Court officials at the state and federal level as well as Iowa’s attorney general are warning Iowans to beware of a jury duty scam. Bob Brammer, a spokesman for Iowa’s attorney general, says they’ve know about the scam for a few years, but it had never made it into Iowa until last week.
"The federal courts alerted us that they’d been getting calls from Iowans who were getting very suspicious calls saying, ‘You have failed to show up for jury duty’ — unsettling people, throwing them off kilter," Brammer says. The callers then began asking for a Social Security number and other personal information.
"They seem to in some cases already have a Social Security number and then seem to be going after other information. This just isn’t the way it works. The courts knew that they weren’t making any such calls. The calls that they received were from questioning and I think sometimes skeptical people who were not cheated," Brammer says. "We think if the court got eight or 10 calls, there are probably many, many more Iowans who received the jury duty scam phone call."
The state and federal courts in Iowa notify potential jurors by U.S. mail and Brammer says they’d never call you at your home to ask for your Social Security number, your birthdate or other personal information.