By Joseph Goral
Staff Writer
jgoral@mihomepaper.com
OAKLAND COUNTY — Residents are receiving fake phone calls threatening them with arrest for supposedly not showing up to jury service.
Callers have given victims false names of people supposedly representing the sheriff’s office and federal law enforcement, along with fraudulent case numbers. Do not believe the calls, says Oakland County Sheriff Michael J. Bouchard.
“Just hang up,” Bouchard said. “We continue to get reports of residents being hit with these phony phone calls. The sheriff’s office will never demand immediate payment over the phone. Ever. Just hang up.”
The latest victim is a Huntington Woods woman who was scammed out of $18,000 last week when a caller posing as a law enforcement officer kept her on the phone for more than five hours and she went to five institutions to obtain the money.
She was also told not to tell anyone about the calls because the caller falsely claimed doing so would violate a gag order. The woman was also told she would be arrested if she visited the Oakland County government complex, the sheriff’s office said.
Law enforcement nor court officials will ever ask for any kind of immediate payment to avoid arrest, according to Bouchard.
Instead, representatives from both the U.S. District Court for the Eastern Michigan
District in Detroit and Oakland County Circuit Court said delinquent jurors would be contacted by mail, never by phone.