Transcripts For CSPAN3 Hearing Focuses On Financial Fraud Targeting Senior Citizens 20170223

Financial scams that are targeting Senior Citizens. The Committee Looked at scams involving purported sweepstakes winning, robo calling and socalled grandparent scams. Well hear from officials with the treasury department, the federal trade commission and victim of an irs impersonation scam. Good afternoon. That was to wake all of you up. Im pleased to welcome both new and returning members to the committee and im delighted that my good friend, senator casey, will be serving as the committees new Ranking Member during this congress. I want to specifically welcome senator Catherine Cortezmasto from the great state of nevada to the committee. We look forward to having you join our work. And of course, its wonderful to welcome back senator gillibrand whos been so committed to this issue. The issues that we have explored as well. Speaking of senator gillibrand, i understand that her son, theo, is here today. He is doing a special class project so he got an excused absence to be at our hearing today for the project that he is doing. And i know thats going to be a very interesting project. My apologies also that this hearing had to be delayed from when it was first scheduled on february 1st due to a long series of votes on the senate floor. During this congress, this committee will continue its focus on three major issues. First, retirement security. We want to make sure that our seniors has sufficient resources so that they dont outlive their savings or find that their golden years end in poverty. Second, Biomedical Research investments. For diseases like alzheimers and diabetes that disproportionately affect our seniors. And third, financial schemes and other scams targeting Older Americans and that is the subject of todays hearing. Last summer, an 81yearold constituent came into my office in portland, maine, with an alarming story of deception and cruelty. A con artist claiming to be an irs agent had just cheated him out of 8,000. And he narrowly avoided losing 15,000 more. After reporting the crime to the local police, my constituent, philip hatch, and his son, came into my office. My staff gave him a copy of the fraud book that this committee produced last year as well as a special postcard that we created with tips on how to avoid scams. Mr. Hatch told us that the tactics described in the materials provided were exactly those that were used by the scammer. If only he had received that information sooner, he might have recognized the scam and avoided losing his hardearned savings. Mr. Hatch was very willing to testify today and to share his story but Health Issues prevent him from traveling. Inste instead, he graciously and courageously provided a video in order to share his experience and well see that video in a moment. This episode demonstrates two important points. First, the criminals who prey on our seniors are relentless. They will harass seniors over and over again until they have drained every penny from their life savings. Second, this committees longstanding dedication to fighting fraud against seniors is raising awareness and prompting Enforcement Actions that are making a real difference. We must redouble our efforts to educate seniors, their families and their caregivers. The stakes are extremely high. According to the Government Accountability office, americas seniors lose a staggering 2. 9 billion each year to an evergrowing array of financial exploitation schemes and scams. Todays hearing coincides with the release of our committees 2017 fraud work. Like the book that we published last year, it lists the top ten scams being perpetrated against seniors along with information on how to recognize, avoid and report them. In both years, the irs impersonation scam was the leading offender. These lists reflect the calls made to our committees toll free hotline. In 2015, hotline staff fielded more than 1,100 calls. Last year, the hotlines call volume doubled to more than 2,200 calls. Its clear that our efforts are raising Public Awareness and more important, our efforts are producing real results. I look forward this morning to the testimony of the treasury Inspector Generals Office on recent evolutions in the irs imposter scam such as the demand for payment in itunes gift cards to which mr. Hatch and many others have fallen victim. Raising awareness about the irs scam is particularly timely as we are in the midst of tax filing season. Last may, thanks to the work of our hotline investigators, the i. G. Arrested five individuals in connection with the irs imposter scam. Federal authorities believe that these suspects stole almost 3 million from more than 1 2rkz,2 victims. In october, five call centers in india were indicted in another important case. In addition to producing criminal charges, these efforts are making it more difficult for criminals to find victims. I also look forward to hearing from the federal trade commission on other scams that are targeting our seniors such as those involving grants, counterfeit checks and romance schemes which are particularly timely with yesterday being valentines day. As our 2017 fraud book makes clear, while we are certainly making progress, far too many victims are still losing money and often their retirement savings. Law enforcement consumer advocates, area agencies on aging, aarp, and Financial Institutions play vital roles, but alert citizens are still our first and best line of defense. Im proud of our committees work on this crucial issue to help seniors become more aware and more informed and to put criminals on notice that they will be stopped and brought to justice. Im now very pleased to turn to our new Ranking Member, senator casey, for his opening statement. Chairman collins, thank you very much for your leadership and for convening this hearing. The first hearing of the committee on aging. A special committee on aging. For the 115th congress. To discuss senior scams, as she just outlined. Also, i want to thank her for working with me to address issues impacting Older Americans, even before the start of this congress. Id also like to Welcome New Members of the committee. I know right now we have senator cortezmasto here. Were grateful that shes with us. And of course, senator gillibrand whos been with the committee for a number of years. Were grateful for that help, especially on these critically important issues for our families. The aging committee has historically been a committee that fosters both collaboration and bipartisanship on issues facing Older Americans and that was, again, abundantly clear by the voice vote we held off of the senate floor two weeks ago to approve the Committee Budget and the committee rules. And i think i was late for that hearing but i wasnt going to mention that. Somehow my voice got recorded but i want to thank the chairman for that. Its my sincere hope that that will continue and im sure that it will. The future of key programs for Older Americans like medicare, medicaid and others are also critically important to the agenda of this committee. We have a responsibility, i believe, to protect these vital programs for Older Americans. Today, we have the opportunity to hear from experts who will give us testimony on the challenging issue of combatting fraud and scams which, of course, target Older Americans and affect Older Americans as well as their families. Experts testifying today include diane menio from pennsylvania, from a Senior Advocacy organization that i worked with over many years. Ill talk more about diane in a moment. But i want to thank her and her organizations work for what youve done for years to help those who are potential victims of these kinds of scams. Also pleased to have joined senator collins in releasing a Committee Report detailing the top ten scams targeting our nations seniors that you saw a moment ago. The report is based upon the experiences of more than 2,200 individuals who contacted the committees fraud hotline over the past year. It will inform the work of this Committee Going forward. Also happy to join with the chairman in reintroducing the senior safe act last week. This important legislation both encourages Financial Institutions to disclose suspected exploitation of seniors when they see it and protects them from being sued for making these reports if they have an appropriately trained if they have, i should say, appropriately trained their staff and made good faith reports. In the commonwealth of pennsylvania, more than one in six seniors one in six residents is 65 years and older. In 2015, 22,000 cases of suspected elder abuse and neglect were reported by the Pennsylvania Department of agings protective services program. Thats why last spring i held a field hearing in wilkesbarre, pennsylvania, to hear directly from the constituents, both those affected by scams and those trying to prevent these scams. Just by way of example, a constituent from kingston township told the heartbreaking story of a scam artist attempting to steal the identity and use credit cars of her husband of 43 years after, after his death. The Luzerne County District Attorney highlighted the most common type of scam happening today. At least in that area. The sweepstakes or lottery scam. Victims are promised lottery winnings if they just pay off a sizable socalled taxes and fees upfront. The District Attorney recalled one older victim being scammed out of 85,000 in the hope of retrieving 1 million in fake lottery winnings. While experts struggle to estimate the total Financial Impact of scams targeting seniors, mainly because its so underreported, they know that it adds up to nearly 3 billion a year in lost savings and potentially billions more. It isnt just money thats lost in these scams. Its Older Americans sense of security and financial independence. Its outrageous for people who have worked worked very hard all their lives and are being targeted for their nest eggs when theyre at their most vulnerable and its wrong that saen yours still feel afraid to report these schemes. They should not be embarrassed or ashamed. They should know we have their backs and were here to help them fight back. Thats why enforcement is such a critical part of this discussion. While it may not be easy to track down these increasingly sophisticated scammers and their domestic and International Networks and hold them accountable, we must do so for the safety and security of our parents and grandparents. Recently, senator collins and i applauded the federal trade commission and Justice Department settlement with Western Union in which the company admitted to criminal antimoney laundering violations that have disproportionately affected aging americans. This settlement, 586 million in the settlement, will be used to compensate victims of fraud, western age jengen jengen jenge complicit in the scam. This committee to both help consumers understand the threat and highlight the need for action. Ill fight to ensure the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has the resources it needs, cfpb houses the only office solely focused on sharing Financial Information with seniors and educating seniors about how to prevent becoming the victim of fraud. Until recently, this office was led by former pennsylvania secretary of aging noradowd isenhower in the first row of our hearing today. We need to keep up the fight to ensure the Affordable Care act fraud and abuse provisions are in place. We know that the government has realized a recordbreaking 10. 