May 15, 2015
The point is to scare you into thinking you're going to jail or your house or car will be repossessed, or your wages garnished. Whatever it takes to scare you into thinking you have to do something to stop it. That usually consists of you paying them some lesser amount (so you think you're getting off easy) by some method of payment that cannot be reversed (when you realize you've been scammed.) Those methods vary, but include charging a Green Dot money card and giving the scammer the card number and PIN, or using Western Union to send the cash.
It sounds like it would be an obvious scam, but clearly people fall for it, otherwise they wouldn't keep at it.