Another wave of the jury scam is here

0:00 This program is designed to provide general information with regards to the subject matters covered. This information is given with the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial, legal, counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas. The information contained in this podcast is intended for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for individual professional legal advice. The podcast information was carefully compiled from vetted sources and references. However, Rose Resources outreach to safeguard the elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall victim to a scam. Let's talk about scams. It's the must listen show for anyone who wants to protect themselves and their loved ones from scams. Every Tuesday at am Pacific time on K four HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose, and her guests will provide valuable insights and practical tips on how to recognize and protect yourself from scams. And now here is your host, Joyce Petrowski.

1:19 Good Morning, everybody, Welcome to Let's talk about scams. It is a great morning to talk about scams and more importantly, how to prevent being a victim. My name is Brian Watson. I am a community outreach specialist for ROSE Resources Outreach to Safeguard the Elderly, and I've just celebrated my three year anniversary with ROSE. I started August first of twenty twenty three, and it's been a fun three years. I have learned so much, I have met so many people. I've got to do so many cool things, and one of them is this podcast, this online radio show. We love that you've tuned in today. I'm here also next week filling in for Joyce, and I appreciate the opportunity.

2:07 I have a guest next week. We'll talk about that at the end of the show. But today we are going to talk about something called the jury duty scam. And the title of today's episode is another wave of the jury scam is here, So it implies it's been around for a long time, and unfortunately it's back. And I'm going to tell you the story of three people that have been approached by it. Not to scare you, but I want you all out there to know about this and then more importantly, tell others. So just this year, I spoke to three people who are targeted in the jury duty scam that basically over the way it works. Scammers call up people on the phone and they pose as either court employees or the more common one that I've seen is claiming to be law enforcement officers, usually a deputy sheriff with your local sheriff's office or sheriff's department.

3:04 And you know they'll either threaten you with a fine or even worse, an arrest, why because you allegedly failed to comply with a court order or show up to journey duty because they sent you a summons and you didn't reply. So this, this particular scam has been around for decades. But what we Joyce and I talk about all the time is scammers love to repeat scams. Why because if they work, why create new ones? You can use the same one over and over. They just like take turns. And so we see this all the time. Certain scams will come back over and over and over.

3:45 So and if they have a high success, right, you know, why not use it again. So for the first person I want to tell you a story is my friend Kate. She's like the daughter of some close friends of mine and she used to live in Arizona. She lives in Denver now. She received a phone call in in Denver and it was a very nice, professional deputy sheriff, and he basically said, you know, sorry to bother you, but you missed jerry duty. You know, a summons was sent to your house and someone signed for it, so we know you got it. You know, he had all of her information, her first name, last name, birthday, had her home address where she was living. And you know, he said, you know, okay, we can make this all go away.

4:32 You just need to make a payment. It's like a fine, and that way we'll quash the arrest warrant. And you know, my friend, she's late twenties, maybe she's thirty, I'm not sure. When she was asked to make the payment via PayPal, that just didn't sit right with her. And even though she was very compliant and wanted to follow the directions of this so called deputy, she realized something wasn't up and she the courage to hang up. She said, she was this close to paying the money. Why because she was raised well, I mean, I know her parents raised with good values. She works, she pays her bills. She's just an honest person. She's a good person. And that's the problem with these scams is it's always good people at fall for these scams, law buying citizens, people that played by the rules. Second person I want to tell you about. I was at the University of Arizona doing a panel with a bunch of people that were smarter than me, and I was representing Rose and talking about My point of view was internet scams and technology and things like that. Well, there was one guy on the panel and he's in the IT field, like super smart guy, like knows everything, and he shared with our panel how he he received the jury duty call. He was at home,

6:03 the phone rang, he answered it, same scenario. Deputy sheriff had all this information and used words like arrest and fine and things like that, and he was told, well, if you make a payment, we can quash this arrest warrant, we can make it go away. And the caller wanted him to go to a cryptocurrency ATM. We always talk about cryptocurrency ATMs on this show. If it's a cryptocurrency ATM, if you hear that word, you know, hang up. It's a scam. And this guy, I mean literally he told us he took it, hooked line and sinker. He grabbed his wallet, he you know, grabbed his keys, he jumped in his car. He was driving to the nearest cryptocurrency ATM where he was directed to. His was why I figured out something was up and kept trying to call him, and he kept screening the phone call because he was on the phone with the scammer. And then somehow, some way the wife got through. I don't know if she sent the text or what it was, but he was able to at the last minute figure out it was a scam. Now, again, this is a super smart guy.