7 billion in recovery of Health Care Fraud in the last three years. Increasing having new tools that increased federal sentencing guidelines for Health Care Fraud and on from there. We also know that proposals that i will oppose like block granting medicaid can provide states with real challenges when it comes to addressing waste, fraud and abuse in programs. Finally, in order to make in order to continue the good work, i should say, of the witnesses here today, as well as others, and to support our colleagues at the in other parts of the government, Social Security administration and other departments in maintaining a skilled workforce, im seriously concerned about the impact of the federal hiring freeze and how that will affect middleclass families. So i look forward to hearing from our witnesses and, again, want to thank our chairman for gathering us today on this important topic. Thank you very much, senator casey. I want to welcome another new member of our committee, senator marco rubio. Senator rubio represents the state with the highest percentage of Senior Citizens. I represent the state with the oldest median age. Thats because a lot of my seniors go to florida, though they tend to spend exactly six months and one day there. Im not quite sure, but i have a feeling it has to do with taxes. But it it is great to have you as a member of the committee, and i want to welcome back senator warren who was here briefly and im sure will be returning as well. Well now turn to our panel of witnesses. First were going to view a brief video from mr. Philip hatch. He is from portland, maine, and hell share his personal experience dealing with the irs impersonators that i mentioned in my opening statement. Next, well hear from kamus, Deputy Inspector general for investigations at the u. S. Treasury Departments Office of Inspector General for Tax Administration. That may be one of the longest titles of any witness that we ever have. But his office has done extraordinary work and i want to thank him. Next well welcome back to the committee, lois greisman, division of marketing practices at the bureau of Consumer Protection at the federal trade commission, better known as the ftc. And senator casey has already introduced our final witness for the day, diane menio. Were very happy to have her here. Menio. Did i get it right that time . Thank you. I want to thank you all for joining us and well now start with the video. My name is philip hatch. Im 81 year s old and im fro portland, maine. Born and raised. I received a telephone call, answered the phone and the man said he was a representative from the Internal Revenue service. I said, what can i do to help you . He said, well, weve gone through the records and theres been a mistake here on your returns and you owe us 5,988 and some odd cents. So i said, fine, tell me who i make the check out to and where do i mail it . He says, we cant do that. We have a warrant out for your arrest and the marshals will be in your house within an hour. And i said, well, what would you like me to do to help resolve this . They said you can go to cvs and get those itunes cards and just when you come back, you can read the numbers off to us. I said, that doesnt sound like a very professional way to do it. He said, well, its either that or the marshals coming. If we can do this, we can tell them not to come. So i did, i went and got these little itune cards, came back, read the numbers off them and they said, okay, now, you cant tell anybody about this. I said what do you mean, i cant tell anybody about this . Im going to tell my guy that makes up my tax returns. Im a little mad at him, you know . He made a mistake. No, dont do that, everything will be taken care of. This started at 4 00 in the afternoon and went on until 8 00 at night. H they called me the next day and they said there was a mistake. I said what do you mean a mistake . It wasnt 5,900 and something, 23,000. They had somebody call me on the regular phone, im still on my cell phone, and say that he was a Portland Police officer and that they had a local warrant for my arrest. So i put my son on the phone and he goes, whos this . And they said, well whos this . He goes he gave them a phony name, said he was an fbi agent and they said, whoops, and they hung up. And that was the end of it. But i had already sent in 8,000 to these people. Being in the military and being working for the government and, you know, the government calls up, you say, ayeaye, sir, what do you need, can i help you . Okay. Maybe if i hadnt had that background, i wouldnt have been so cooperative, but i was mad, upset that i was taken in. Just give me five minutes in a room alone with those people and id be happy. All i can say is just be wary, you know . You know, just be careful and when it comes to someone going after your money, just say, listen, ill think about it over tonight and you can get back to me tomorrow. And then contact someone and find out. Thats the best advice i could do. As you can see, this is really outrageous and illustrates the lengths to which these criminals will go and a lot of times they do target people who are either isolated or have been in the military. We did a whole hearing on scams that are directed at those whove been in the military, and they will stop at nothing. They kept mr. Hatch on the phone for four hours, from 4 00 p. M. To 8 00 p. M. , getting him to go from place to place to buy the itunes card which is a new variation that were seeing on the irs imposter scam. And it frightens people when they get a call from someone claiming to be from the irs. It frightens all of us to get that kind of call. And its become so sophisticated that these con artists can spoof the number so it looks like if they have caller i. D. , it will say u. S. Treasury. So that makes them think that it is for real. And it just shows that they will stop at nothing. Id now like to call on our first witness who is actually here with us, mr. Camus, for his testimony. Thank you, senator. Chairman collins, Ranking Member casey, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the topic of financial frauds affecting seniors. Over the past three years, tigda conducted numerous investigations on the issue of irsrelated frauds and scams. Telephone impersonation scams, sweepstakes or lottery scams, and email and phishing scams are among the top ten fraud schemes used by criminals to target Senior Citizens. I will highlight two major irsrelated scams weve been investigating. The first is a telephone impersonation scam in which more than 1. 8 million americans reported to us that theyve received unsolicited telephone calls from individuals falsely claiming to be irs employees. The second is a socalled sweepstakes or lottery scam which has reemerged as a significant threat to the integrity of Tax Administration. The telephone impersonation scam continues to be one of tigdas top priorities. No one is immune from receiving these calls. I receive calls, myself. Tigda made numerous arrests in connection to this scam and we have a number of significant investigations that are still under way. For example, this committee made a direct referral to tigda involving a Senior Citizen located in florida who was so frightened by the impersonators that following their directions, he immediately drove to his local walmart while remaining on the phone with them. During the drive, he crashed his vehicle and continued on foot in order to obtain a money grant payment as demanded by the impersonators. Tigda special agents worked diligently on this referral and ultimately identified five suspects in miami, florida. These suspects were arrested by tigda special agents for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. In october 2016 after an extensive threeyear joint investigation, the department of justice obtained an indictment on 56 individuals, 24 of whom were located in the United States, and 5 call centers located in india. The investigation identified approximately 2 272 million of total fraud and thousands of victims involving multiple trod schemes. This is the largest single Law Enforcement to date involving the scam and the operations success is a result of excellent crossagency collaboration and the efforts of hundreds of tigda employees who participated in this investigation. In addition, tigda has taken numerous other steps to fight this crime. For example, we created a strategy designed to shut down the impersonators callback numbers. Weve also developed an outstanding working relationship with the federal trade commission and the federal Communications Commission to combat this scam. We have worked with the aarp and the Veterans Administration on public warning messages. Tigda has also employed a Public Awareness campaign. We recorded five videos that received over 71,000 views, and we have provided approximately 1 100 print and media interviews resulting in over 4,400 news stories in both large and small media markets resulting in an estimated 113 million views. We also worked with the private sector such as walmart and apple who were used in this massive fraud. These companies are now helping us to warn consumers about the scam. As a result of all of these efforts, the impersonation sc s scams impact on the public has been significantly reduced. Today, there are 92 fewer reported calls each week and the 93 fewer victims reported to us that they paid the scammers money. However, the problem has not gone away entirely and the volume is starting to come back. For example, we received on average 1,000 reported calls per week in early january and our data for last week shows we received over 4,600 calls for the week. I believe sustained investigative efforts and ongoing outreach to ensure people do not become victims in the first place is critical to our success in fighting this scam. Another fraud scheme, the lottery scam, has continued to target and victimize Senior Citizens. Its premise is simple. The scammers contact victims to advise them that they have won a lottery or sweepstakes but first they need to pay a nonexistent federal tax or fee in order to receive the prize. Over the last few years, tigda has conducted investigations that have identified over 30 individuals who were responsible for defrauding victims out of millions of dollars. We have obtained some prosecutions and were working on others to address this crime. In summary, we at tigda take seriously our mandate to protect american taxpayers and the