AUGUSTA, Ga ()- According to the Federal Trade Commission, scams are on the rise across the nation, with people losing more than $12 billion last year. That’s a 25% increase over the year before.

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

We’ve heard from several viewers in recent weeks saying they’ve been scammed out of a lot of money by someone claiming to be local law enforcement and threatening them with arrest for missing jury duty.

“It was Aiken County Sheriff’s Office Deputy So-and-so, and he asked if I was aware that I had missed my jury duty summons that morning at 8 a.m., and I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness, no, I did not. I did not receive that,'” said Caitlin Unkles, an Aiken County resident.

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.