recent victim held by the senate ag commission. says two hours. >> the committee will come to order. good morning, today the special committee on 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 scams, which have been the top scams reported to the committee for five consecutive years has fallen off dramatically. a used to be number one, now it is number seven. it is still a problem but public awareness has certainly helped to decrease the prevalence of that scam. unfortunately, the social security impersonation scam, 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 committees fraud hotline in 2018 and becoming the number one recorded scam last year as shown on the chart displayed on the monitor. this scam has resulted in 38 million dollars in reported losses to americans in 2019 alone. i suspect that that is just the tip of the iceberg because 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 hear from a shell 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 who now know to just hang up the phone when they are called by somebody who is asking them for money or gift cards and pretending to be from the social security administration. we are also very fortunate to have other terrific witnesses with us today and who are working very hard to combat this 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 it. typically the scam begins with a unsolicited robocall with a spoofed collar id falsely displaying the social security administration as its source of the call. naturally most of us if we see on collar idea that the social security administration is calling us, we are going to answer the phone. the fraudster's are making the call and will attempt to scare the victim by claiming his or her social security number has been suspended due to suspicious activity deceiving the victim so that she or he will do as instructed without question. my own 92 year old mother received five of the social security administration scam calls on her cell phone. fortunately she was not taken in. she knew to call me but they were so clever and so specific, telling her that her number has been compromised, has been used to commit fraud in taxes. there were so many details that she wisely chose to check with me to see if there could be any truth in it but that is how clever and ruthless these criminals are. the scam are then attempts to isolate the victim so that no one can warn him or her of the scam and break the spell. finally, the criminals claim that the only way 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 has made than the scammers current payment method of choice. to emphasize the need for urgent action in the dire nature of the victims situation, the scammers often work in teams to impersonate local law enforcements, the irs or other federal officials. in one particularly outrageous case that we will hear about this morning, a criminal claims to be the head of the drug enforcement administration and even suggested to its victim that she verify his identity by looking up his name and phone number at the agency online. to keep the victim under the spell, the scammers will demand that they cooperate with their fake investigation by the government or face severe 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 to not to tell anybody about the issue. they will cite the confidentiality of the investigation. in a recent case reported by the wall street journal, an oncology nurse in new york was instructed to leave work without notice, check into a hotel and stay on the phone for nearly 50 hours. coast by the fraudster's through a series of transactions at her bank and credit union, she lost almost 340,000 dollars to scammers over three days. educating people, particularly older americans who are more likely to be the targets, is key to defeating the scam. in today's hearing we hoped learn more about how these fraud stirred's entrapped are victims as well as what the social security administration has done and plans to do to get the word out to the public, to consumer groups, to 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 the late breaking development that the social security administration is working with the office of the inspector general and the department of justice and they have recently filed civil suits against temporary restraining orders in two cases against five companies and three individuals. that is finally progress. i also look forward to asking the inspector general about new enforcement activity to stop these harmful thefts. i appreciate all of our witnesses in joining in this effort. my hope is that our hearing today will help heighten public awareness about this scam because the best way for us to prevent 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 and i am now pleased to turn to our ranking member, senator casey for his opening statement. >> senator collins, thank you very much. thank you for holding this hearing tonight to discuss impersonating scams. as everyone here knows we are in a very important proceeding for 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 fraudster's must be taken just a seriously. and it is for this reason that i am pleased this committee, this agent committee is taking on this topic as the first one that we examine in the year 2020. the social security impersonation scam is an impostor scam, plain and simple. in this case however the impostor diabolically is exploiting a public good. the benefit paid for and earned by hardworking americans. so we must not only be concerned for the sake of the individuals targeted, 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 social security impostors. >> this call is from department of social security administration. the reason this call is to inform that there is a levy of enforcements under your name in the social security number and has been involved in a crime. -- the existing social security number on an immediate basis. call us buck as soon as possible on this number before we begin legal