TAMPA, Fla. — While shopping at a local Costco Friday afternoon, Joey Rosati got a call — on the line claimed to be a Hillsborough County Sheriff’s deputy providing a name and badge number.
“'We are calling to notify you of contempt of court and failure to appear for jury duty.' The first thing that comes to my mind is that it’s definitely a scam,” Rosati recalled, adding it's not a notice he would miss.
However the “deputy” then started confirming his personal information, Rosati said he knew his full name, new address and last four digits of his Social Security number. Rosati also searched the number that called and it came up as HCSO.
“Then the kind of that the dagger was they asked, 'Have you moved in the last couple of weeks?' Well, yes, I have. They repeated that the summons would have arrived, and they give a specific date in April, which was, literally, the exact week that I had moved,” he explained.
Rosati says the caller even acknowledged jury duty scams, telling him he could be a victim and they would need him to head to the sheriff’s office to clear it up, giving him the real address.
“He said, 'Yeah, there's a common scam going around where individuals are signing jury summons for civilians,' In the back of my head I'm thinking, 'That's definitely what happened. Somebody signed for me, I would never miss this.' So their whole pitch is that you just got to come down to the office and confirm that your signature was forged,” Rosati explained.
He rushed out of Costco and started driving to the sheriff’s office. Meantime, he had the call on speaker and was confirming the deputy’s name, the judge’s name and other info on Google. Everything was checking out.
Rosati even said he planned on hanging up and calling back, but the caller didn’t have an issue with that, repeating a badge number to give, but warning that if he didn’t call back, deputies would have to be sent to his home.
“I'm probably 20 minutes into it, I'm close by. They transferred me to a different department and that's when they lost me. And they lost me because they said, 'Sir, we're actually going to have you pay your civil penalty. We're going to instruct you to go to a different address before you come to the sheriff's office.' And soon as it started to go with money, I was like, 'This is a scam'," Rosati said.
He hung up the phone and reported it to the sheriff’s office who said they’ve received similar reports recently. Rosati then documented the details of the “sophisticated” scam with a thread on X, now viewed millions of times.
“I've probably had 20 to 30 individuals who have posted or have privately messaged me saying that they've lost anywhere from $500 to $20,000,” Rosati said.
With data leaks, call spoofing, AI and other tools becoming more common, so is the sophistication of scam calls.
Even though he admits he’s a bit embarrassed he stayed on the phone for so long, he’s sharing his story so others know to hang up, no matter how convincing those callers sound.
“If that post saves one person from paying, who otherwise would have then it's worth it. Like, who cares? We're all in this together. We all don't want these guys to win,” Rosati added.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office is warning residents of a recent increase in phone scams where people pose as HCSO employees. The sheriff's office says they will never request money or personal information over the phone and if you suspect you are being targeted by a scam, hang up the phone immediately.
You can report a scam call at 813-247-8200 or report online.