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Thursday, March 19, 2015

Scam: Notice To Appear In Court

Notice to Appear,

This is to inform you to appear in the Court on the March 26 for your case hearing.
You are kindly asked to prepare and bring the documents relating to the case to Court on the specified date.
Note: The case may be heard by the judge in your absence if you do not come.

The copy of Court Notice is attached to this email.

Sincerely,
Samuel Church,
Court Secretary.

It's coming around again!

It looks official…a notice to appear in court. An attachment with more information. And those threatening words if you don’t appear: “The judge may hear the case in your absence.”

“It’s going to want you to click on that court appearance to see what the email is about, what court you’re supposed to appear to,” says Detective Kristen Gillespie.

But the attachment will download a virus and worse yet: install a key logger.

“That is waiting for you to put a certain password in, it’s going to detain that information, any of your personal information, your bank information,” says Gillespie.

And the email itself should really send up red flags. It doesn’t give you a courtroom number, it doesn’t give you a judge’s name, it just gives you an attachment to click on for more information.

We asked—and the clerk of court says they don’t even send out emailed notices to people. If anything, it will be a letter in the mail.

“A letter from the clerk. And if you do not respond you will get a letter back if you don’t respond in time you’ll receive another letter from the court saying they did not get your response,” says Carol Oates.

“The ordinary citizen may not know that something that appears to be from the court, isn’t from the court,” says Joe Altadonna.

If you get a questionable email, don’t click on the attachment. You can also copy and paste part of the email into Google search, and that will often tell you if it’s a scam as well.

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