integrity of the Internal Revenue service. As such, we plan to continue investigate coverage in this area and look forward to our continued collaboration and discussion on ways we can fight these types of frauds and scams in the future. Chairman collins, Ranking Member casey, and members of the committee, thank you so much for your support and for the opportunity to share my views. Thank you. Thank you, chairman collins, Ranking Member casey, and members of the committee. I am very happy to appear before you again to discuss the ftcs broad efforts to protect seniors against frauds which is a critical part of its Consumer Protection mission. These efforts are driven through the ftcs Law Enforcement work, its coordination with u. S. And International Partners and with a tremendous emphasis, its education and outreach initiatives. First just a quick overview. As you know, the population of Older Americans is growing rapidly. By 2013, more than onefifth of u. S. Residents will be over age 65. Now throughout our laurlt work, we train a deliberate eye on whether fraud sters are targeting specific consumer populations and in particular, whether theyre targeting seniors. We do see that certain types of fraud, such as medicare imposter scams, deceptive pitches for medical alert devices, braintraining programs to treat cognitive impairments such as also se al alz seemers may be directed to seniors. In areas such as the keck catec support scam, scammers impersonate, for example, dell or microsoft and lead you to believe your computer is in dire straits and only they have the remedy to fix it, we do think seniors may be disproportionately impacted. And with tigda and has Deputy Inspector camus just indicated, we have strong partners in our work, particularly on combatting the irs imposter skam. But as a practical matter, scammers care little about their victims age. As a result, we see seniors impacted across the entire s spectrum of our Consumer Protection work from investment in business opportunity, frauds, to bogus health care products, to timeshare resale frauds. I want to take a moment to highlight as Ranking Member casey referred to the recent 586 million settlement with Western Union. A good many iterations of fraud flowed through Western Unions Money Transfer system, but we know based on the investigation that lottery scams, socalled emergency scams such as the grandparent scam and the Online Dating or romance scams were well represented among the complaints the Company Received and we know that these types of scams often target and impact older consumers. In addition to the more than half billion Dollar Settlement, the ftcs order requires Western Union to implement a comprehensive Antifraud Program that among other things will require suspension or termination of problematic agents under certain requirements and as you mentioned the department of justice entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the company at the same time. Not only has the ftc proceeded against Money Transfers, this morning, an announcement with a florida man and his company helped telemarketers in india dupe consumers in the u. S. To pay hundreds, thousands of dollars for taxes they did not owe. The telemarketers as we heard from mr. Hatch pretended to be from the irs or this case another government agency, and told them to pay via money gram or Western Union. U. S. Based entities that orchestrated having runners literally driving up and down the florida coast to various retain stores to collect the Money Transfers before consumers realized theyd been scammed and could take some action. And as you know, ftc Law Enforcement regularly collaborates with our partners here, state and federal, as well as international ly and for thee purposes i want to simply note we and our colleagues have spent considerable time working with Law Enforcement and other stakeholders here and in india to curb illegal telemarketing hitting the u. S. Finally we continue to build upon our pasedon education effort. Im sure youre familiar with this. Its aimed at active adults. This is our signature initiative. It reaches seniors in social clubs, libraries, Senior Centers, veterans facilities. We recently added a new video of how an investor scam harmed a teacher. We posted a video about the campaign, itself, highlighting how important it is for an older consumer to be the one who helps friends and families to avoid excuse me, to avoid being victimized. We continue to use these resources and promote them with our state and federal partners. In some, through aggressive Law Enforcement, Strategic Policy initiatives and innovative Consumer Education, we will continue to tackle scammers that exploit older consumers. Look forward to your questions. Thank withdrew. Thank you very much. Miss menio . Good afternoon. My name is diane menio. Im the executive director of the center for add vocacy of th rights and interests of the elderly. I just thought id say the full name so you know why we have a girls name for the name. Thank you, senator casey, chairwoman collins and members of the committee for your interest in financial exploitation fraud and scams against the elderly and for the opportunity to present testimony today. Two weeks ago, charlotte from pennsylvania, volunteer in our pennsylvania Senior Medicare Patrol Program, accompanied me here to the hearing. Unfirefig unfortunately she couldnt make it here today. Shes here in spirit. She was very excited to be at the senate at all. She works very hard with us. And so im today im going to talk about Health Care Fraud. Im going to also talk about abuse scams and financial exploitation targeting the elderly and how carie is working to protect seniors across the state of pennsylvania. Founded in 19d 97, carie is a Nonprofit Organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for elderly adults. Carie works to protect the rights of older adults and promote awareness of their special needs and concerns. In addition, we provide a range of services to help older victims of crime, abuse and financial exploitation including a program that helps elder victims through the core process and assists with victim impact statements and crime victims compensation. In addition, carie coordinates pennsylvanias Senior Medicare Patrol Program to help fight medicare and medicaid fraud. We have more than 75 retired Medicare Beneficiaries who share information about how to prevent being victimized. While we talk about the great toll that financial exploitation exacts on its victims, its important to note that the problem of exploitation impacts many people, whether their net worth is in the millions, the thousands or even the hundreds. Every day, carie peer volunteers like charlotte talk to individuals who have been victims of these horrendous crimes and look for solutions to provide guidance to prevent scams from occurring in the first place. Additionally, we send out scam wire alerts that help to identify new threats to the aging community that seek to involve elders and fraud through mailings, email, Community Meetings and phone calls. Id like to share just a few stories about cases we hear every day. 71yearold mary from philadelphia was contacted by an individual representing himself as a spokesman for publishers clearinghouse. Mary was told she had won several hundred thousand dollars but had to pay the taxes on the prize. She officially sent them 200, then she was contacted again and told her she misunderstood and she needed to send another 2,850 in cash via the United States postal service. Mary finally thought better of what she did and filed a police report. She initially admitted to the first mailing but after talking to our Victim Advocate revealed the second amount that she sent and she told us that she was very embarrassed and thats why she hadnt reported it right away and thats why she was only willing to talk about the 200 at first because she felt that that wasnt so bad. But the extra money made her very embarrassed. So she did after talking to our Victim Advocate talked to the police about that, gave them the information that she was given, the address and the phone number of the person that had called her, but, of course, they couldnt find that person anymore. Unfortunately, she couldnt get the money back from the Crime Victims Assistance Fund because theres a time limit involved with that. We just really need to offer some of these people more security and to resist these crimes. Gloria 88 from delaware kocountn pennsylvania receive ad phone call from her grandson and when questioned why he didnt sound like himself he said that he was in an accident and an airbag hit nim the face, and she got scammed out of ended up being 7,000 with the itunes card. And a lot of the older people dont know what that itunes card is about, but they are told to go get these, and so that is again, one of the twoyear period had expired. On the encouraging note, mrs. Smith who is a homebound beneficiary and lives in central pennsylvania called to thank us that she had received the scam wirele alert in the morning included in the home delivered meal package and that same afternoon she received a phone call from the scammer, and she knew not to give out personal information because of the alert. It is the stories like this that keep us at a it everyday. We have seen similar case, and you will see many more in the testimony, and i could give you more, and the need to prevent the financial exploitation is a national imperative and familieses need to speak about wit their elder adult. For those showing signs of dementia, this is particularly important, because they may lose capacity to make decisions. Financial capacity is often the first to go. We work toward positive change and my time is running out, so i want to kconclude here. We are pleased that the bipartisan attention to elder fraud that the committee is working on and the senior safe act which builds on the Lessons Learned from the organizations like ours is very please ed d t work with you on this issue, and here for anything that you need. Thank you. Thank you so much for your testimony. Mr. Camus, you mentioned the direct referral from our committees hotline to your office that resulted in the arrest of five suspects who allegedly were responsible for almost 3 million in schemes that defrauded more than 1,200 vi victims, and this is truly an appalling case that we passed on to you, and the Senior Citizen was so upset that he crashed his car on the way to the local walmart to get the debit card. And he was convince ad that he was going to beer arrested immediately, so he leaves the scene of the crash and walked the rest of the way to walmart. We were a able to determine that the money was sent and picked up in minnesota and provided with that information and im pleased that you acted on it. And could you give us an update on that case since the arrest last may. Yes, id be proud to. One of the suspects plead guilty and he was ordered to pay 90 of restitution to multiple