industrialized countries pretty. >> watch afterwards on sunday night at 9:00 p.m. eastern on the tv. on "c-span2". next, social security administration officials testify in efforts to protect seniors from social security impersonation scams. witnesses look at what organizations are doing to combat these scams, and figure from utah resident was a recent victim. held by the agent committee, this is two hours. senate ag commission. says two hours. the meeting will come to order. good morning. today the special committee on the aging is releasing its updated 2020 book. it lists the top ten scams that have been reported to our committee over the past year. the good news is that the notorious irs impersonation scam, which had been the top scam reported to the committee for five consecutive years, has fallen off dramatically. he used to be number one and now it is number seven. still a problem, but public awareness has certainly helped to decrease the prevalence of that scam. unfortunately, the social security impersonation scams, the topic of this morning's hearing, has risen to take its place. reports of the ss a scam, barely registered as recently as 2017. but then it began to take off. cracking the top ten scams reported to our committee's hotline and 2018, and becoming the number one reported scam last year as shown on the chart displayed on the monitors. this scam has resulted in $38 million in reported losses to americans in 2019 alone. i suspect that is just the tip of the iceberg. many seniors who have been affected by this scam, are either too embarrassed to report their loss or don't even know who to turn to. the emotional and psychological toll for those who have lost hard earned life savings, are beyond measure. we will here today from michelle anderson who has been a victim of this ruthless scheme. and i want to personally thank michelle for her willingness to come forward and share her story because of her willingness to do so, i am certain that there will be other older americans are now no to just hang up the phone when they are called by somebody who is asking them for money or for gift cards and pretending to be from the social security administration were also very fortunate to have other terrific witnesses with us today. and who are working very hard to combat the scam and i will be introducing them at the appropriate time. today we will highlight the features of the social security scam that are key to defeating them and typically, theil scam begins with an unsolicited robo call with the stove caller id, falsely displaying the social security administration of the source of the call. naturally, most of us if we see on caller id, the social fecurity administration is calling us, we are going to answer the phone. the fraud that are making the calls, will attempt to scare the victim by claiming his or her social security number has been suspended due to suspicious activity deceiving the victims so that he or she will do as instructed without question. no man 92 -year-old mother received five of these social security administration scam calls on her cell phone. fortunately, she was not taken in and she knew to call me. but they were so clever and so specific telling her that her number had been compromised and used who commit fried fraud in texas. there were so many details that she wisely chose to check with me to see if there could be any truth in it. that is how clever and ruthless these criminals are. the scammer then attempts to isolate the victim said that no one can warn him or her of the scam and break the spell. finally, the criminals claimed that the only way that the victim can resolve the problem is to provide sensitive financial information over the phone and transfer thousands of dollars to them as quickly as possible. the speed and anonymity of gift cards, have made them the scammer's current payment method of choice. to emphasize the need for urgent action and the dire nature of the victims situation, the scammers often work in teams to impersonate local law enforcement, the irs, or other federal officials. in one particularly outrage case that we will hear about this morning, criminal claim to be the head of the drug enforcement administration and even suggested to his victim that she verify his identify by looking up his name and phone number at the agency online. to keep their victims under the spell, the scammers say that they cooperate with her bank investigation by the government or face the fines or even jail time. they also attempt to isolate the victim by keeping him or her on the phone uninterrupted for hours or even days at a time and by instructing them not to tell anybody about what is going on. they will cite the con confidentiality of the investigation. in recent case reported byy the wall street journal, and oncology nurse in new york was instructed to leave work without notice and check into a hotel and stay on the phone for nearly 50 hours. coached by the processors by ane series of transactions, at her bank and credit union, she lost almost $340,000 to scammers over three days. educating people particularly older americans were more likely to be the targets is key to defeating the scam. in today's hearing we hope to learn more about how these fraud fraudsters entrap their victims as well is what the social security administration has done and plans a to do to get the wod out to the public to consumer groups, two businesses, and to law enforcement at every level. we will also look at what should be done in response. in that area, i am pleased to note late breaking development that the social security administration working with a office of the inspector general, and the department of justice has recently filed civil suits against and temporary restraining orders in two cases against five companies and three individuals. that is finally progress. i also look forward to asking inspector general about new enforcement activity to stop these harmful people. i appreciate all of our witnesses and joining in this effort. my hope is that are hearing today, will help heighten public awareness about the scam because the best way for us to preventsc this scam from ever again robbing seniors of their hard earned savings, is to prevent the scam from happening in the first place. thank you am now pleased to return to our ranking member, senator casey for his opening statement. >> thank you very much. thank you for holding this hearing today. to discuss social security impersonations scams. as everyone here knows where the middle of a very important proceeding on the floor of the senate. at the same time, for