The Burke County Sheriff’s Office has received several reports of scammers calling and claiming to be Lt. Jacob Reynolds from the Burke County Sheriff’s Office. The scammers will state you have missed jury duty and must pay money or be arrested. This is a reminder that the Burke County Sheriff’s Office will never ask for money. Also, no Law enforcement entity will offer you to pay money for a warrant to be dismissed. If you receive a suspicious call, contact the Burke County Sheriff’s Office at 828-438-5500 and have a deputy speak with you.
You can confirm if you have been selected for jury service or failed to appear by contacting the Clerk of Superior Court.
Things to Remember
• In North Carolina, official jury summonses, as well as failure to appear notices, are always delivered to your home or post office box by first class mail.
• Court officials and law enforcement officers never make phone calls to threaten arrest or warn you of an impending arrest for failing to appear for jury service or any other infraction.
• Scammers obtain targets’ names, phone numbers, or addresses from phone directories or other public records and often call after working hours because they know they have a better chance of reaching their intended victims.
• Caller ID can be manipulated to appear as a local number or display the name and phone number of any agency or business, so don’t be fooled.
• Scammers often ask for payments of hundreds or thousands of dollars. The actual penalty for disobeying jury summons is currently $50.00 for each time a juror fails to appear.
• If you have concerns, hang up and look up the courthouse phone number yourself (do not rely on any phone numbers provided by the caller) to verify with the jury coordinator or Clerk of Superior Court if you have, in fact, been summonsed for jury service or failed to appear. Burke County Sheriff’s Office, 150 Government Drive, Morganton, NC 28655 (828) 438-5500 or Fax (828) 764-9543, www.burkesheriff.org.