Residents of the Northern District of Georgia are receiving phone calls and emails from individuals falsely claiming to work for the U.S. Marshals Service in the Richard B. Russell Federal Building and United States Courthouse in Atlanta. The callers offer to assist with “surety replacement” refunds or court-related payments and are directed to send funds to the scammer to process a refund. Victims are falsely told they can get the funds back using a password provided by the scammer. Instead, their money is gone. The phone calls and emails may reference fake case numbers and may include documents that look like official court forms.

All official federal government email correspondence comes from addresses ending in .gov, such as usdoj.gov or uscourts.gov. The federal government does not use Outlook.com, Gmail.com, or other commercial email domains for official business.

In a recent example:
• The fake document displayed the letterhead of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania but listed an address in Atlanta, Georgia.
• The email address used was u.s_civil@outlook.com, which is not a government email address.

The Court will not:
• Require you to send money to receive a refund.
• Conduct official business using non-government email addresses.
• Request payment through unofficial websites or peer-to-peer payment services.

If you receive a suspicious communication related to Court payments or refunds:
1. Do not send money.
2. Do not provide personal or financial information.
3. Independently verify the legitimacy of the communication by contacting the government agency at issue using contact information found on the agency’s official website ending in .gov.
4. Report suspected scams to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) at www.ic3.gov.