7:18 If someone like this can get that close to losing money in a jury duty scam, we all all can. So it's there's nothing to be embarrassed about. Really smart people lose money to scams. Why because these criminals are that good. They are so good at what they do. And then the third story I want to talk about is a lady named Rachel that lives here in southern Arizona. She actually went on our podcast. She went on this show and told her story and I'll give you the date when that was later if you missed that particular one.

7:59 But her story is worth a repeat because it lasted a long time. It was a long call, and there were so many things we can learn from that scam. So she was at home, her phone rang. It was her cell phone and it was a deputy shriff from the Pema County Sheriff's Department. So that's basically twoson Arizona and the caller ID on her phone actually came up Pima County Sheriff's Department. Criminals do that on purpose. That's what builds like a trust. You think it's coming from a legitimate law enforcement agency. That's called spoofing. They can make it say anything they want. So that was the first thing that started. This started her down the road and the caller was very nice and he said, you know what, you didn't show up for jury duty. And you know, unfortunately this particular judge, she's a real stickler to duty and she personally gets upset when people don't show up for jury duty. And then he said, you know, this is now a federal offense. You failed to show up for jury duty. But now it's a federal offense, and there's a warrant out for your arrest. Rachel on arrest for contempt of court and failure to appear. Scary words, you know. So then Rachel was like, well, I don't remember seeing a jury summons. And then she goes, let

9:30 me talk to my husband. Maybe he saw it and put it somewhere, and right when she said that, the fake deputy sheriff said, well, if you speak to your husband, then he's going to be complicit in the crime. So she doesn't. She's not even allowed to talk to her husband. And then the caller really starts getting into the psychological manipulation here. He said, you know your children could be at risk because if you and your husband both go to jail for this federal crime, you know that your kids are going to have to go into child protective services.

10:13 Like who says stuff like that. That is just pure evil. This scammer is willing to scare a mom and tell her that her kids are going to be taken away from her and she's going to go to jail so he can make some money. These people are pure evil. So then Rachel asked, well, there's a police station around the corner from my house. Let me just drive down there. And when she said that. This scammer said, well, if you do that, you'll be immediately arrested. You can't pay the fine. So the scammer kept Rachel on the phone and on the phone. When she drove to the bank, she pulled out set. She withdrew seven thousand dollars in cash from her bank account, and then scammer kept telling her stay on the phone. If you hang up, you're going to be immediately are which is really really scary obviously, and then ultimately the scammer directed Rachel to a coinstar machine at a nearby grocery store. And you know, she was Rachel when she told me this story, I mean, she was nervous. She was The guy seemed was asking what kind of car she drove, what color it was.

11:23 Then she started to get the feeling that he was watching her, and that probably was the scenario. Actually, by all the clues in this particular scheme, I actually think this was a local scheme, meaning the scammer was nearby. She actually got the feeling that this guy was in the parking lot watching her go inside this grocery store, which is really scary because then you don't know if you're going to be kidnapped, if you're going to be robbed at gunpoint. She knows she's carrying seven thousand dollars in cash. She hasn't talked to her husband. She's absolutely scared to death because and at this point, the reason why she went to the this coinstar machine with the seven thousand dollars, the scammer said, you're gonna put this money into an escrow account. It'll be held and when you show up for your next jury duty, the next time you get a summons, you'll get your money back.

