A woman says a caller posing as the sheriff’s office said she’d missed jury duty, but she clocked the scam because of what a judge once told her

Laura (laura.bro6) shared how she recognized a jury duty scam for what it was. In a video that has racked up hundreds of thousands of views, she said she got a call from a person who identified himself as Lieutenant Simon Jackson from the Utah County Sheriff’s Department. When she answered, she said he tried to convince her that she had missed a high-profile court case and now faced an active arrest warrant.

In her video, Laura said he read out her home address and his badge number to build credibility. She said he then pressured her to report to the sheriff’s department immediately. However, she said something felt weird. “And then it dawned on me that I had just done jury duty a year ago and ended in a mistrial.”

Laura told her viewers, “If you do jury duty, the judge will tell you, like, you have so many years that you don’t have to do jury duty after you’ve already done it. I think it’s like three or four years. And so I was like, this guy is totally lying.” She said she confronted him, and he then tried to use the word detained to keep her scared. So she joked back that she would appreciate the detention to get a break from her kids. “That made him really mad,” Laura said, “And so he hung up the phone.”

Laura’s viewers had a lot of similar stories to share

Many people shared their own brushes with jury duty scams. One user admitted that their husband was almost taken in and noted, “If the police want to come get you they are not going to call you first.” Another commenter mentioned that this scam has been “around [for] about 10 years.”

One commenter shared a practical tip to avoid these calls altogether, suggesting, “Set your phones to not ring through any number not in your contacts!” However, one viewer with a similar background to Laura shared that the scammers tried to get them after they “had been on Grand Jury 2 months prior.” Another woman said a fake contempt of court call turned out to be a $50,000 scam.

As Laura noted, people who have served jury duty typically aren’t summoned again for a set period. However, that depends on where they live and whether the court is federal or state. Both the Southern District of New York and Arizona Court Help noted that jurors who served on a jury panel are exempt for two years. In comparison, according to the Sacramento Bee, California residents can be summoned once every 12 months, while Massachusetts residents are summoned once every three years.

On the flip side, a person who serves in a state or federal court in New York, per the New York State Unified Court System, is normally not called back for at least six years. Additionally, if they served for more than 10 days, they won’t be called back for at least eight years.