Here’s a heart-racing call many Americans are getting right now: There’s a warrant issued for their arrest because they have missed jury duty, and they need to pay up now now, or else.
This alarming jury notice is a scam, but it may not feel like one. What makes this scheme convincing is that the caller ID often may read that it is coming from a legitimate source, like the county sheriff’s department. The scam may impersonate real judges’ and officers’ names, and may even pressure you not to share what has happened because of a “gag order.”
Sometimes, the scam is also sent as an email or text with language that appears official, such as: “Our records indicate that you have failed to appear for jury duty service.”
“It’s effective because it puts the fear of being in trouble in us,” said Amy Nofziger, the senior director of victim support for the AARP Fraud Watch Network.
The Better Business Bureau told HuffPost that it has received 110 reports of jury-related scams in each of the past three years, and the median reported loss was $1,500 in 2025 and $3,400 in 2024.
Just this year, an Arizona woman lost $35,000 to this scam, and a Tampa, Florida, resident named Kimberly Fudge lost $25,000 in a daylong ordeal with scammers. In Fudge’s case, The Wall Street Journal reported, scammers claimed a “gag order” meant Fudge could not tell anyone about her charge, or she would face more charges.
“They had me scared,” Fudge told the Journal. “They knew my Social Security number. They knew how much I had in my bank account. They had every single thing about me.”
Roger Handberg, an attorney who specializes in financial crimes, said the jury-duty scam was an issue he saw “with increasing regularity” when he was a U.S. attorney.
Scammers will weaponize personal information they can find out about you on the internet to convince you they are real, Handberg said. “They try to give you tunnel vision,” he said. “That’s why they need you to stay on the phone.”
But there’s one big red flag: Real law enforcement authorities will let you hang up, and they certainly won’t make you pay over the phone.
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Remember: No Real U.S. Government Agency Will Ever Demand Payment Over The Phone
The most important red flag about this scam is that no real officer, judge or deputy will demand you pay over the phone or direct you to go to an ATM and pay through bitcoin.
“Courts never demand payment over the phone. In fact, no government agency will,” the Federal Trade Commission explained in its June alert about this growing scam.
This jury duty scam convinces people that money can help you avoid jail time. In Fudge’s case, fraudsters claimed she could pay bail to avoid her charges, but a real arrest warrant is a lawful command for law enforcement to arrest you.
“There is no mechanism by which you can pay someone to get out of it,” Handberg said.
He noted that a phone call or texts about missing jury duty should also be a red flag, because “most communications between courts and people about jury service are going to be by mail, and under no circumstances is someone going to say, ‘You need to pay some sort of fine so we don’t arrest you right now.’”
To Defeat A Scammer, Hang Up The Phone
Scammers win when they get you to stop thinking with your head and start panicking. If you get this kind of call, Nofziger said to hang up immediately.
“The more you stay on the phone with them and ask them questions,” she said, “the more they’re going to get you emotional, and then you’re going to follow their instructions because they’ve gotten you so panicked and fearful about being arrested.”
“The biggest red flag to look out for is: Does the person seem to not want you to hang up the phone?” Handberg said. “The way these scams have to work is they have to keep you on the phone.”
Scammers also want you isolated, so you feel like you have no choice but to obey. That’s why Nofziger also recommended putting a call like this on speakerphone, so another person in the room who is not being targeted can be a voice of reason and say, “Hey, hang up. That’s a scam.”
What To Do If You Got Fooled By This Scam
If this happens to you, act quickly, because you may be able to recuperate some or all of your losses.
Handberg recommended reaching out to law enforcement officers and your bank and informing them what happened. Sometimes, banks “still have the ability to reverse the transactions and to get some or all of the money back,” he said. “But time is of the essence.”
And in the meantime, report this fraud to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, which is run by the FBI to investigate cyber-related crimes.
“From my experience as a federal prosecutor, your case and your information might be an important link that an investigator needs to be able to figure out who the perpetrators are,” Handberg said. “You are not the first person who’s been the victim of these fraudsters, and you’re not going to be the last unless law enforcement is able to identify them.”