Would a court or sheriff call me about missing jury duty?

A real court mostly contacts jurors by mail, and federal courts say real phone or email contact never asks for sensitive information. No court or sheriff's office collects a fine, bond or bail over the phone to cancel a warrant. Hang up and call the court clerk on a number you look up yourself.

Can I pay a fine over the phone to clear an arrest warrant?

No. A warrant is not cancelled by a phone payment, a gift card, a wire or a deposit at a crypto kiosk. The FBI's September 2026 alert lists prepaid cards, couriers, bank wires, cryptocurrency and cash fed into crypto kiosks as the payment methods these scammers demand.

The caller ID showed the real sheriff's office number. How?

Caller ID can be faked. The FBI says these callers spoof real phone numbers, email addresses, employee names and credentials of real agencies. A familiar number on the screen proves nothing, so call the office back on a number you find yourself.

I already paid at a bitcoin ATM or with gift cards. What now?

Act the same day. The FTC says to call the crypto ATM operator or exchange, or the gift card issuer using the number on the back of the card, say it was fraud and ask for a reversal. Then report at ic3.gov and reportfraud.ftc.gov, and tell your bank if money left your account.

How did the caller know my address and my car?

Most of it is sold. People-search sites and data brokers publish names, addresses, relatives and phone numbers, and some scammers use that to sound official. Knowing your details does not make a caller real.

A phone lying on official-looking papers with an embossed seal, next to car keys and a coffee mug on a kitchen table. — A phone on official-looking papers with a seal. The paperwork these callers send is fake too.

Texts and calls

The jury duty or arrest warrant call, and why no real officer asks you to pay

Updated 18 September 2026

The call says you missed jury duty, a warrant is out for your arrest, and a deputy can make it go away today if you pay a fine or a bond. It is a scam, every time. No court, sheriff's office or US Marshal collects money by phone to cancel a warrant, and none will ask for gift cards, a wire, cryptocurrency or cash fed into a bitcoin kiosk. Hang up, find the court clerk's number yourself, and ask them directly.

Caller ID: County SheriffPhone call transcript

SCAM CALL, NOT REAL"This is Sergeant Miller with the Sheriff's Office. You failed to appear for jury duty and the judge has issued two warrants for your arrest. You can resolve this today by posting a bond of $990 per warrant. Do not hang up and do not discuss this with anyone, or the deputies will be sent to your address."

1Caller ID can be spoofed to show a real sheriff or court number
2A missed summons you never received, now a warrant
3Pay now to avoid arrest: no court works this way
4Stay on the line, tell no one: isolation is the method

Recreated example of the wording used in this scam. Not a real captured message; built to match the pattern described on this page.

The FBI put hard numbers on this on September 17, 2026. Its Internet Crime Complaint Center public service announcement I-091726-PSA says it received about 61,000 complaints about criminals posing as US or foreign law enforcement and government officials between January 2025 and July 2026, with losses of more than $1.6 billion. That is the whole family of these scams. The jury duty and missed court date version alone accounted for 6,833 complaints and nearly $36 million.

How the call goes, step by step

The version that reached a Durham, North Carolina woman this month is close to the template. WRAL reported on September 17 that a caller posing as a Durham County Sheriff's deputy told her she had three arrest warrants for missing jury duty, set "bail" at $990 per charge, and sent her a document called a "mobile escort order" dressed up with federal court insignia. He already knew her name, her address and details of her car. He told her to stay on the phone and go to her bank. She lost nearly $2,000.

Pull that apart and you get the parts nearly every version shares:

An official name and rank. A deputy, a sergeant, a US Marshal, a court officer. The federal court in Alaska warned in December 2025 that callers there used the names of real judges and court employees and quoted case numbers.
A crime you did not know about. A missed summons, a missed court date, sometimes identity theft in your name. The federal court in western Texas described callers who "attempt to collect a fine in lieu of arrest" for exactly those reasons.
A price for making it go away. Called a fine, a bond, bail or a fee. It is always payable today, and always by a method that is hard or impossible to pull back.
A leash. Stay on the line. Don't hang up. Don't tell your family, your lawyer or the bank teller. The FBI lists refusing to let you talk to anyone else and keeping you on the call throughout as core tactics.
Paperwork. A PDF with a seal, a case number and a judge's signature. Anyone can make one in ten minutes.

Would a real court call about jury duty?

Rarely, and never like this. The federal judiciary's own juror scams page says most contact between a federal court and a prospective juror "will be through the U.S. mail," and that any phone or email contact from real court officials "will not include requests for any sensitive information." WRAL's reporting makes the same point about state courts: real jury summonses arrive by mail, not by phone.

The Alaska court put the key point in one line: "Neither the U.S. Marshals Service, nor the U.S. District Court, will ever call to request payment of fines over the phone for failure to appear for jury duty." That holds for every real court we know of. If you had genuinely ignored a summons, you would hear about it on paper, through the court, and the way out would run through the court clerk or a judge, not through a deputy taking a card number.

Real warrants also do not come with a payment plan offered by the arresting officer. Officers who intend to arrest someone do not phone ahead to negotiate. The whole premise, that an arrest can be called off by a payment you make right now, is the tell.

Why the caller ID said "Sheriff"

Because it can say anything. The FBI's alert says these callers "spoof" real phone numbers, email addresses, employee names and credentials of well-known agencies. A name and number on your screen are typed in by whoever places the call. If you look the number up while still on the phone and find it really does belong to the sheriff's office, that check proves nothing.

The knowledge the caller has about you proves nothing either. Names, addresses, relatives, phone numbers and sometimes vehicle details are sold openly by people-search sites and data brokers. Our page on how scammers got your phone number covers where it comes from, and removing your address from people-search sites is a slow but real fix.

