West Virginia court warns of Bitcoin scam involving fake jury duty arrest warrants

A West Virginia district court has alerted the public about cryptocurrency scammers using dubious arrest warrants to extort payments for alleged missed jury duty.

Crypto scammers were found to be impersonating officials from the U.S. District Court, using “official looking” documents that falsely claim to come from the Eastern District of Virginia, a recent notification from the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Virginia warned.

The forged arrest warrants accuse victims of skipping jury duty and demand immediate payment. 

The scam typically unfolds over a phone call where the victim is coerced into paying the scammers via Bitcoin and other hard-to-trace means like gift cards. If victims don’t comply, they are threatened with arrest.

Court officials clarified that U.S. district courts “do not issue arrest warrants” for failing to appear for jury duty unless the individual has been “summoned.” 

They urged anyone who receives such documents, especially those demanding Bitcoin payments over the phone, to reach out directly to the court to verify their authenticity.

Such scams, where bad actors impersonate government officials and other industry figures, have been running rife in the crypto sector, which lost over $3 billion to fraud and hacks in 2024 alone, according to a January report from PeckSheild.

In late 2023, the FBI cracked down on one such scheme, which targeted residents of El Paso, Texas, with phishing email letters pretending to have been sent by the bureau. Around the same time, the agency issued an alert about scammers on Telegram who were posing as venture capital investors, tricking crypto users into downloading malicious software.

More recently, law enforcement agencies across multiple jurisdictions have raised alarms over scammers impersonating representatives of crypto exchange Binance to defraud users.