People, including seniors, one of whom was recently threatened with a home foreclosure home foreclosure if they do not pay specified amount. Mr. Cook, i would like my constituents to be prepared when they receive a phone call from an irs imposter. Can you confirm that an irs agent would never call to demand immediate payment, asked for credit or debit card numbers over the phone, or threaten arrest for not paying. Yes i can absolutely confirm that. Those are scams in a consumer should hang up and not provide any information. Okay i appreciate that. Im probably going to repeat what you just said so people understand that in my district. Ill wanted to ask also about reporting incidents. Many consider financial exploitation to be a silent crime as victim are often too ashamed or embarrassed to report what is happen. Additionally can be a challenge for seniors to serve as a criminal witness. Bob forstmann talk about challenges of both identity and financial exploitation. Can you explain the role of the Consumer Network has in combating exploitation. Are there in each challenges the ftc spaces in respect to the database and what steps need to be taken in reporting of Senior Financial Exploitation in general. The database is an important tool for lawenforcement agencies and we continue to develop and improve it. We have some of the works right now. It is a tool for for lawenforcement agencies throughout the country to have access to millions of Consumer Complaints and look for trends and specific areas they may be interested in. It has been an effective tool. Can you give us an update on the Consumer Complaint database at the what type of complaints are you seen and how is this information useful to you in developing policy proposals question. What i will say that there is been in excess of 63000 complaints submitted by consumers age 62 and older since we began accepting complaints. What we do is we comb through them, well look at them to see how older consumers are faring in the marketplace. We know from looking at the complaints that there are many older consumers that are having difficulties with their mortgages and with that collection. Those are are the two largest areas that older consumers are complaining about. Which, by the way is not unlike their younger counterpart. There is often a misconception that older consumers are not engaged fully in the marketplace, that simply is not true. Our consumer response section for complaints is focused on Consumer Products and services which is what the bureau focuses on. However, consumers also had narratives to their complaints and we have the opportunity to find instances of financial exploitation, stories related in the complaint as well. All right, thank, thank you very much. Thank you mr. Chairman. The gentleman yields back, the chair recognizes a gentleman for five minutes. Thank you mr. Chairman. Thank you each of you for being here. We certainly have a lot of issues that need to be discussed. I know this will, as a surprise, we do some bipartisan work on occasion so i, along with represent castor introduce legislation in july to the race Family Caregiver act which would implement the bipartisan recommendation of the federal commission on longterm care that congress develop a National Strategy to support Family Caregivers. Similar scope to the National Strategy developed to help not alzheimers disease. It it would require the Development Maintenance a National Strategy to recognize and support Family Caregivers. I think this is an underreported issue. Unless you are living in the middle of it, people dont understand what is going on. My my mothers almost 92, we are going through issues with sitters in ourselves trying to take care of her and deal with those issues, it it is a difficult problem for a lot of families. And from personal experience for a number of years, we had phone calls, credit card offers, switch switch your credit card over here, do this, change your phone service to the cable and that if you dont like that you can change back. We finally were able to get to the point and hopefully this will be something to help families are doing this to tell that person to say i want to anything until you talk to soandso, my my son, my daughter, my trusted Family Member. Those things will sometimes help. This is a question for for mr. Kaufman to ms. Kane as well. Im interested in whether youre agencies are focused on the caregivers role of protecting the elderly from fraud. You mention some, but to a particular education that shows guides for these caregivers and others in a position first of seniors, and how are lawyers and Financial Institutions dealing with the risk of broad against their elderly clients. At the ftc we have a wide range of consumer materials available. We have materials focus specifically on seniors, or pass it on campaign has been highly effective for seniors. I think they have more materials on specifically caregivers and Financial Institutions of that nature. I may refute to my colleagues. Thank you. Im actually very happy to have this opportunity to tell you about one of our very popular publications. We call it mansions someone elses money. These are how to userfriendly guides for nonprofessional, fiduciaries. People who are taking care of the financial matters for a Family Member or friend. It includes information that helps the fiduciary know what their duties are. So in other words, if youre caring for someone and you have access to their money, it is not okay to buy a car with those funds. Simple things like that which should be known, but unfortunately there is some confusion. In addition, in these guys include information about how to spot scams and fraud and what you can do to protect the person who you are cared for as i financial caregiver. Caregiver. We have these National Guides who and we are going to roll out state specific guides. Including a template which would allow states to do their own as well. You mentioned you had 63000 complaints involving people 62 years years of age and older, you mentioned mortgage related, debt collection, of course we had the Data Protection act that deals with a lot of it, of that 63,000, youre nothing all 63,000 more fraud, youre just in those were complaints that youre just in those were complaints that were register, correct. Correct. If, in the time that i have for both mr. Kaufman and ms. Kane, im interested in the cross Agency Initiative that protects seniors from fraud, abuse, and the collective exploitation. Would you