A new e-mail scam is telling people they’re being summoned to appear in court because they’ve misused software. The e-mails are disguised to appear as if they’re coming from prominent law firms.
The messages usually have a subject line saying “Notice to appear in court,” and the e-mail address of the sender looks like it belongs to a well-known law firm. Scam e-mails have been received in Missouri, Washington, D.C., Louisiana and Georgia.
Florida Supreme Court spokesman Craig Waters says, “I really became concerned whenever I got an e-mail from the court officials in Georgia.”
He says he wouldn’t be surprised if scammers are preying on Floridians too. He says e-mails summoning people to court should be deleted without opening them.
“That usually is not done by e-mail. That would be very, very unusual that that would happen," he says. Instead, summons are generally delivered in person or by post.
The scam e-mails have an attachment that purports to be additional information about the supposed court appearance. Waters says victims should not open the attachment or click any links in the e-mail itself.