Cary woman says jury-duty scam used Apex crypto ATM to steal thousands

A Cary woman says a fake jury-duty call that felt official from the start ended with thousands of dollars pushed through a cryptocurrency ATM at an Apex gas station. Mia Bashir said the scammer knew her full name, maiden name and Social Security number, then claimed she had missed jury duty and now faced civil and criminal charges.

Bashir said the caller kept her on the phone for hours and texted paperwork that appeared to come from the U.S. Department of Justice, including threats tied to a warrant. She said the pressure escalated quickly: she was told to withdraw cash from her bank account and take it to an Apex gas station, where she believed she was using a federal payment kiosk. Instead, she fed money into a crypto ATM.

After that first payment, Bashir said she was told the money would be held until she appeared before a judge the next day, which led her to deposit thousands more. Only later did she realize she had been scammed. Bashir said she could not sleep afterward and felt shaken and embarrassed, which pushed her to speak publicly.

The case shows how jury-duty scams have evolved in Wake County. The scheme no longer depends only on a threatening phone call; it layers personal data, fake legal documents and a cash-to-crypto transfer that can move money fast and leave victims little time to question what is happening. In Bashir’s case, the scammer used the authority of a deputy, the language of federal paperwork and the urgency of an alleged warrant to create pressure that felt hard to escape.

State courts say that is not how jury service enforcement works. The North Carolina Judicial Branch says a person cannot be fined by telephone or email for missing jury duty, and any call claiming a bench warrant has been issued for not reporting is a scam. North Carolina’s current penalty for failing to appear is $50 for each missed appearance, not an immediate payment demand over the phone.

Wake County Government has also warned residents about scams involving cryptocurrency, warrants and jury duty. The warning comes as the Wake County Sheriff’s Office has reported 181 fraud complaints so far in 2026, including several confirmed cases of law-enforcement impersonation. The office also warned last year about a crypto-and-bail scam that relied on spoofed caller ID, a tactic that helps fraudsters sound local and official.

The broader risk is not limited to one Cary resident or one Apex gas station. FBI data cited in North Carolina reporting showed that in 2025, 76% of cryptocurrency-ATM scam losses were tied to victims age 60 and older, underscoring how often scammers target people most likely to trust official-sounding calls and most vulnerable to high-pressure cash demands.