ID THEFT ALERT - SCAMMERS POSING AS JURY DUTY OFFICERS

JURY DUTY SCAM !
This has been verified by the FBI (their link is also included below). It is spreading fast so be prepared should you get this call. Most of us take those summons for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on their civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of fraud has surfaced.

HOW IT WORKS:
The caller claims to be a jury coordinator calling about jury duty you missed. . If you protest that you never received a summons for jury duty, the scammer asks you for your Social Security number and date of birth so he or she can verify the information and cancel the arrest warrant. Give out any of this information and bingo;your identity was just stolen.

The fraud has been reported so far in 11 states, includingOklahoma , Illinois , and Colorado . This (swindle) is particularly insidious because they use intimidation over the phone to try to bully people into giving information by pretending they are with the court system. The FBI and the federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their web sites, warning consumers about the fraud.

Here's the FBI's own story:

http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june06/jury_scams060206.htm

ASSET PROTECTION 101 FOR FOR FINANCIAL ADVISORS, LAWYERS AND CPA'S

This article was originally written for and published by ADVISOR TODAY, the journal of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors. It has been used nationwide as a client and advisor education piece and has been selected for presentation at the annual meeting of the Academy of Financial Planning this fall in Anaheim, CA.

A link to the article in its original format is here: http://cfofa.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/advisor-today-ap-1013.pdf