AUGUSTA, Ga ()- The Federal Trade Commission reports that scams are increasingly prevalent nationwide, with losses exceeding $12 billion last year, marking a 25% increase from the previous year.

Here in the CSRA, reports of jury duty scams are increasing.

Recently, several individuals have shared their experiences of being defrauded by callers impersonating local law enforcement officers, who threatened them with arrest over allegedly missing jury duty.

“The caller claimed to be a deputy with the Aiken County Sheriff’s Office and asked if I knew I had missed a jury duty summons that morning at 8 a.m. I was shocked and said, ‘Oh, my goodness, no, I was not aware. I never received anything,'” recounted Caitlin Unkles, who resides in Aiken County.

Unkles was almost scammed out of nearly $10,000. The scammer told her that since she’d missed jury duty, she would have to pay a fine or there would be a bench warrant issued for her arrest.

They also told her she was under a gag order and couldn’t talk to her husband or even the bank teller. She told NewsChannel 6 that, at first, she was too scared to realize something was off.

“So I go into the bank and at this point I’m like, ‘This just seems weird.’ And so I finally start Googling on my phone like ‘jury duty scams’ and ‘what would be the most amount that you would be fined for jury duty scams or jury duty fine’ or whatever. And it was like $1,000 max. And I was like, okay,” Unkles explained.

Unkles figured it out before she handed over the money, but Heather Harper of Columbia County wasn’t so lucky. Her scammer started using tactics to scare her into complying.

“That’s when he kind of started intimidating me, like by using more law enforcement terms, such, like active warrant, since you have not paid, you know, language like ten four,” Harper said.

Harper gave the scammers $1,000 in gift cards before she realized what was happening. Harper said she started to figure it out after they pressed her for more money. She WAS able to get her money back by reaching out to the gift card company.

“So the only thing that came to my mind was chat GPT. So I ended up writing like very discreetly one sentence and they told me, well, it sounds like you’re being scammed. And so that really shifted my thoughts like, what the heck? Yeah, some of this stuff doesn’t make sense,” explained Harper.

Major Jason Griffin of the Aiken County Sheriff’s Office told NewsChannel 6 that there are a few things to think about if you ever get a call like this.

“And again, law enforcement and court officials will never ask you to pay anything over the phone or for personal information regarding you missing a jury duty,” he said.

Harper has some advice for anyone else who has been a victim of a scam.

“Don’t hate yourself for it. Don’t feel stupid because at the end of the day, you were a victim of this. And so be kind to yourself,” she said.

We spoke with the Aiken County Clerk of Courts office and they told us that you will usually only receive correspondence from them through the mail. In the event you are truly fined for missing jury duty, you won’t even hear from law enforcement. It will be in a letter from the court.

Photojournalist: Reggie Mckie.