americans who are worried about their loved ones being scammed out of their hard earned savings, our efforts here in the efforts of others, to stop con artists and fraudsters, must be taken just as seriously. it's for this reason i'm pleased that this committee, the aging committee, is taking on this topic as the first one that we examine in the year 2020. the social security impersonation scam, is an imposter scam. plain and simple. in this case however the imposter diabolically exploiting a public good, they benefit paid for and earned by hard working americans. and so we must not only be concerned for the sake of the individuals, individuals targeted but we also have to be concerned for the integrity of federal departments and agencies that are tasked with serving all of us. just last week, as we were preparing for this hearing, one of my staff members received this message from socialrs security imposters. >> will this is from the department of social security administration. recent of this call is to inform you there is a legal information on your social security number and it will be stopped immediately. so call us at the earliest possible time. >> you can tell from just a brief example, how alarming this could be forte someone when they are using highly charged language to get the individual's attention. anyone, anyone, could be a victim of this kind of a crime. one thing we have to be focused on of course is tracking these people down, prosecuting them and throwing them in jail. but we can just talk about that here, we've got to talk about ways to prevent it. and that is one of the main purposes of the hearing. in this case thankfully, my staff member recognize this for what it was. but not all arrogance are immersed in this issue every day. so today, where to make with no one from the united states government, no one, will ever make these types of threats. nein some ways, as senator colls talked about, we made some progress on the irs version of this. we are morning people with the irs would not do. we had to do the same in this case. so any help in getting this message out. every american vertically seniors, must be armed with information. it will take all hands on deck approach and the committee during this by releasing her 2020 fraud book. when i visit senior centers in my home set of penciling is a meeting of my bring copies of with me. every single individual who wants a copy goes home with on. his real w bestseller. at senior centers. as long as we keep bringing those copies with us. so this year, there also the same seniors will be going home with the poster that is inserted into the book and it's in the back. you can take a look at that. i want to make sure i use these visual aids. this poster, which is not huge the good sense of the size of it. give people a lot of information that her committee prepared. we are grateful that her staff helped us with us. but that is another way to remind seniors, we hope that this poster will be held up by the proverbial maintenance on the refrigerators are other ways to remind folks about the scam. public awareness alone is not enough for the federal government has to double its efforts and we will be hearing about those efforts today. for this reason i joined senator collins and is on the committee is sending letters to the social security administration, the inspector general for social security and the elder justice and trade commission asking for help. i know all of these entities are eager to help to engage. the private sector must also be involved. i have a bill with senator jerry moran, which will help banks, wire transfer companies and retailers to train their employees despite scam and stop it before money exchanges hands. the commerce committee passed this bill last year without any objection and were trying to get it through the senate as well. we know the con arson scammer should not be allowed to steal money from our loved ones nor should they be allowed to steal our confidence in government itself. we have a lot of work to do. i look forward to hearing from our witnesses today. and again i look forward to working with chairman collins and my colleagues in the committee and others in the senate to stop these imposters in their tracks. thank you chairman collins. >> thank you. i want to welcome senator mcsally and senator holly to our hearing today. they have been very active members of our committee. n appreciate their taking the time during this very busy time for all of us. i now want to turn to our witnesses and very pleased to welcome our first panel. we have the commissioner of the social security administration and group salt, commissioner saul was sworn in as commissioner in june of 2019. and he immediately began taking a leadership role in the federal reef spots to the social security impersonation scam. his long-standing commitment to protecting and improving financial security for older americans. having previously served for nine years as the chairman of the federal internment investment board which oversees the federal employees retirement system. our second witness will be down in us, gail innes the inspector general of the social security administration. sheal was sworn in as the ig. in january of 2019. after practicing law for more than two decades in security litigations, and making enforcement. she has greatly increased her focus on the ssa scam and we are very pleased to have two such dedicated public servants with us this morning. commissioner saul we will start with you. >> thank you very much senators for welcoming us here.m as you said, as everybody said so far, the publicity, the education is really the most important thing in my having this hearing, i hope we can further that co. many chairman collins, ranking member casey, the members of the committee. i mentor saul, commissioner of social security. thank you for inviting me here today to talk about the scam crisis. everyone here has probably received one of the scam calls. and too many people have been victimized and most money. it is a national problem. first we would not doing enough to combat these scams. that was shortsighted. the magnitude of this problem caught us off guard. americans trust our agencies and our employees and we cannot allow swindlers to erode the trust. emma first office visit employees told me how the scams harm americans and our service. we received more and more reports from people who have been tricked by or are worried about these calls. america's water health on this crisis and we also need to do critical social security work. processing benefit applications, and