It may be one of the worst dials a scammer could make. The man they called is not just in law enforcement. He’s in charge of the FBI for the entire state of North Carolina.
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“It was good to hear from a victim’s perspective what we hear from victims firsthand about these types of scams,” said Reid Davis, FBI special agent in charge.
Davis has investigated everything from cybercrime to terrorism, but the caller probably didn’t know that. This was your typical jury duty scam.
Davis says the scammer pretended to be with a local sheriff’s office and “even were piping in like static noise that sounded like radio traffic.” Davis says the fraudster claimed the usual: Davis missed jury duty, and there was a warrant for his arrest, but that Davis could pay his way out of it. Davis knew it would be hard to find the scammer to arrest him, so he decided to play along to learn more.
“He wanted me to drive to a Bitcoin ATM,” he said.
Obviously, he didn’t.
“Once they realized that I wasn’t going to travel to the ATM, I did identify myself as law enforcement.”
He says they didn’t hang up. They got furious.
“It’s kind of funny because they were like, ‘Are you threatening a law enforcement officer?’ And I was like, ‘I am absolutely not threatening a law enforcement officer because you’re not a law enforcement officer, and I am.’ And they’re like, ‘We will be at your residence to arrest you.’ And I was like, ‘Please come,’” he told Action 9 attorney Jason Stoogenke.
Stoogenke says remember:
- No one will call you about failure to appear for jury duty. They’ll mail you a notice.
- Court officials never call to threaten to arrest you.
- And they certainly don’t say you can pay your way out of arrest.
- Not sure? Hang up, look up the court number yourself, and ask.
- The penalty isn’t jail. In North Carolina, it’s $50.
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