Most of us take those summons for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on their civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of scam has surfaced.

The caller claims to be a jury coordinator. If you protest that you never received a summons for jury duty, the scammer asks you for your Social Security number and date of birth so he or she can verify the information and cancel the arrest warrant. Give out any of this information and bingo, your identity just got stolen.

The scam has been reported so far in 11 states. This (scam) is particularly insidious because they use intimidation over the phone to try to bully people into giving information by pretending they're with the court system.

The FBI and the federal court system have e issued nationwide alerts on their web sites, warning consumers about the fraud.