DATE: July 31, 2014 FROM: Lance S. Wilson, District Court Executive New Jury Scam Uses Fake Emails The United States District Court for the District of Nevada issued a public warning today about a new jury service scam aimed at obtaining personal information from unsuspecting citizens. The scam involves a misleading email message that may be mistaken for a jury summons. The recipient is instructed to fill out a form attached to the message. The form asks for home address, telephone number and important personal identifiers, including date of birth and social security and driver’s license numbers. It also makes reference to a possible fine and imprisonment for failing to answer the supposed summons. Citizens who received such an email are advised that it is a scam intended to obtain information that could be used for criminal purposes, including fraud and identity theft. They should not respond to the email and are advised to contact the court, which will alert federal law enforcement agencies. Federal courts are particularly concerned because the sender of the email message is identified as “EJuror Program,” which is the name of a system used by many federal courts to allow jurors to respond to jury questionnaires and summons using a court website. Closer inspection of the message, however, will reveal that non-governmental email accounts were used to send the message and to receive replies. Federal courts using eJuror will never request that personal identification information be sent directly in an email response. Requests by courts to complete a juror qualification questionnaire would be initiated by formal written correspondence delivered by the U.S. Postal Service. The correspondence will provide prospective jurors with instructions on how to access an eJuror website over a secure connection. Jury service scams have been proliferated in recent years. In addition to this new “phishing” email, citizens are being contacted by telephone and threatened with prosecution for failing to comply with jury service in federal or state courts. In the calls, the threat of a fine for shirking jury service is used to coerce those called into providing confidential data. These calls are not from real court officials. Federal and state courts do not require anyone to provide any sensitive information in a telephone call.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 22:33:11 +0000
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