proceedings. >> you can tell from just that brief example how alarming this could be for someone when they are using highly charged language to get that individual's attention. anyone, anyone could be a victim of this kind of crime. one thing we have to be focused on is tracking these people down, prosecuting them and throwing them in jail but we cannot just talk about that here, we have to talk about ways to prevent and that is one of the main purposes of the hearing. in this case thankfully my staff member recognizes this for what it was but not all americans are immersed in this issue every day. today we are here to make clear that no one from the united states government, no one from our government will ever make these types of threats. in some ways as senator collins talked about, we have made some progress in the irs version of this by warning people with the irs would not do. we have to do the same in this case. we need help getting this message out. every american, particularly seniors must be armed with information. it will take an all hands on deck approach. the committee is doing its part by releasing it's 2020 fraud book. when i visit senior centers in my home state of pennsylvania i bring copies of the report with me. every single individual who wants a copy goes home with one. it is a real bestseller at senior centers as long as we keep bringing those copies with us. this year they will also, the same seniors, will also be going home with posters inserted in the book. it is in the back. if you take a look at that. we have a copy right here. this poster, which is not huge -- that gives people a lot of information so we are grateful that senator collins and i and our staff helped us with those. that is another way of reminding seniors. we hope that this poster will be held up by the proverbial magnets on refrigerators or other ways to remind folks about this scam. public awareness alone is not enough. we will be hearing about those efforts today. it is for this reason i joined senator collins and others in the committee in sending letters to the social security administration, the inspector general for social security, the other justice coordinating committee asking for help. i know that all of these entities are eager to help to engage. the private sector might also be involved. i have a bill with senator jerry moran to stop senior scams act, which will help banks and wire transfer companies and retailers to train their employees to spot a scam and to stop it before money exchange happens. they passed the bill last or without any objection, we are trying to get it to the senate as well. we know that con artists and scammers 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 and i look forward to hearing from our witnesses today in the proposals they have. again i look forward to working with chairman collins, my colleagues on the committee and others on the senate to stop these impostors in their tracks. thank you chairman collins. >> thank you. i want to welcome senator martha mcsally and senator halle in our hearing today. they have been very active members in our committee and we appreciate them taking the time during this very busy time for all of us. i now want to turn to our witnesses and i am very pleased to welcome our first panel. we have the commissioner of the social security administration, andrew sault. he was sworn in as commissioner in 2019. he immediately began taking a leadership role in the federal response to the social security impersonation scam. he has a long-standing commitment to protecting and improving financial security for older americans. having previously served for nine years on the investment board which oversees the federal employee retirement system. our second witness will be gayle honest, the inspector general of the social security administration. inspector general and this was sworn in as ig in january of 2019 after practicing law for more than two decades in securities litigation and banking enforcement. she has greatly increase to her offices and focuses on the ss a scam when we are very pleased to have to such dedicated public servants with us this morning. commissioner sault will start with you. >> thank you very much senators for welcoming us here. as you said, as everyone said so far the publicity, the education is really the most important thing and by having this hearing, i hope we can further that call. committee chair collins, ranking member casey and ranking members of the committee, i am andrew saul, committee of social security. thank you for inviting me here today to talk about the scam crisis. everyone here has probably received one of these scam calls and too many people have been victimized and lost money. it is a national problem. at first we were not doing enough to combat the scams, that was short sighted. the magnitude of this problem for -- america trust our agency and our employees and we can allow swindler's to erode that trust. in my first office visit employees told me how these scams harm americans and our service. we have received more and more reports from people who have been tricked by or are worried about these calls. americans want our help on this crisis and we also need to do critical, social security work like processing benefit applications and making sure we pay people the right amount. within a few months of getting here, i made fighting the scams and helping our frontline offices a top priority. with inspector general and mrs. help, we start fixing things. we have been working closely with oig and i.s. deputy commissioner black to lead our efforts to curb the scam and see what more we could do. now i believe we are on the right track. we are taking action at the national level to help frontline employees to provide better service to their local communities, employees like mr. grow sean, a district manager in maine who will speak to you about his offices experiences last year before we had taken on this problem. let me tell you about some