Criminals Threaten Jail Time in Jury Duty Scam

The Perfect Scam

AARP

True Crime, Aarp, Fraud, Society & Culture, Scam, Crime, Bobsullivan

4.5 • 980 Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jana always tries to do the right thing, so when she receives a call from the sheriff's office stating that she missed jury duty, she panics. She thinks back to studying for her American citizenship exam and learning how important it is to respond to a jury summons. She doesn't remember receiving a notice, but the officer knows all her personal information and says she will have to pay a $9,000 bond or face arrest. Jana spends the next several hours driving from the bank to various crypto ATMs, trying desperately to meet the payment demands. When Jana discovers that it's a scam and calls 911, she learns that seven other people in her county were victimized the same day.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week on The Perfect Scam.
0:04.0	So as I'm driving towards the courthouse, he says they have a red flag and the bond of
0:11.0	$1,000 is not enough.
0:13.0	How much more can I get?
0:14.0	And I said, I can't get anything.
0:16.0	Is there any other way?
0:18.0	No?
0:19.0	So I kept driving.
0:20.0	I was looking at the sun and I'm thinking,
0:21.7	okay, maybe this is, I'm not going to see that for a long time now. Because who knows how
0:25.4	this day is going to end?
0:32.1	Welcome back to the perfect scam. I'm your host, Bob Sullivan. Most of us want to do the right thing as citizens. We pay our
0:41.3	taxes, we move over for ambulances and fire trucks, we park legally most of the time, and we do
0:48.3	our duty when it's time for jury duty. The insidious part of today's scam is it preys on those people who have a great
0:56.2	sense of duty, who feel a strong urge to do the right thing. Meet Yonna Cash, who feels a
1:03.6	particularly strong sense of civic duty. I'll let her explain why. And that's what criminals
1:09.5	took advantage of. So I lived in Munich, yes, sir, for about 20 years in Germany. I was born in Czech Republic outside of Prague.
1:18.6	And then I moved to Germany because I had some German background. My dad has a German background.
1:24.6	But I am originally from Czech Republic.
1:26.6	That means you speak several different languages I heard. My dad has a German background, but I am originally from Czech Republic. I'm beautiful.
1:28.3	That means you speak several different languages I heard.
1:31.3	I do. I do, yes. It's kind of a hobby. I do speak. Just a few.
	...

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