making sure we pay people the right amount. within a few months of getting here, i made finding the scams and helping our frontline e offices a top priority. limit inspector general, we started fixing things. we have been working closely with oig and i asked deputy commissioner black to lead our efforts to curb the scams as they will more we could do. now i believe we are on the right track. we are action at the national level, to help frontlineth employees provide better service to their localal communities and employees, district manager in maine who will speak to you about his offices experience last year before when taken on this problem. the me tell you about some of the things we are doing. anyone who comes to our home page, will see the bold red banner with scam information just like the one you see on the screens in this room. we are looking to add visages to the pages people visit most often. this is up from our actual webpage. this is on our homepage. we developed an online scammer reporting form to help oig get the information it needs to investigate and stop these crooks. since this farm went live in mid-november, oig has already received over hundred thousand written reports. we overall the oig broad hyatt hotline in a further 800 number. callers now hear about the scams and how to report them through oig online. we work with oig and major phone carriers to block calls that attempt to stove our toll-free numbers from ever reaching the department. education is key. we're using e-mail, television, radio, and social media including youtube, facebook, and twitter. last week we began rolling out e-mails to all 47 million my social security account holders and we are working to add a scam awareness message to the outside ofci our envelopes which will rd or reach millions of people. made public service announcements that we released this month to tv and radio outreach across the country. i did an interview with aarp that focused heavily on the scams and aarp will share scam information with its 38 million members. we appreciate that walmart work with us and oig will display a message number 2000 of its stores nationwide we are recruiting other organizations and agencies. we've issued two recent national press releases regarding the scams. and last month we provided every member of congress materials on the scams and i urge you to help us get the message out. everyone needs to hear this message, if the caller says there's a problem with your social security number or account, hang up. don't provide the money or personal information. record it at oig . ssa .gov. reported there. this is a tough problem to solve. these scams able as we were to shut down social security related to scams, crooks likely target another agency, just as they move from irs, to ssa. our country needs broad national solutions and will share responsibility to fight this serious threat to the public. if you've been tricked by the scams, you're not alone. these criminals are very good at what they do and you should not feel embarrassed or ashamed if you are a victim. you can help protect other people by coming forward and reporting what you know to oig. i think this committee for holding this hearing. to elevate the visibility of the scams and for working on solutions. i would be happy to answer any questions. >> thank you. inspector general and us. >> thank you for inviting me to testify about the oig efforts to raise public awareness and the social security phone scam sprint for the better part of a decade americans have been five persistent robo calls in my callers pretend to be government employees. too many americans have fallen victim to the scams believing sophisticated lies and threats because they fear for their families and their livelihoods and even their freedom. we've interviewed victims including a 30 -year-old mother of two in virginia who paid scammer $9000 at target and ige gift cards because she had no one to careir for her newborn ad she went to prison and 75 -year-old alvarion it was harassed and threatened for over a month i think police officer pretty eventually be wired and mailed cash or checks totaling over turn $60000. these pervasive scams have also impacted social security ability to deliver its vital services timely and they would damage the public's trust and social security. to combat than we have dedicated to significant resources to investigative efforts with working with the justice department and other law enforcement agencies and we raise like awareness working with ssa and other partners to reach as many as people as we can with our educational methods. i am very pleased to announce that as a result of our investigative efforts, the department of justice filed to comply history in new york . to very restraining order preliminary and permanent injunctions another relates against five tele- communication companies and their owners. after his this morning, covering three of the five companies in their owner, has been granted and we are hopeful of the other temporary restraining order will also be granted. according to the complaint some of these companies as gateway carriers, facilitate the delivery millions of fraudulent robo calls every day from foreign call centers to the united states telephone systems and ultimately to the personal files the victims throughout the united states. these gateway carriers will .otify repeatedly their passing erandals in that they allowed at least hundreds of millions of scam calls into the u.s. telephone systems and they've earned a lot of money in the process. in essence, profiting off of scam victims. the civil actions as a result of months of investigative work in close coordination withit the dj and sewer protection branch. had the transnational alert from strikeforce. the u.s. also inspection service partner in this effort and other law enforcement agencies including homeland security investigations, treasurer inspector general for tax ministration and secret service. they provide data to support the investigation. i am vertically proud of social security oig role in collaborative efforts and arranges an investigative counsel advocated for this top-down approach to combat the scams. we took the lead and invest getting the gateway carriers and we played a pivotal role leading up to yesterday's filing. we conducted a complex analysis of phone call routing interviewed countless victims and methodically built the government's case. we still a long way to go to formally shutdown these and of the gateway carriers that facilitate scam calls . and perhaps more clearly we need to ensure that we need