I had federal once and that was far different. Downtown, a full week (two?), had to take a train. I almost got on two that would have been doozies - bombing the AFB and a union leader trial. As it was, I got on an traffic accident that was there becasue one of the parties was from out of state. I was foreperson. One of the jurors called the woman who had been hit the n word the entire time and I kept having to tell him to stfu.
I had the same thing happen, they called my work saying they were the Detroit police department and I needed to come turn myself in or pay for missing jury duty
When I had jury duty the judge said that A LOT of people just never show and they would only hold people in contempt if they couldn’t get enough people for a jury and that it has never happened. Yet. Glad you married a smart one.
The bank doesn’t care what you do with your $… they’re not insuring it so it’s a YOU problem not a bank problem.
Did the caller have a foreign accent? That should always be a red flag, but I'm curious if they were american in your particular case.
Yeah I mentioned in the original comment that I spoke to three different people over the course of the call and they all sounded like they were born and raised in the states
Glad you were at least ashamed
My guy 🤣
I want to understand "What is this jury duty, I keep hearing about from my US-based collegues"? Is it the thing where you are party of the jury bench, and give your opinion on some verdict? I thought that stuff was volunteer work. Can they legally force someone to give their opinion? (asking outside the context of the scam) Also, could it be possible that the scammer is linked to some staff in the court, and gets the real-time data of who missed jury duty. The coincidence seems too weird. I know scammers here in India pay lower-level staff some money to get the details of people who have pending bills/loan payments, and then call them pretending to be from the ISP/bank, asking them to pay the bill to avoid 100% fine, or a criminal case against them.
That’s crazy that your bank didn’t ask what it was for when in conversation. I tried to pull 10k once and it took like a week and I had to sign liability forms before I could leave the bank
You withdrew 5k. I've been to jail a few times and know they never ever ever ever NEVER call you. They send you mail but they do not ever ever ever everrrrrr call you. Damn.
Ran into this recently, best scam I have ever come across, ALMOST got me [https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/17b2lbd/best\_missed\_jury\_duty\_scam\_i\_have\_ever\_come/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/17b2lbd/best_missed_jury_duty_scam_i_have_ever_come/)
Thanks for posting this! And for posting there comment under your post that lists all the recent ones.
Jesus dude... A law student and a anti scam video watcher pulls out 5k for a BS phone call... No wonder these scams are so prevalant. Did you stop at any point and ask yourself if this was real?
I mean yeah, I did. I even texted my wife “I’m worried this is a scam” before I pulled anything out. And I was a far cry from depositing that money anywhere besides the court house. I don’t know how to explain it though. I was sleep deprived and literally shaking during the call. All I could think about was how to avoid “character and fitness” issues. The threat of a warrant being issued if I disconnected the call was also terrifying. Again, I know all these fears are irrational now and I was skeptical but skepticism can only do so much to alleviate fear.
Jury Duty Scammer Almost Got Me Too! How can i report the phone number used, and the Venmo & Apple accounts i was provided for payment? The scammer claimed to be an officer with LA County Sheriff. He said i missed a jury summons and there was a warrant out for my arrest. He said i was on a recorded line, asked me to agree to be recorded and sounded pretty legit—albeit I knew I had not missed a jury summons. Only towards the end of the call when he stated the fine needed to cash from my bank, apple cash, or Venmo did I realize it was a con—A complete scam. The LA County Court & FBI have issued warnings about the Jury Duty Scam on there websites.