In the hope that it may save someone else from the experience that I had or may even save them some money.

At 2:02pm Jan 15, 2015 I received a phone call from a man identifying himself as Sargent Murunby of the King County WA Sheriff department.  He stated his badge number was 6649 and that the phone call was being recorded.  He then proceeded to ask me who I was when I gave him my name he asked if I lived at … ( he had all of my address correct except not the last 4 digits of our full 9 digit Zip code.) I will explain the significance of this later.  I agreed that I was that person.

He then proceeded to explain that he was making a courtesy call.  He then proceeded to explain that a bench warrant had been issued for my arrest.  Further explaining that I had failed to appear in the king county court house juror room on January 9th as was required by the summons sent to this address on December 10th stating that I had been selected as a juror for a Grand Jury Trial in King County Washington.

At this point I was a bit in shock.  But did have the brains to ask him what the full address was again.  Again he repeated the address back to me but scrambled some of the first five digits in the zip code and did not give the final four digits of the zip.  This also gave me the wherewithal to ask him why I would even be summoned for jury duty in King County when I didn’t live in King County.   Also I explained that due to the fact that there is a duplicate house address to ours on a street 2 blocks away.  (The street we live on is 25th DR. and the duplicate is on 23rd drive easily misread.  The duplicate address was just built about 6 years ago.  And we have been here for over 30 years.  Back to the point is that mail deliver people get our mail mixed with the mail for the other address.  So the postmaster has requested that we make sure that everyone mailing to our address use the full 9 digit zip code.  If they do we always get our mail.

So I asked the Sgt. where they got their address information from and he stated the court clerks use the voter registrations.  (I in hind sight I know that our ballots come the complete 9 digit zip.  But the Sgt. Could not give it to me.)  At this point I was getting very agitated and asked what I was supposed to do about this mess to clear it up.   He reacted negatively to my calling it a mess.  But did say that I would be expected to come to the King County court house and post a bond until I could be brought before a judge or go to my local law enforcement office and turn myself in I could then post bail after I had been printed, booked, and incarcerated.  He repeated this statement several times without changing one word as if reading it from a script.

Getting more agitated I demanded to speak with a supervisor.  I was put on hold.  

At this point another man identifying himself as Lieutenant Jones came on the line.  I asked if the Sgt. Brought him up to date and he responded like he wanted me to tell him everything again.  So I just told him that they did not have a complete address on file and I never received any summons.  In addition to that no one should be trying to summon me to King County court as I don’t live in that county.  
At this point the Lt. was getting agitated and just repeated what the Sgt. had said about what my options were.  I replied that was not right and he said that he could just send a deputy out and have me arrested at home and then hung up.  

I was pretty shaken up and infuriated.  I started trying to find lawyers to call and asked both of my daughters if they knew of any.  Thankfully Terry our oldest suggested that I just try to call the King County court house and see if indeed there really was a warrant issued for me.  

So I looked up their number and there are three different courts, Superior, District and I don’t even recall the last one.  So I a Grand Jury summons would have been from the Superior court so I tried to call them.  They have one of the phone systems that if you call and it is busy it relays the operating hours and then states if you are getting this message during those hours hang up and try again.  You can’t stay in a queue you have to keep trying until you get through.  

Finally on the 8th try I got though.  I must admit by this time my frustration level was boiling.  But the clerk that did answer was very polite and helpful although she did not have any direct answers for me she did give me two phone number to call and connected me with the first which was the juror room of the court house.  Their response was first that, There are no Grand Jury trials held in Washington state and that this was a serious scam running across the entire country and there have been thousands suckered into sending money in to cover bail.  They then said that they would check the records to see if any summons had been sent to me and requested my name and birthdate.  Took about 30 seconds and the clerk came back and said that this was certainly a scam as there was no summons sent out to me.  But he was puzzled by the fact that I was not offered the option to send bail in by mail.  

I then called the second number which was the King County Sheriff’s office communications department.  The deputy that answered was again very courteous and said first that he would check to see if any kind of an arrest warrant was out standing in my name.  Took him about 30 seconds and he came back and said I was clear, no warrants.  He did want to hear about the entire call and what had transpired though until I mentioned that I didn’t even live in King County.  He said that I could contact the Snohomish County Sheriff and make a complaint.  At this point he like the court clerk stated he was puzzled about why I was not offered the opportunity to send bail by mail.  To this I suggested that it could have been all the challenges I had made about the address not being correct.  To which he totally agreed.

As an afterthought I now remember there were no mandatory beeps to indicate that a recording was taking place.  I do believe that these two were or still true law enforcement personnel.

The phone number that the call was placed from is a Verizon Cell phone of 206-919-3687.  It is my belief that the phone is either stolen or the number is spoofed by some computer elsewhere to conceal the real origin of the call.