12:17 So it's sort of like an escrow account. And it just shows how devious these criminals are, because you know, they make it sound like it's not gonna cost you anything. Just put the seven thousand in, it'll be held. It'll be held until you show up to the next one. It seems seems almost logical, but it's just it's just not. And so Rachel, the way the story ends, Rachel walks up to this coinstar machine. So coinstar machine accepts change. You can put your extra pennies, Nichols, dimes, quarters into this machine and change it to you know, either cash or some other payment form. This particular coin start accepts cash to buy cryptocurrency. Again, anything with a cryptocurrency ATM is a complete scam. And on the screen, which you know, she thought she was putting money into her jury duty escrow account, there was a warning on the screen. It said law enforcement will never ask you to put money in this machine. I mean, this whole time, Rachel wasn't one hundred percent sure, but she was scared and the guy hadn't answer for everything. But when she finally saw the words on the screen that said law enforcement will never ask you to put money in this machine, she knew it was a scam. So thank goodness, our government requires those wordings to go on there. And then, you

13:49 know what, Rachel toughened up real quick. I mean, she was tough this whole phone call, but she stood her ground and she said, you know what, take my chance. I'm going to go to a police station and I want to talk to someone in person. I just read what's on that screen. And at that point, this nice friendly scammer who's professional claimed to be a deputy sheriff, started yelling at her, started cussing at her, using some very colorful words. And you know what, this whole ordeal, this is the crazy part. It took about two hours, and during the whole time Rachel was there on her own, never got to talk to anyone else, you know what, So she went through two hours of complete stress, financial stress, marital stress, children's stress, like everything, and driving around in a car just and she lost two hours. You know so, I was so proud of Rachel. She bravely told her story.

14:50 Why so no one else will suffer the same fate. You know, that's what we do here at Rose. We share information, we share stories. We are in the prevention business. We don't want anyone to be scammed. And so if you want to hear Rachel's stories and her words, not mine. And you missed that episode that was on our radio show on February tenth of this year, February tenth, twenty twenty six, you can go, you know, find it on our YouTube channel, or you can go to Let's Talk about Scams dot com. We post our stuff there. So here's some tips to remember, because we always we tell scary stories here and then we send people home with some positive advice, some just common sense advice. First thing, remember, courts do not demand money over the phone. They don't demand they don't request gift cards, cryptocurrency or electronic payments through venmo zell or PayPal. That's just not the way they do business. Judges do not have law enforcement officers collect money on the phone on the court's behalf okay.

16:02 And if you get a phone call and the individual says I'm a court official or I'm a law enforcement officer and demands payment so that you can avoid arrest, it is a scam. Hang up the phone and call the court directly. Never use a number that was provided to you by the caller. Find your own, find the phone number yourself by doing an Internet search or you know what. You can also show up with the court and just say I got a scary phone call. I was told I miss Jerry Duty, what's going on? And then they'll tell you nope, you didn't receive a summons and nope, that's not how we do business. So please please please sign up for our monthly email. You can go to our website. It's scrolling on the bottom of the screen and it's also right next to my name there Roseadvocacy dot Org. At the bottom of our homepage.

16:57 There's a blue button where it allows you to sign for our monthly email beginning of the month, we send out some good information, good conversation starters that we can have with our friends and family, and just we just need to spend a little bit of time each week each month just thinking about scams, being mentally prepared because that call will come. We will all get a scam call this year. I guarantee you. And if you get the jury duty scam, hang up, so I'll be back next week. My guest is a gentleman named Kevin, who is a friend of mine I've known for a while, and he owns a senior placement service, a company that helps people find living arrangements for older adults. And it's an area that I don't know that much about, and so Kevin's going to explain the process, how it works, what they do, and then more importantly, you know, what are some of the red flags to look out for, why you would want to use the senior placement service, the pros and cons and you know, and I always see at Rose, we always are aware of scams. So are there any scams or shady things that go on in the senior placement business? So whether you have whether you're looking, you know, you're an older adult looking for a place to live, or you're a you have a parent who might be looking for a place in the future.

18:19 It's a good show to tune into. So that'll be next Tuesday morning, same time, same place. So I appreciate I appreciate everyone out there for tuning in today. If you like this episode, please share with a family member, friend, or a neighbor, and thank you for tuning into. Let's talk about scams. Well that's all the knowledge for this episode. Tune in every Tuesday at eight am Pacific time on KFOURHD Radio at KFOURHD dot com as Joyce explores a variety of knowledge. So you have the power to make scam protection your healthy habit and until then, feel free to reach out to Joyce and let's talk about scams.