defendants. The others are going through the various stages of the legal system right now, but we anticipate that they will be brought to justice here in the very near future. That is great news to hear. I am also ra really pleased to hear that the ftc has stepped up the efforts, and you mentioned the agreement or the settlement with Western Union. That have been made, and i am interested in wh or not that 586 million is going to end up compensating any of the victim, and were you able to trace the money that has been lost and will some of the victims be compensated. Thank you, chairman. That is the precisely goal of the settlement, and pursuant to the two agreements, and the settlements will be the claims adm administrator, and it is going to be taking it upon themselves to do the best job to reach out to new victims and provide redress. That is important, because the vast majority of the cases, once t the money has been wired, it is gone forever. And it is difficult to trace, and that is why i appreciated not only the settlement with Western Union that is going to lead to are restitution, but the quick work of the Inspector Generals Office for Tax Administration that stopped the fraud and in progress. That is the kind of the cooperation that we need across government. One of the things that truly frustrates me about these conartists is that they are very clever. They are always changing their tactics to stay ahead of the Consumer Education efforts that we do and Law Enforcement. And i think that we are all making a difference but, the fact that is that the calling to our hotline have doubled to more than 2200. Im going the brio bring up a c which demonstrates how the scammers and it is a little hard to read and a little busy there, but why they are continuously changing their strategies. Let me explain it, since it is a bit busy as i said. A losses per month was about 1 million, and then the losses increased in the spring of 2 to 4 million and i can see mr. Camus nodding his head in agreement, and it stayed through that level through the end of last year, and what happened during that time is that the scammers made a change, and they are no longer using the walmart debit card as muchings but they have gone to the itune card which struck me as strange, because i have bought those to buy records, but that is perhaps the dishm out of it. The im out of it. But mr. Camus, i would like for you comment on whether the change of tactics plus the relentlessness that we have heard about from mr. Hatch where they call again and again and the next day with more demands, has that made scammers more successful in testimonies of the money that they are bringing in, even if the number of victims has declined . Yes. We noted in april, senator, april 2016 that theres a shift to the itunes card as a method of payment. They also redoubled their efforts on their autodialer program so theyre able to make hundreds of thousands of telephone calls in a very short order. To your point exactly, when the scam first started it was individuals calling one on one. And then when they shifted to the auto dialer technology, they were able to blanket individuals with hundreds of thousands of calls, leaving a call back number. About the same time they shifted to the itunes card, what we learned in our investigation is that the itunes cards makes it very easy for them to flip the money. Theyre no longer paying middlemen to convert payments into money orders. Theyre now selling the itunes cards on a Third Party Market and then pocketing the money immediately. And also its very difficult for Law Enforcement to trace that transaction. Thank you. Senator casey. Thanks very much. Diane, im going to start with you. And not simply because youre a pennsylvanian but most especially because of your longer work. I mentioned as well in my opening comments the acronym and i want to put the words behind the acronym. Diane, youve worked for a, well call it a couple of years. Just a few. Just a few. I guess i can say decades. Its 28 years. 28. For the center for advocacy for the rights and interests of the elderly. So called carie. Were grateful for that work. One question i had was how do you coordinate in your work with both state authorities, federal authorities, sometimes the most difficult challenge in any investigation is to the coordination of it. How do you do that and is there anything we should know about those issues . Yeah, it sure is challenging sometimes. But in pennsylvania we have a network of Elder Abuse Task forces that operate in various counties across the state. In philadelphia our task force is specifically focused on financial exploitation. We have bankers and others at the table. I think thats one of the best ways to coordinate, is to actually know these people, be able to sit around the table and talk about the problem. Sometimes we do case reviews. You get to talk about how this case got played out through the system. And it helps us. Last year, you know, i know that the committee had a hearing about the drug mules that were being used and one of the calls about that came in to our office about a gentleman who was from pennsylvania and jailed in japan. And we were frustrated by that because we started calling everybody we could think of and we found no help for that family. But eventually he did get out. When we were at the Task Force Meeting we talked about that case and someone from Homeland Security was there and we shared, they wanted they gave us their card and said can you share the information about the family. And so we talked to the family and we were able to connect them with Homeland Security. Its that kind of collaborative work i think that is very important. Because we have to know one another. And reaching out to Community Groups that are in the community that actually work with older adults, working with Law Enforcement. I mean we do this in our Health Care Fraud program as well. Its very important we get to the oigs office, the fbi is involved, all of these other groups so we can get to the bottom of this. Its not always the same agency. So we try to work in collaboration as much as we can. I want to ask as well about you mentioned Health Care Fraud. The socalled senior medicare patrol. I know youve worked very hard with that, with that patrol. Were having a big debate here about the Affordable Care act and this is one area where theres a very strong set of numbers that aligns with the progress thats been made over the last couple of years in combating Medicare Fraud. Whats to the extent that you can give an opinion on what happens with regard to the aca, if it were to be repealed, repealed and not replaced i know that thats a big subject of debate. But just give us your sense of the impact of the Medicare Fraud patrol. Well theres a number of issues that i think have impacted the Health Care Fraud, you know, uncovering Health Care Fraud but also just medicare and other provisions as well that we think are very important looking at Nursing Homes and a number of other issues. But one of the things that the Affordable Care act did and it sort of related to your last question, it allowed agencies like cms, medicaid, department of veteran affairs, Social Security administration and other to data share, to help them identify criminals who are defrauding. Sometimes well get a call we had a lady in philadelphia who was a podiatrist and she went into chinatown. She was part of that community. And she started basically getting peoples medicare numbers and billing. Turned out she was billing hundreds of thousands of dollars and it actually was in the millions. At one point she was vacationing in paris when those bills were submitted. Its really important, you know, because we had a couple of complaints from the beneficiaries and thats probably not going to rise to the level of a major investigation. But once you start looking at the data you can see whats happening. And so that is extremely critical. Its important to see because these criminals are going across programs. Theyre similar to the other scammers. Theyre setting up business where its opportunistic business. The Affordable Care act created a Medicare Fraud strike force. I think that cost 350 dollars and so far its recovered more than 10 billion dollars. Theres economic advantage to doing the work. When they find the scammers, a lot of them are very large scale. The one i talked about was probably small compared to the large scale. I know in florida, for instance, there were these groups, these store fronts set up to basically pay Medicare Beneficiaries for their medicare numbers. So it made the beneficiaries complicit in the fraud. They certainly didnt understand what was happening. They were getting 10 or 20 or Something Like that. But they didnt understand what was going on. So we really need to continue to do this work to make sure that were combating this stuff. And it just sometimes to us, when were getting the complaints, it seems all too easy and sometimes the solution seems easy too. So we really need to make sure that were looking at how to make these systems work. And i think the more what was provided for in the Affordable Care act has created some results and we need to continue doing that. I appreciate that. Im out of time but well come back. Thanks. Thank you. Senator rubio. Thank you, madam chair. I want to continue to build on what you just mentioned about the store fronts. Its a topic a lot of people arent aware of. What we have in florida, south florida in particular is an outrageous case of Medicare Fraud. I say this to you with a cuban american with deep regret and shame about this reality. We have 50 to 100 individuals mostly recent arrivals from cuba who arrive in the United States, somehow set up a medicare company, usually a storefront, often a p. O. Box. They then acquire a medicare numbers from somebody who works at a hospital and they begin to bill those medicare numbers for no services provided, and im talking about the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Ive been told by Law Enforcement in south florida that if they dont get greedy and are willing to steel 200 to 300,000 a month, theyre probably not going to get caught. Theyre stealing to the tune of millions of dollars. The list of the top most wanted Medicare Fraudsters in america are almost entirely from south florida and when were about to arrest them, they know were coming, they leave to cuba for millions of dollars. Its an outrage. It is grotesque and extensively covered by the press in south florida. People may think that seniors arent victims. They are victims. Its helping to exacerbate the troubles of made care and if many cases seniors are being told, theres nothing wrong with it, its legal, sit down for an interview, give us your medicare number and they get wrapped up in it. I hope that we have a chance to discuss it, and i hope that when im the people, they dont believe it. It is organized crime. Its organized crime and theyre brazen about it and they laugh