Is a phone call about missing jury duty a scam?
"This is Sergeant Davis with the County Sheriff's Office, badge number 4127. We have a bench warrant issued by Judge Margaret Thornton for your failure to appear for jury service on May 14th. This warrant is active and officers will be dispatched to your address at 319 Oakridge Drive within the hour. I'm going to transfer you to the court clerk's office so you can resolve the fine before we have to send a unit out. Do not hang up or the warrant becomes non-reversible. Ma'am, are you still there? Stay on the line."
Scam. Courts do not ring people to take payment, and the FTC's guidance is blunt about the two things that give this away: real law enforcement will never text or email an arrest warrant, and real officers do not call to say they are about to arrest you. A genuine failure to appear arrives as paper, and it can be checked with the court itself.
How to spot this scam
- The caller claims to be a U.S. Marshal, a sheriff's deputy or a court officer, and says you missed jury duty.
- You are threatened with arrest unless you pay a fine immediately.
- An official-looking warrant follows by text or email. The FTC states outright that real law enforcement never sends warrants that way, so the document is proof of the scam rather than the debt.
- Payment is demanded in gift cards, a wire transfer, cryptocurrency or a payment app.
- You are told to stay on the line and not speak to anyone, including the court.
- They already know your name and address, sometimes a partial Social Security number. That is bought data, not evidence of a case.
- The caller ID shows a court or police number, which is trivially spoofed and proves nothing.
What to do now
- Hang up. No court settles a missed summons by taking payment over the phone.
- Call the court yourself, using the number from its official website, to check whether you were ever summoned.
- Never pay by gift card, wire, crypto or payment app, which are the methods named precisely because they cannot be undone.
- Report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and to your local court's clerk, since courts track these campaigns in their districts.
- If you paid, contact the payment provider immediately, keep every receipt, and report it.
- Tell older relatives about this one specifically. It leans on respect for authority, which is exactly the instinct it exploits.
What it looks like on your phone
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Sources and reporting
Use official channels to confirm a suspicious request and report fraud.