Vance County Sheriff Curtis Brame urges the public to be savvy when it comes to answering phone calls from someone claiming to be a representative of his office.

These calls are scams and the best advice he can give anyone who answers such calls is simple: Hang up.

Brame told WIZS News Tuesday that his office has gotten reports about two different scams involving a person’s failure to appear in court or failure to appear for jury duty.

Be assured that anyone who fails to appear in court for any reason, Brame said, would not get a phone call, which usually ends up with the call recipient being told to make some kind of  payment to a third party. Don’t fall for it! Brame said he was informed on New Year’s Day that someone had gotten one of these phone calls. These scammers call random numbers, and often the number that pops up on Caller ID appears to be a local number.

This particular call recipient, however, is a friend of Brame and “the person knew my name and voice” and was not fooled by the call.

The simplest thing to do is ignore the call. If it’s a legitimate call from a legitimate number, the caller will leave a voicemail and you can retrieve the information.

Once again, nobody from the clerk of court’s office is going to make a phone call to an individual who, for whatever reason, has failed to appear in court for jury duty.

That’s not how the process works.

Whether you’re a defendant facing charges or someone who may be asked to serve on a jury, the process is simple: show up in court at the right time or a sheriff’s deputy will show up on your doorstep – with a summons to appear.

 

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