about it. They know they are protected if they leave the country. My mother is a senior and this is why i want to ask you this question. She has been the target in the past. I just recalled this as we were having a conversation. She is suffered a stroke in 2011, largely home ridden except she goes to therapy. She gets calls about taxes she owes. I know enough about my mom to know shes not made a lot of money ever. She relies exclusively on Social Security and small savings. So we get the number. Even thee i am in this position of Public Service, first of all, i didnt know who to call about it at the time. Number two, its caller id so theres nothing i can do about it. But even if i had been able to lure them into an extensive conversation, im not sure if i should have gone to local government, the fbi, a little confusion about what to take it to. That is number one. The second is her caregiver. She has people that come during the day and watch her sometimes, making sure shes taking her meds. We have to educate them as well. And the third quite frankly in florida is the language barrier. My mother speaks english but her first language was spanish. Thats where she watches the soap operas every night. She watches them on the Spanish Language networks. A lot of people are being targeted because of the language barrier. In all of this is embedded the following questions. What can we do to better educate the caregivers. Can we do to facilitate for them. Do we tell them to actually engage them and play detective or just hang up and dont deal with them, and the third is what should we do about the communities and the enclaves of seniors who are getting a maer jo tiff the getting a majority of their news in and information in a second language like spanish that were doing enough to inform them about these skams and things that are occurring . I think the Public Education is critical. I do think that another issue you might be interested in the future is looking at why people become subject to scams. And you know, we talked about people with dementia. But theres an issue around Financial Capacity at which someone may be able to function very well in their life but their ability to manage finances goes down. And one of the reasons older adults are targeted so often is theyre the ones that are at home and answer the phone. They might be lonely. These guys, not only do they come up with the latest best scams, but they also know how to engage people and become their friends. Its i say that because its very challenging, even when theyre doing the education to get people to pull back from this. When you talk about the caregivers, the caregivers certainly should be educated about this as well. Because theyre on the front lines and they will see this happening. I will, though, caution, that sometimes we do see caregivers being the exploiters as well. Its really important for families to be vigilant about this. We certainly also deal with people with limited english as well. One time we did a presentation in chinatown and i think it was simultaneously translated into about eight different languages so that people could get that information. So we try to do as much as we can to reach people. And to also train gatekeepers in those communities so that theyre you know, if it is a Spanish Speaking community, we can train people in that community to take that message to individuals, those people who are going into the home for for instance, who are work in the housing sites. We have housing coordinators who are working with people individually. Weve had scam we had a scam by somebody telling them they were the cable company. It happened in housing, Senior Housing throughout the city. And we were able to, through that one of them was at a housing site where most of the people speak spanish. Thats where we were able to tackle the problem. I know that i am out of time, but we may want to talk to the two primary Spanish Networks about Public Service networks as part of the fcc licensing especially programming geared towards the elderly. We have been able to get these on our local stations. As you were talking i was thinking that we should get this post card translated into spanish as well. So that you want me to do it . Ill do it. I can translate. I even know how to do the accents. I have no doubt of that. We can well call you suzanna. And i love the idea of including it with meals on wheels because they would reach a lot of home bound seniors. So thats something we can look at also. Senator gillibrand. Thank you, madam chairwoman and thank you mr. Ranking member. This is such a vital hearing. You know, ive traveled around new york state asking Community Centers and Senior Centers, you know, have you been affected and overwhelmingly almost every hand in the room is raised because someone has gotten the irs scam, someone has gotten the grandparent scam, somebody has gotten the sweepstakes scam. Its heartbreaking. Some of these seniors have lost tens of thousands of dollars and theres no protection for them. I have three sets of questions. First, what should we do as the Senate Committee to all of you said yes, there must be Public Education. How must there be Public Education. What legislation do we write about how to educate all seniors apt this scam. Ho do we reach all seniors in this country. Number two, every one of these scams has Public Participation on some level. The cva counter that sells the itunes card, the target that sells the itunes card, the credit union, the bank. Thank goodness one new york woman, she went to her bank to take out 5,000 to pay the irs scam and someone sitting outside waiting for her to bring the money. And the teller so smartly says, maam, you look so nervous. Are you okay. And shes like no, aye got the irs on the phone and i have to give them the money right now. The woman was smart enough to say give me the phone, hung it up, said the irs will never call you. Should we not be having conversations directly with any place you can purchase an itunes card. Shouldnt there be a notice on every Cash Register if someone guys an itunes card please confirm its for news music or a video game, its not go give to the irs. Why arent we posting at every vendor that sells itunes, every bank and teller should be trained on this. I dont think were doing enough to prevent the horrible crimes from happening. These are significant criminal networks. Ive heard some are run by the russian mob for gods sake. We if we knew massive criminal networks were targeting our seniors and families, i would think were doing much more than we should be doing. Were not taking this as serious as we should. These seniors are being duped. The money is gone. If we had a huge cartel bringing drugs in the country, wed have federal action. Wed be sending money to address it. Were not doing that. The degree of the scam is bigger than weve disclosed. We only have whats been reported. But we know that 40 isnt reported because its so embarrassing. This happened to my aunt, she got the irs scam, she sent the money, she never told me mother who does all of her finances. She was so embarrassed. So from each of you i would like to know what you recommend to us to prevent this, from warning various parties that have involved in these scams unwittingly, the people who sells the itunes cards, the banks. I had a senior who took out an advance. And you know what the bank is doing now . Charge iing her interest becaus there is no relief from her bank. The money is gone. This is a problem. So from each of you, direct recommendations for us. Thank you so much, senator. Youre on target with what were trying to do. We agree that once the money is gone its gone, as the senator pointed out. Public education is the number one way to combat this. Criminals will continue to go for the vulnerable, in this casein your it citizens, as lons they get money. Specifically what kind of Public Education and what form. We spend the special agents out and look forward to invites from town hall meetings. We think we can penetrate into that segment by actually participating with members of congress at various town hall events and we would be proud to have a special agent come and speak to this issue. Thats one idea that i have. As far as the vendors, were working on a project with walmart to do exact as you described, post placards and train their cashiers that when somebody comes through with a handful of itunes cards, that theres some sort of dialogue that goes on prior to the purchase being consummated. Theres a scam going on. Are you aware of the scam . Have you been told that the itunes scams are for taxes. If you have, its a scam. When the individuals go on the money gram kiosks at the cvs, one of the warnings that pops up, if youve been told to pay your taxes with a money gram then you are being scammed. Please stop the transaction. We have to leverage the retailers and get them to cooperate. In some cases we have. A recent shift is that walmart was being used as the retailer and now our data is telling us within just this past month its now being shifted to target. Just yesterday i had one of my executives reach out to target and were going to insist that target work with us the same way walmart did. For us as a small Law Enforcement agency, we think that every person we protect is a victory. Thats how we view this. Its no just a Law Enforcement aspect. Its every Single Person that doesnt become a victim is a victory. But how do we collectively come together to make a bigger impact. Certainly working with the ftc is something weve really enjoyed doing but theres still more to be done. I want to give you the assurance that were doing a lot behind the scenes. Thank you, i appreciate the opportunity to address the points you raise. Its very serious and i dont want to have you think in any way that this is not a top priority for the federal trade commission. In terms of prevention i would urge you if you have not used the pass it on materials, again, this is tested. This is, we think, a very effective way to reach seniors where they are and to provide them with the tools that they need so theyre the ones positioned to assist friends and Family Members not to be victimized. Theres a specific piece on irs imposter scam. The intermediaries. One, we sue them. Thats what the settlement with Western Union is about. We had a settlement years before with money gram through amendments to the sales role. We made wire transfers in connection with telemarketing and prohibited other types of reloadable cards being used. Law enforcement is front and center in terms of the intermediaries. We also, as Deputy Inspector camus referred, we have lots of conversations with apple, with walmart, with trade association for relevant industry members. The Western Union settlement imposes specific requirements to make it more likely that the company will intercept and prevent the transfer of money. As weve all discussed, once its gone, its gone. Thats why the scammers are using those types of payment