of the things we are doing. anyone who comes to our home page will see a bold red banner with scam information just like the one you see on the screens in this room. we are working to add messages to the pages people visit most often. here you see that this is from our actual web page on our home page. we developed an online scam reporting form to help oig to get the information it needs to investigate and stop these crooks. since this form went live in mid november, oig has already received over 100,000 written reports. we overhaul the oig fraud hotline and improved our 800 number. collars now hear about the scans and how to report them to oig online. we work with oig and major phone carriers to block calls that attempt to spoof our toll free phone numbers from ever reaching the public. education is key. we are using email, television, radio, print and social media including youtube, facebook and twitter. last week we began rolling out emails to all 47 million social security account holders and we are working to add a scam awareness message to the outside of our envelopes which will reach millions of people. i made public service announcements that we released this month to tv and radio outlets across the country. i did an interview with aarp that focused heavily on the scams and aarp plans to share scam information with its 38 million members. we appreciate that walmart work with us and oig to display our message in over 2000 of its stories nationwide and we are recruiting other organizations and agencies. we have issued to recent national press releases regarding the scams and last month we provided every member of congress materials on this scam and i urge you to help us get the message out. everyone needs to hear this message. if a caller says there is a problem with your social security number or account, hang up. do not provide them money or personal information. reported at oig dot ss a dock of. this is a tough problem to solve. the scams of olive as we work to shut down social security related scams, crooks likely target another agency just as they move from irs to s.s.a.. our country needs broad national solutions. we all share responsibility to fight the serious threat to the public. if you have been tricked by the scams, you are 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 thank this committee for holding this hearing to elevate the visibility of the scams and for working on solutions. i would be happy of course to answer any questions. >> thank you. thank you very much commissioner. inspector general. >> chairman collins, ranking member casey and ranking members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to raise public awareness and corrupt social security phone scams. for the better part of the decade, americans have been played by persistent robocalls and light colors who 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, livelihoods and even the freedom. we have interviewed victims including a 30 year old mother of two in virginia who paid a scam or 9000 dollars in target an eye to gift cards because she had no way to care for her newborn if she went to prison. a 75-year-old california who was harassed and threatened for over a month by a fake police officer. eventually he wired and totaling over 260,000 dollars. these insidious and pervasive scams have also impacted social security ability to deliver it's vital services timely and they have damaged the public trust and social security. to come back then we have dedicated significant resources to investigative efforts with working with the justice department another law enforcement agencies and we have raise public awareness, working with essay and other partners to reach as many people as we can with our educational message. i'm very pleased to announce that as a result of our investigative effort, the department of justice filed to civil complaints yesterday in the eastern district of new york requesting temporary restraining orders, paramilitary and permanent injunctions against five telecommunication companies in their owners. as of this morning one of the two temporary restraining orders covering three of the five companies in their owners have been granted and we are hopeful the other temporary restraining order will also be granted. according to the complaints, these companies known as gate we carriers facilitate the delivery of millions of fraudulent robocalls every day from foreign call centers to the united states telephone system and ultimately to the personal phones of victims throughout the united states. these gateway carriers were notified repeatedly, they were passing scam calls yet they allowed hundreds of millions of scam calls into the u.s. telephone system and they have earned a lot of money in the process. in essence, profiting off a scam victims. the civil actions is the result of months investigative work in close coordination with doj's consumer protection branch, which heads the trans national strikeforce. the u.s. postal inspection with apart in this effort and law -- including homeland security investigations, treasure inspector general for tax administration in the secret service. the ftc see in the fcc provided data to support the investigation. i am particularly proud of social security's oig's role in the collaborative efforts. our agents and investigative counsel advocated for this top down approach to combat the scams. we took the lead and investigating the gateway carriers and we have played a pivotal role leading up to yesterday's filings. we conducted a complex analysis of phone call routing, interview countless victims and methodically built the government's case. we still have a long way to go to permanently shut down these and other gateway carriers that facilitates can cause. perhaps more importantly we need to ensure that we need to deter others from filling that void. we continue to conduct of their scam related investigations. i cannot share many details because our other investigations ar