Ross Victim Loses Thousands In Jury Duty Scam

ROSS TOWNSHIP, PA — A person in Ross has lost more than $8,000 in a jury juty scam, the Allegheny County Sheriff's Office announced Thursday.

The victim received a call in which the caller ID read “Allegheny Cnty Sheriffs Dept” along with the number (412) 350-4700. The person was told that an arrest warrant had been issued for failure to show up for jury duty.

The victim told police that they never received an official notice for jury duty.

The caller requested $8,550 in bitcoin in order to clear the warrant and the victim complied by sending the funds through a bitcoin ATM. The subsequent investigation showed that the funds were tracked to Binance in France. Binance is the largest cryptocurreny exchange in the world.

Unfortunately, the investigation has been unable to isolate the actual account that received the funds. The investigation by Ross police is continuing.

Sheriff Kevin M. Kraus said in a release that the sheriff's office would never serve a warrant by phone and would never ask for any sort of payment over the phone. The office also does not use any sort of electronic transfer of funds when dealing with warrants or fines, including the use of Venmo, Zelle and other phone apps, nor would we ask for payments in gift cards or cryptocurrency.

The sheriff's office cautions that should you receive this type of call from someone claiming to be from our office, do not hand over any money and immediately report it to the sheriff's office investigations division at (412) 350-4709.