instruments. Thats where well work to get better tools in place to identify where the bad actors are and how the transfers are going forward. Thank you. I cant agree more with what you said. But i do want to put a plug in for the senior safe act, which is one thing that you can do. And this is one of the biggest problems weve had with Financial Institutions is making these reports. In my written testimony youll see a story about a lady who was bilked out of 800,000. That was basically everything she had. She was in her 80s and she thought she was winning the lottery. So she kept paying money and didnt tell her family until it was way too late. I think it was finally she and her husband had invested their money with an Investment Firm for all of their adult life and her husband had died. That was their money in the bank. And no one made a report. And eventually the money got transferred to another bank and she continued to buy the walmart cards and everything to pay this thing. And finally that second bank made a report but that as after 800,000 was lost. So we need to do something to make them feel better. I mean, you know, we keep pulling out the graham leech blighly act and saying you can do that, youre covered. But they still are not doing it. And sometimes i can tell you what happens in some of the cases that work out well is its the teller who is making the report. Theyre not necessarily authorized by the guys at the top but its the teller coming in seeing all of the withdrawals taken. That gets to your point of training the people who see it happening. The people who are at the tellers at the bank, although we have fewer and fewer of those these days and the people at the stores. The other thing is that we need to encourage age Friendly Services in those institutions. We need to have fraud technology. Theres a lot of technology out there these days. I remember sitting in a meeting with the bankers saying if im out of town and i use my credit card, like i was somewhere in chicago, i think, and suddenly my card got shut off. Well, you know, it was legitimate charges but they shut off my card because they were monitoring it. I said why cant you do that for some of these cases and theyre very shy about doing that. They wont do it. But those technologies need to be used for this. And the age Friendly Services are also important to make sure that they have protections like encouraging them to plan for incapacity, offering age friendly features, having someone who has access to your account, maybe they cant take money out but the daughter can monitor online to make sure nothing is going wrong. So all of those kinds of things i think can be done. I hope that we can do more the combat this. And we need to you know, when you talk about education, sometimes it really is just as easy as putting up a sign at the Cash Register so the person managing the Cash Register seeing someone buying, someone whos 82 years old buying all of these itunes cards. Thats a flag. I cant imagine why you wouldnt report that. We need to do exactly what youre saying. Thank you. Senator cortez masto. Thank you. Very excited to be a member of this committee. Thank you very much. Thank you to all of you for what you do. I was fortunate to be able to work with the ftc as the attorney general of nevada and had great partnership. And many of you, we have worked with on so many different levels. This area was important for me as attorney general. Thats why i created a unit in my office to address elder abuse neglect and exploitation. Every single one of the scams that you identified here happens in nevada. I want to talk about the Public Education. To me this is the first step in prevention and its so hard to do. It really is. Many of us are trying to do the outreach and get out to talk to folks but it has to be on a constant basis. You cant say im throwing this out there, well do it overnight and thats done. The education occurs all of the time. I have been i always say this just about to every Senior Center in nevada to reach out to the seniors. But its reaching out to caregivers, family and service providers. For my purposes, and this is what im going to ask with your help, i have put on conferences in the state of nevada, bringing people in for the training, the Public Education. Bringing the experts in to talk about how we educate, train and get the information out. Thats what i would love your help in nevada to continue down that road. The next one is challenging for me when it comes to Law Enforcement. And this is a question i have for our Law Enforcement folks. Giving the aging population, in nevada it is growing, but also were constantly evolving with technology and technological scams. What Additional Resources or innovations does Law Enforcement need to keep up with the financial threats posed to seniors now. When you talk about it, talk also about how to examine the Money Transfer systems which make it much easier for some of these criminal element to engage and scam or seniors. Just a couple of ideas. Thank you, senator. And we look forward to working with you in nevada. One of the ideas you could come up with, theres a 72hour right of rescission on large transactions. Maybe it could be consider that on any wire transaction, instead of it being rapid and instantaneous, theres a 72right of rescission. Many of the victims realized it but a little bit too late. By the time they realized of talked to a Family Member about being scammed the money was gone and no way to get it back. If we can get that frozen for a period of time to allow recognition, family discussion or Law Enforcement to intercede, we might be able to save people a lot of money and save their live actually. As far as some of the other ideas, the challenge for Law Enforcement is the money moves so quickly and the ability to convince somebody to put their federal income tax payment on an itunes card, that is really difficult. As i said in my testimony, we estimate through media on our own, a small agency, we believe we had 113 million views and over 100 media interviews with us, and it is constant. We had apple agree to fund a Pilot Program where over the air in cvs stores and other stores, the message over the air as they were shopping were, do not pay apple itunes card to pay public debt. Do not pay apple itunes card to pay government. It doesnt work that way. We believe it worked, but it is very, very expensive, because that project cost apple 140,000 to fund that, but it was a pilot. If we can get that cooperation, funds set up where the retailers and companies are required to put aside money to educate and continuously educate. Its so difficult to penetrate. I am astounded by how difficult it is. I cake calls myself at my desk. Just this morning i took a call from a victim and they had no idea that there was an impersonation scam. It perplexes me. What more could we all do or other things could we do to try to reach that . It is constant. The education has to be constant. Because people are not really listening. And let me just say one thing as well. And i found this in nevada. Part of it, too, is when they become victims and weve heard it here, but theyre embarrassed to come forward. They are embarrassed to say that this happened to them, and we have to give them a venue to say that et did happen, and it is all right and it is happen iing across the country to make sure that they are willing to come out to educate themselves and others about this type of scam. Thank you, senator, and we have enjoyed the cooperative nature of your former offices as well. You mentioned how do we get out into the community. Well weve held some 33 Common Ground conferences throughout the country. One was in vegas with the help of your former office. Working with grass root members, Legal Service providers, attorney generals office, local Law Enforcement and the discussions vary nationwide. But a lot of focus is on issues affecting seniors in the community. And we learned from those conferences, we push out our Consumer Education materials. We will continue to do more on that front. Money transfer services, well, id like to sit here and be cautiously optimistic that the near half billion Dollar Settlement with Western Union will squeeze some of the fraud out of that system. And i think it will. Its ordered with very rigorous requirements that if they ad here to them should make a difference. Were squeezing money out of that system then its going to find another path of less resistance to move to. Theres no Silver Bullet in this. Education has to compliment Law Enforcement and thats what were committed to doing. We certainly look forward to working with each and every one of you to build upon what weve been doing. Thank you. Thank you. And let me just add one final thing, diane, the senior medicare patrol unit was in my office. It is instrumental. I will always continue to support it. I cant tell you how many seniors not only were excited to be a part of it but we were able to uncover fraud. I cant say enough about the journals, the diaries, health care diaries and journals we would hand out to individuals. It matters. They Pay Attention when you talk about it. And when you have their peers talking to them about how to address Medicare Fraud and medicaid fraud, it made a difference. Ill continue to support programs and advocacy. Thank you for what you do. Thank you, senator. Senator flake. Thank you. Madam chair, thank you. Sorry if im plowing old ground here. But could you tell me what innovative programs are already out there that the states have come up with for addressing these senior scams . Anybody who wants to start there. As far as the states are concerned . Yes. We work with multiple states and we work with Law Enforcement agencies local and federal partners. Im not uniquely aware that any of the states that were working with have come up with inveigh tiff approaches but im probably not to one thats best suited to answer that. Many states have wonderful robust programs addressing fraud targets seniors. Many have offices that directly focus on that and to the extent possible we work closely with them. I mentioned earlier our pass it on materials. We freely distribute those to the state. We urge everyone to put their own name on it. We have no copyright interest in it. We just want to pass on the materials to be used. Can i just add that one of the tools that we have at the state level is the Older Adult Protective Services office which often gets the first report on these cases. And i want to say that one of our recommendations is to make sure that those programs are Strong Enough to do what they need to do. One of the things that they often lack is forensic accountants, for instance, to be able to take on a case and figure out whats happening. So we need more resources in that program. And at the same time were aware that this social services bloc grant is under question at that point, and that tease money that often supports those programs at the state level. So we need to while we need to enhance the funding for the program, we need to at least maintain the funding for those programs, because they are often the first line. When senator rubio asked who to report to, and i did not say my answer, but it is to report it. Because even if it is no wrong place it will get to the right place eventually. Protective services is the first line and able to get that person into the system. So. Thank you, ms. Menio. You mentioned in your testimony that a beneficiary called to thank you for the timely scam wire alert she received in her home, delivered a package shortly thereafter. Are there any reoccurring services that seniors use when companies where companies can include the fraud alerts so they can be delivered more yes. We also distribute those to public libraries, senior houses, we distribute them to a large number of places, grocery stores, places with people gather, older people do business. And the homedelivered meals project that we do is really focused on people we wont reach by going to a library or a Senior Center or those kinds of places. Its the people who are home bound and dont get out and wouldnt get the message otherwise. Were trying to do that through many different public venues. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you, senator flake. Before you were here ms. Menio mentioned the senior safe act which you were cosponsor of in the last congress and which weve reintroduced senator casey as a cosponsor. Just yesterday aarp as endorsed that bill, along with we have endorsements from Legal Services for the elderly, the National American securities administrators association, the conference on state bank supervisors, the National Association of insurance commissioners. And a wide variety of regulatory groups. And that is one concrete action we could take in this congress that would really make a difference in empowering the fronttellers, the witnesses were describing, who can make a real difference in stopping fraud right up front. So im going to ask unanimous consent that all of those endorsement letters be entered into the record. Senator warren. Thank you very much, madam chairman. Thank you very much for holding this hearing, you and the Ranking Member. And i want to follow up. I think your point about how to better empower people on the front lines is really important. I want to look at another aspect of that. As we know, the con artists who perpetuate irs impersonation scams, Identity Theft and other forms of financial exploitation often target seniors. And when a senior needs to report that they were the victim of fraud, it is frequent ly the men and women who work in our government enforcement and Consumer Protection agencies in washington and in all 50 states who are on the front lines taking their calls and investigating the cases. So it seems pretty obvious to me that one easy way to protect the american seniors from fraud is to strengthen that workforce, but instead of staffing up the workforce that cracks down on the scammers and fraudsters that hurt our seniors, on the first full day in the oval office, President Trump issued an executive order freezinged ingi federal hiring and starving the agencies of their most important resource american workers. So mr. Camus, you were deputy administrate for Tax Administration and your job is to protect the seniors from s m scammers who pretend to be the irs is calling and trying to protect the back taxes. Almost 2 Million People have reported this scam to your office, and these scams have cost americans more than 54 million. Does a hiring freeze help you achieve your goal of protecting seniors from fraud . As you point out, senator, these are its a huge issue and every one of these victims is a significant challenge on our resources. So naturally, ive been told im not allowed to pander for resources at these events. Well let you know if youve crossed the line into pandering here. I can tell you that we are a proud and efficient agency, but this has certainly stretched our agency very thin. Were seeking the exemption in the president s order to, under a Public Safety clause, at least for the social agent portion of our workforce. I appreciate that, mr. Camus, but according to testimony from your office in 2016, quote, reduced staffing has affected the irss ability to deliver its Priority Program areas including Customer Service and enforcement. Given that your Enforcement Team is already understaffed, i worry that this kind of hiring freeze is music to criminals ears. Now mr. Camus, you also work with the department of justice to help protect seniors from criminals who are trying to defraud them. Will the hiring freeze help you with the doj . Again, you know, its were only limited, all of us are only limited by how much resource we have. Were all very passionate about protecting all americans but most especially the most vulnerable. That is why i took the oath to be a Law Enforcement officer. Resources are a challenge on the good day, so any disruption in that is certainly a cause for concern. Im not sure if the Internal Revenue service or the department of justice have any exemptions available to them under the order . If they dont . I could not comment, because i dont know the impact. I want to point out. Weve seen this movie before. A 201 is hiring freeze at the Social Security administration eliminated 15 of the agencys workforce and closed 64 field offices. Ms. Menio, youre the executive dreker toort director of center for the rights of the eld errorly in philadelphia, and can you explain how the 2001 Social Security personnel freeze affected the seniors that your sen te works with everyday . Well, certainly it takes a lot longer to make an appointment. Increased wait times. I can tell you that were you know, interestingly, the Social Security im in downtown philadelphia and the Social Security office is in our building. They have the top floor. And the way that it works is no one goes upstairs until the guard lets them go upstairs. So they get the message you can send more people up. And that line gets quite long and people are standing there with their walkers and with their canes waiting to go upstairs. So thats something i see every day. I can also tell you that my staff spends a lot of time when theyre helping consumers doing threeway calls because we like to empower people and work with them. But sometimes its difficult for them to make the call on their own. Well sit with them. They tell me its 30 minutes to an hour sometimes theyre waiting for that call to get through. We had a client who called her recently from the western part of the state who, her husband died and she was collecting she wanted to switch her Social Security so she could collect on his account, i believe Something Like that. And what happened was you know, i think this is illustrative of the short staffing. She got lost in the system. She didnt get a check at all for three months and that meant her Medicare Part b wasnt being paid. She didnt even have her health care during that time. Eventually we were able to get that back. Nevertheless it was a stressful time for her. It shouldnt have happened that way. Probably took more man hours from the Social Security office to fix this than it would have taken to help her in the first place. Those are some of the kinds of things were seeing. I are also know that the center on budget and policies put out a report that said that less than 1 of the operating, of their expenses are spent on overhead. I cant run my agency on less than 1 , and i wish i could to be honest with you, but i cant. So that is not realistic. How can you continue to provide the level of services to this aging population, and to many of us who are ready to, you know, go into the Social Security system into medicare, we need to be able to get that information as quickly as we can and work with people without going through a lot of the red tape and spending hours on the phone, and in offices. And i appreciate that. You know, i just want to add a couple of statistics if i can and then ill quit. Thank you, madam chair. Appeals times go up. The appeals time go up. She is talking about people applying, but almost 20,000 people died waiting for a disabilitile eligibility decision in fy2016. With all of these negative consequences you would at least hope that these freezes save money. But what the data actually show is that they dont save money. We have a workforce that is more stressed, more inefficient, you spend more time trying to fix the problems that are broken because you didnt solve it early on. I just want to say i appreciate the work youre doing and i hope that we can give you better support to do it. Thank you. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you. Senator tillis. Thank you, madam chair. And thank you all for coming before the committee. And at least in one case returning to the committee. Ive got a more general question. You know, this committee is intended to provide insights into the senior abuse, care giver programs, those sorts of things over the course of the last two years that i have been on it. And then we have proposals here at the federal level and talked about potential best practices down in the state, but it does not seem to me that we have made much progress, and so could you give me and any of your opinions, and the capacity before this committee of examples of where i should be kinder in my assessment . What kind of progress are we making at the state or the federal level that you think that is really moving the ball substantially in the right direction . Mr. Camus, i want to start with you. One of the Biggest Challenges i have, senator, is and i have been working with staff here. And we learn how the crimes are happening and as pointed out, the criminals are look agent what we do all over the world and adapting to what we do. It is literally a catandmouse game, and they will continue to victimize our most vulnerable population, because they can get money. So we have to talk about when the crime happen and legislatively what are some of the areas to be explored . One of the things that we are excited a mbt the investigation is through the ftcs help is that we start to the work the federal Communications Commission, and what we learned is that they have task forces under the u. S. Telecom c consortium that is working on the technology to block robocalls that are coming in spoofed. And not political ones . I am kidding. In the robocall area in indiana they were able to block 2 million spoofed calls coming in that could have hit the seniors and how many people would have been vi been vick tiy those calls. And then there is a traceback as well, so that as Law Enforcement figure out when the bad guys are calling in from off shore to quickly determine where that comes off shore, and then to try to get them taken eliminated or taken out of service. How do we scale those things to go to where we are a good proof of concept, and to the pervasive capability where Something