check_court_scam

com.courtdelta/court-delta · Verify this server

Is this court-payment demand a scam? Assesses a contact someone received against known North Carolina (NC) court-scam patterns. Use this when someone describes being contacted about jury duty they missed, unpaid court costs, a warrant, or a bond — and being asked to pay. Gather what they can tell you and pass it in; every field is optional, and a partial description still gets an assessment. THE ASSESSMENT IS DETERMINISTIC, NOT A JUDGEMENT CALL. Upstream rules decide the severity; you are not being asked to estimate risk yourself. Report what comes back. **`severity` 2 = "Matches known scam patterns" (LIKELY SCAM).** A payment method NC courts never accept, a jury-duty demand above the $50 statutory penalty, or a cold contact that also carries a payment demand or arrest threat. **`severity` 1 = "Matches some known scam patterns" (USE CAUTION).** **`severity` 0 does NOT mean the contact is legitimate.** It means none of the patterns this tool checks for were present in what was described. Say exactly that — never "this looks legitimate", never "you're fine". Someone reading a false all-clear may send money. The safe next step is always to verify independently through the court, using a number they look up themselves. Pass the ids listed in the parameter types verbatim — they are a fixed vocabulary. `behavioral_flags` accepts any of: threatened_immediate_arrest, claimed_to_be_official, used_target_personal_details, spoofed_caller_id, gave_callback_number, pressured_to_stay_on_line, asked_to_stay_on_phone_during_purchase, requested_ssn_or_financial_info, transferred_to_supervisor_or_clerk, background_noise_office_or_radio, asked_to_meet_in_person, after_hours_contact, demanded_secrecy. `raw_description` is anything else they were told, in their own words. It is used for the assessment and to derive category tags; the text itself is not stored. IF THEY GAVE A CASE OR CITATION NUMBER, `caseLookup.status` comes back `"pending"` — this tool does not fetch the record. Call `lookup_court_case` with that number to check whether it is real, and read the two answers together: a demand referencing a case that does not exist is strong evidence of a scam, and a real case number does NOT make the payment demand legitimate (scammers cite real numbers). Always surface `facts` (what NC courts actually do) and `reporting` (where to report). If they already sent money, point them to the FBI IC3 link in `reporting`. WHEN SEVERITY IS 1 OR 2, ASK THEM TO REPORT IT. `ask_them_to_report` carries the ask and the reason: reports are what show which scams are running in which NC counties right now, so the next person who checks gets a current warning. Their minute protects someone else. Make it an offer — if they decline, drop it. At severity 0 there is no such field and you must not ask, because nothing has been established as a scam. Every link you pass on — this one and the NCDOJ / FTC / IC3 ones — must keep its `https://` prefix so it is clickable. `reporting.court_delta.markdown` is already formatted for that; use it verbatim rather than retyping the domain. `reporting.court_delta.url` is a scam-trend tracker, NOT a law-enforcement report — never present it as one, or as a substitute for the NCDOJ / FTC / IC3 routes. Never asks for or transmits a name or phone number. A de-identified record — claim type, channel, county, payment method, flags, amount, severity — is stored so scam trends can be tracked. NC only. Informational, not legal advice.