Excused From Jury Duty? If You Get This Phone Call Afterwards, You're Being Targeted in a Scam

It's a brazen scam that relies on victims' fear of the law.

It's not one of the many IRS-related scams — this one has to do with jury duty.

In a Friday story, Orange County, California, resident Brenda Taylor told KNBC-TV how she nearly paid a stranger hundreds of dollars because she thought he was a cop.

One detail caught her attention, though, and saved her from the scam.

“The way he was talking to me and threatening me, I just said to him, ‘You tell me what I need to do," Taylor recalled. "I’ll do whatever you need me to do.'"

Brenda Taylor. (Image via KNBC-TV)

The man had called her up after she'd been excused from a jury.

Claiming to be a sheriff's deputy, the man said Taylor had missed her scheduled jury service and would have to pay a “failure to appear” retainer.

Taylor almost did it, until she considered the way the man was asking her to pay: Buy a $474 prepaid gift card and meet him at a supermarket to hand it over.

“If he would have told me to come meet him outside of my bank or a sheriff’s office, I would have done it,” she said.

As it was, she contacted the sheriff's office, which told her it was a scam.

“The sheriff’s department is never going to call someone over the phone and ask for money,” Orange County Sheriff Lt. Jeff Hallock told KNBC.

The department conducted an internal review and told KNBC that it believes the scammers call people at random, instead of the scam being an inside job.

Watch Taylor tell her story in KNBC's report below:

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