Like that could have a significant effect on a lot of the nets that are beingturing n taking advantage of them. So i will go down to have a better a assessment of what we can scale, but your read down the panel. Thank you, senator, and i appreciate the opportunity to be here again. Aggressive continued law enfo e enforcement is ongoing, and it is making a dental. It may not be a sustained department, but it is not a reason not to do it. Ill point again to the recent Western Union settlement 586 million with significant injunctive relief to require the company to change how it does business with fraud detention. And so with the recent crackdown on tigfa in india target iing t u. S. Consumers with the irs and posture scam, and those make a difference and we have to sustain them on a more permanent basis. Mr. Camus referred to some of the work with the robocalls. And we have been at it for years and what has happened is that as a result, new technologies are developed and in the marketplace and one as a ftc challenge, and these are bloc technologies that work, and a great deal more cooperation and coordination within industry and government to bring the technologies to forefront and also to develop, no it is not going to happen overnight overnight, but the caller i. D. Authentication, and that is going to provide a significantle tool, and technological change that will prevent some of the calls from hitting the consumers. And so i think that there is good reason to be optimistic. Well, i wish i had some of their answers for you. We are not on that scale. On a very large scale in a sense are our senior medicare patrol is a good example of this work. It is in every state in the country. I can tell you right now that we are working, and we had some consumers and some beneficiaries call us about something that we think is a scam, and not totally sure yet and i wont say what it is, because it is being investigated right now, but what we could do is to get on the phone with the people from your state and from i believe i think that i am not sure if it is maine or not, bun of the new england state, and number of the states with our colleagues who are doing the same work that we are doing. And we were finding out that the same scam is or the same situation is happening in each of those places. Which made it a lot easier for us to go to the Inspector General with this and so it is being investigated now. We think that it is a very large scale issue, and that is the way, but it is again, back to the way of the working in collaboration with other people is so important, because we get two call, and oh, that is a problem and maybe it is not. It sounded fishy, and so we w t wanted to look into it further and with those two call, nothing would happen if we called the oig but once we get the colleagues from other states identifying the problems as well, that makes a case. I think that something can happy to protect people in the future through that situation. So. Thank you. And madam chair, i know that the chair has put together to write proposals for programs working through congress, and authorizing maybe addition al initiatives a that are helpful, but it points to why we have to get to the regular order of ap 3r0e7iations process to make sure that we have a Financial Resources with the scale to implement it. And then to come back and start measuring what i believe are the results of coming about a lot of great ideas and great pilots and proofs of concept and a lot of great law Enforcement Actions that we have to scale, and we also if i had more time, because i am way over now, but at the end of the day, most of what we are talking about here are the cure. We have to work on the prevention side, and we have to continue to focus on the education, the stigmatizing and public acknowledgment that you have been abuse and doing those kinds of things so that you are very early in the cycle of abuse, you have per prevented that from ever happening. Thank you. Thank you very much, senator. I agreed with the comments about the appropriations process. I would indicate that compared to the very first hearing that we held on scams, we have come a long, long ways, and Law Enforcement has stepped up to the plate, has started aggregating the scams rather than dismissing them, because they are only 2,000 here or 3,000 here. And2,0 2,000 here and 3,0 3,000 here. When gao came out with 2 2. 9 billion annually, in our hearings helped raise the awa awareness of the public and need for aggressive enforcement, the cases described earlier today. Im actually encouraged were making progress but these vic m criminals are relentless and will continue. Me, too, madam chair. Im just mad at the people that too this and want them to suffer badly as quickly as possible. Theres nothing like putting people in jail to be a good deterrent, for sure. Senator blumenthal. Thank you, madam chair woman and thank you for having this hearing. And your very persistent drive to enforce these laws. Like my colleague from nevada, case state attorney general for some years, back 20th years and we established a unit quite a while ago to focus on elder abuse and criminal activity that victimizes them. I agree as well that education is along the best preventive steps to an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, recovering the money after the fact is very difficult but it is possible. Educating the bad guys is important. At least as important as educ e educating the good guy, because educating them through deterrence, the chair is absolutely right, prison time teaches a very valuable lesson. With that in mind, i introduced a bill called the robert montava criminal victim abuse prevention and restitution act. It became with bipartisan support, the elder abuse prevention and prosecution act, which was approved by the judiciary committee. Its bipartisan, senator grassley and i together led it. It would improve the current law in a number of ways. Its now out of committee, on the house floor, we can approve it if we get bipartisan support there and if our distinguished leadership there puts it on the floor, im sure it will be approved near enthusiasm unanim. It would expand Data Collection and informationsharing to better prevent and respond to elder abuse and exploitation. Increase training and information training among agencies. It would increase penalties for perpetrates of these crimes, so the anger my colleagues feel could be channeled very posit e positively and effectively against these bad guys by passing this measure including mandatory. Everybody knows what drives them is money. If you require mandatory forf t forfeit, it hits them where they live. Mandatory forfeit hits them with restitution and we deter and prevent and make them whole or work to make them whole. To any of you that would like to answer you believe mandatory forfeit, restitution and increased penalties against perpetuarators will occur, that the softest ball anyone has thrown to you in a while. We work really hard and dedicate resources to investigate these. Theres nothing like at the end of the day, when my agents can do to court and this perpetrator, especially picking on our vulnerable citizens gets a significant sentence. The more we can punish them and rapidly any moneys available, in many cases there may or may not be Assets Available the better for us. We wholeheartedly agree with increased deterrence through increased penalties. Senator, its a delightf fuf softball. Were a civil Law Enforcement agency. I cannot speak, i have to defer to my criminal colleagues. Anything that wraps up deterrence and help us on the civil side would be greatly appreciated. I would like to add i think one of the reasons the elderly are targeted because this prerpprerp traitors feel they will get away with it because they do. One of the things were advoc e advocating in pennsylvania is enhanced sentencing for people who commit crimes against the eld elderly. I think its very very important, because the other issue we have often with crimes. Announcer the elderly, if 1 crimes against the elderly, if they have dementia. That person is not a good reporter. We have to get past that as well. I can tell you of some horrendous crimes committed against people without capacity. We have to come up with a system to make sure theres a reason for people not to do this, they will be a little afraid of taking advantage of the elderly. Thank you for that. 92 thank you all for your support and thank you for your great work. Thank you. Thank you. I want to thank all our Witnesses Today for your very important contributions, whether its Law Enforcement, education, civil action against those who would rip up some of the most vulnerable citizens in our country, our nations seniors. As weve heard today and as our committees new fraud book makes clear, criminals are relentless in their pursuit to swindle seniors out of their hardearned sa savings. We see infinite varieties of these scams. Once one is closed down, another pops up. I, too, have had those phone calls on my home answering machine in bangor, maine, i called the igs office up immediately because i was so excited because i thought i could help entrap one of these criminals. It turned out that the numbers expire after three day, so that by the time i got home for the weekend the numbers were no good. I was so crushed, because i thought i could help bring these people to justice, which is exactly what is the commitment of each and every one of us here. Much remains to be done. Im proud this committee has been just as relentless as the criminals fighting back against this fraud. The important work that all of you are doing really contributes to our efforts. I look forward to continuing to work with our Ranking Members and with our returning and new members of the committee, as we continue to fight in the new congress. Committee members will have until friday, february 24th to submit questions for the record. As a reminder at the risk of sounding like one of those late night info commercials, the committees tollfree fraud number is 18553039470. 185530329470. The reason i mentioned that is those 2300 calls we got last year enabled us to identify new sc scams, so that we we could warn people and come up with tips for avoiding people becoming vict victims. We distributed so many copies of our fraud book and our postcard and we are going to continue those education and prevention efforts as well. I would call on our Ranking Member if you have any conclu concluding remarks you would like to make, senator casey. Thank you, chairwoman. 1855 thank you very much. Thank you. This concludes our hearing. It is now adjourned. April of this year marks the 100th anniversary into the word war 1. Up next, Michael Kazin talks about the coalition that nearly succeeded keeping america out of the great war. Part of the symposium hosted by the world war i Museum Memorial in kansas city, mysterious. For our last speaker this evening here at the National World war i Museum Memorial, it