The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office is reporting “jury duty” and “asphalt” con artists seeking to scam people out of money have resurfaced this week.
The jury duty scam involves someone calling and saying they are with the sheriff’s department or the courthouse and the person they’ve called has missed jury duty and a summons has been issued for their arrest. They are then told how to go about sending money to clear their name.
“First of all, we don’t call people for missing jury duty, and we sure don’t issue summons for the arrest of people for missing jury duty,” Sheriff Janis Mangum said.
The asphalt scam may be as old as asphalt itself.
Someone comes to your door and says they have some asphalt left over from another job and will let you have it at a cut rate price.
“If you allow,” Sheriff Mangum said, “they’ll put down a very thin small amount and then do an invoice for a large sum of money.” In one instance, she said, the quoted price was $20,000.
“Please don’t deal with these people,” she added.