A 79-year-old Gresham man reported losing $40,000 after someone posing as a Multnomah County sheriff’s lieutenant told him he had missed jury duty and would be arrested unless he paid a fine, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office said. The caller’s demand was false: the county said in a December 2025 scam warning, “We do not collect money for missing jury duty.”
The man, identified as Steven, made two $20,000 withdrawals from his bank, according to the sheriff’s office. He then deposited cash into a Bitcoin machine at a southeast Portland convenience store. His daughter, Tarisa, told KOIN that scammers directed her father to four or five machines in the area.
A local warning, and a separate report
The county’s warning gives a direct test for this kind of demand: a request for money to avoid arrest over missed jury duty is not a county collection. Deputy John Plock told KOIN that police agencies do not call to collect fines and advised people who receive such calls to hang up.
A separate report to Multnomah County’s Auditor’s Office shows that threats tied to alleged law-enforcement authority have appeared locally before, though it does not establish a connection to Steven’s case. On May 20, 2024, the office said a community member reported a caller posing as a sheriff’s officer who demanded $3,000 at an ATM under threat of arrest. The person recognized the call as a scam and reported it, the Auditor’s Office said.
Bitcoin kiosks in the broader picture
State and federal figures provide context for the payment method, not proof about how common this particular jury-duty scam is. An Oregon Division of Financial Regulation alert, citing Federal Trade Commission data, said consumers reported more than $110 million in scam losses involving Bitcoin ATM machines in 2023—a tenfold increase since 2020.
The Federal Trade Commission also reported that, among older adults who said they lost at least $10,000 to business or government imposter scams in 2024, 33% identified cryptocurrency as the payment method. Most reports in that group that mentioned cryptocurrency referred to Bitcoin ATMs. Those figures describe reported losses and a specific subset of older-adult victims; they do not measure all kiosk transactions or show that every such loss involved a jury-duty threat.
The sheriff’s office notice said Tarisa reported Steven missing on September 23 after a troubling phone call left her unable to reach him. The available accounts do not say whether the money was recovered or whether anyone has been identified in the case. Tarisa told KOIN she wanted the scam exposed so others would not lose money.