The FBI also warns that some of these crews now use AI to produce video of a supposed official. A face and a uniform on a video call are no more trustworthy than a voice. We go into how that works on how AI voice cloning scams work, and the defense is the same: you end the call and verify on a channel the caller does not control.

The other versions in the same alert

Jury duty is the best known story, but the FBI's September 2026 alert breaks out several others, with their own numbers for January 2025 to July 2026:

You are accused of a crime. The caller says you are under investigation and threatens arrest or prosecution unless you pay.
Your license is about to lapse. A passport, a driver's license or a professional license needs a fee or it will be cancelled: 496 complaints, more than $348,000 lost.
Your medical license is under investigation. Medical professionals told their license will be revoked unless they cooperate and pay: 3,322 complaints, $37 million lost.
You face deportation or extradition. Aimed at immigrants and foreign nationals, sometimes with callers in fake uniforms or in mock government offices: 1,809 complaints and about $140 million lost, by far the highest loss per complaint of the versions the alert breaks out.

The Social Security and IRS flavor of this call works the same way, and it has its own page: the IRS or Social Security scam call. If the call instead claims a grandchild is in a cell and needs bail, that is the grandparent scam, which also leans on fake lawyers and "gag orders".

Where the money goes: kiosks, gift cards and couriers

The payment method is what separates a scam from a bureaucratic mix-up. The FBI names the ones these callers ask for: prepaid cards, couriers who come to collect, bank wires, cryptocurrency, and cash deposited into cryptocurrency kiosks. Not one of them is how any court in the US takes a fine.

Bitcoin kiosks deserve a word because they turn up again and again. The caller often stays on the phone, sends a QR code and talks you through feeding cash into the machine, step by step. IC3's May 2026 kiosk alert counted more than 13,400 complaints involving these machines in 2025, with losses above $388 million, a 58% rise in losses on 2024, and it names government and law enforcement impersonation as one of the drivers. If anyone official ever tells you to pay at one of these, you have your answer.

What to do while the phone is still ringing

Hang up. You are not obliged to stay on the line with anyone, police included. Ending the call is not resisting anything.
Do not use any number they gave you. Find the court clerk's number on the court's own website, or the sheriff's non-emergency line on the county website. Type the address yourself rather than tapping a search ad.
Ask the clerk one question: is there any jury matter, case or warrant in my name? If there is nothing, you are done.
Tell someone. The instruction to keep quiet is the scam protecting itself. Saying it out loud to a family member or a bank teller breaks it.
Do not send a photo of your ID or read out your Social Security number. Some of these calls are after identity details rather than cash.

If an older relative might get this call, a family rule helps more than a lecture: nobody in this family ever pays anyone by phone to stay out of trouble, and everyone hangs up and calls back. A shared family safe word covers the related calls where someone claims to be a relative in custody.

If you already paid or handed over details

Move fast and go by how the money left. The FTC's what to do if you were scammed guidance splits it the same way:

Crypto kiosk or exchange: contact the kiosk operator or exchange immediately, say it was a fraudulent transaction, and ask them to reverse it. Keep every receipt and screenshot of the transaction.
Gift cards: call the card issuer on the number on the back of the card and tell them a scammer has the card number and PIN.
Wire or bank transfer: call your bank or the wire company now and ask for a recall. Hours matter.
Cash sent by mail: call the US Postal Inspection Service at 1-877-876-2455, which can sometimes intercept the package, for a fee.
Cash handed to a courier: call your local police, and if another pickup has been arranged, tell them when.

Then report it. File at ic3.gov with the numbers that called, the payment records and any documents they sent, and at reportfraud.ftc.gov. Our page on where to report a scam lists which agency does what. The longer walk through each payment type is on I paid a scammer: what now. If you read out your Social Security number, follow what to do after giving out your SSN and freeze your credit.

Expect a second wave. People who lose money to these calls get targeted again by "recovery" callers, some of them claiming to be the FBI or IC3. The FBI's July 2026 alert says plainly that IC3 "will never directly communicate with individuals via phone," and it never charges to get money back. Anyone offering that is running the recovery scam.

How worried should you be?

If you hung up, not at all. The call itself did nothing to you, and a caller who knows your address has not gained any power over you. The danger is entirely in what happens next if you stay on the line: the payment, the ID photo, the bank visit. Keep one rule and the rest of this page is optional. A real arrest is never cancelled by a payment you make over the phone, so anyone offering that deal is not the police.

Quick answers

Would a court or sheriff call me about missing jury duty?: A real court mostly contacts jurors by mail, and federal courts say real phone or email contact never asks for sensitive information. No court or sheriff's office collects a fine, bond or bail over the phone to cancel a warrant. Hang up and call the court clerk on a number you look up yourself.
Can I pay a fine over the phone to clear an arrest warrant?: No. A warrant is not cancelled by a phone payment, a gift card, a wire or a deposit at a crypto kiosk. The FBI's September 2026 alert lists prepaid cards, couriers, bank wires, cryptocurrency and cash fed into crypto kiosks as the payment methods these scammers demand.
The caller ID showed the real sheriff's office number. How?: Caller ID can be faked. The FBI says these callers spoof real phone numbers, email addresses, employee names and credentials of real agencies. A familiar number on the screen proves nothing, so call the office back on a number you find yourself.
I already paid at a bitcoin ATM or with gift cards. What now?: Act the same day. The FTC says to call the crypto ATM operator or exchange, or the gift card issuer using the number on the back of the card, say it was fraud and ask for a reversal. Then report at ic3.gov and reportfraud.ftc.gov, and tell your bank if money left your account.
How did the caller know my address and my car?: Most of it is sold. People-search sites and data brokers publish names, addresses, relatives and phone numbers, and some scammers use that to sound official. Knowing your details does not make a caller real.