both very quickly discuss your work with the elder Justice Court needing counsel and that department of health and Human Services, whether it has been constructed toward your agencys efforts and what do you think could be improved. If i may be allowed to continue could they answer on that. Proceed. Thank you. We are member of the council, we have participated in a number of vents, we partnered with organizations wrote the country, senior organizations we have found to be effective to share information with other lawenforcement agencies. I cant think of any improvements at the moment. Thank you. So we are one of the 11 federal agencies that are been very active in participating in the coronation council. We to find too find it very helpful for cordoning our actions. Each Agency Brings to the table different expertise and different jurisdictions. It is a situation where where we need all hands on deck. All were complements those verses regency. Thank you very much, youll back. Thank you. The chair recognizes the gentleman from massachusetts. Thank you mr. Chairman. Pleasure to have you here. I wanted to focus on an aspect of medicare if we can. Open enrollment period. Start october 15 and runs through december 7. For the nations 54 beneficiaries this is an important time to consider changes to the health and drug plan. They should be vigilant during this time is also an opportunity for fraud. According to recent article by a world report, common request for medicare scam is a victim revealed their medicare number. It is important are members know how easy it is to spot open enrollment scams. I like to start with mr. Kaufman. I understand the ftc won a victory in federal court last october after filing a complaint against the telemarketing scheme that was designed to trick, and did the trick seniors who are pretend to be part of medicare. Can you describe that case and why thats important. Sure, thank you for acknowledging that case. Its an important case. Telemarketers were claiming to be affiliated with medicare. They falsely promised new cards for consumers and required them to provide their bank a account numbers. They would then with just several hundred dollars. Its consistent with the cases we have seen repeatedly that i misrepresented affiliations with Government Entities or other entities in order to scam consumers out of personal information and then out of financial benefits. So how does the ftc corneille with cms to prevent this type of rock . We do work with them, we talk to them, we issue alerts, when there are changes in Health Benefits that are publicly available, we know frauds will follow. That is one thing we have seen at the if there is a new program in a scare frauds will follow. We issue scam alerts and talk about a. And just so everyone is clear, is it true that medicare will never call or email seniors with products offered or with a request for their medicare number. That is correct. They will not answer your Bank Account Information in particular. Insurance is not allowed to visit your home and sell any medicare products. That is my understanding but i would have to verify that. It is my understanding as well. So what should consumers do if they or someone they know receive one of these fake medicare solicitations . Hopefully they have not provided their information, if they have, they should contact their bank immediately and try to rectify the situation. They should file a complaint file a complaint with the ftc at ftc got golf. Thank you very much sir. Any other witnesses have anything to say. And without a youll back. I was just going to dig in my purse for my Medicare Card, every once in a while we hear from people who say, how come Social Security numbers are on the Medicare Card . So it is in the wallets of everybody who is over 65, we are told it would be very cumbersome and costly to change that, is that a bad idea . Either one of you can answer . Its right there, so when we talk about medicare number, its your Social Security number. Im not sure about this i would have to look into that but i believe in that medicare reform that we passed in marsh in april of this year to the removal of the Social Security number was in the ways and means per provision it was added to a bill and it was passed earlier this year. Ill find find out about that for you. That was a weakness in the system. It is important that Social Security numbers not be shared or readily acceptable or publicly display. We be glad to talk to more about that issue. Will maybe we did fix it, that is good. Every now and then we do fix something. The chair recognizes the gentleman from oklahoma for five minutes. I can honestly say that i cannot tell you what a card for medicare looks like. I dont have one anyway, thank thank you so much for being here because something started happening to us about a month ago in our office which is very odd, we started getting people calling us and same they had received a call from our office. Pretending to be from our office to get personal information. It worries me because they are automatic trust that we have built with our constituents and getting phone calls from people supposedly from our office. Now i can imagine in business, we use use a rule that you only receive roughly around 1 of your actual complaints. I would wonder if that would play true that im only receiving about 1 of those were receiving those calls. Now is there an enforcement, do we lack enforcement, do we lack the ability to go after these individuals, even if we get their information . What is . What is the penalty for doing this . Can one of you talk on that. We have definite leasing rights and imposter scans. I have seen calls in my office from people who are contacted by me who were not contacted by me. It is definitely a scheme, were bringing action when we can find the perpetrator. We are civil Law Enforcement agency so we can only bring civil action. We also know criminal lawenforcement is looking at it as well. Consumer education is an important focus here. Were talked about Consumer Education but i will use my grandparents for example, they are checked out. And im not saying that in a bad way, my grandpa is 94 years old. Drama is 89. They are not reading these manuals that come out, theyre not getting online, they are not reading this stuff. Well talk about the most vulnerable, those that do not grow up with computer. One that has a cell phone but the numbers are this big on it. The information is for younger generation, not these older generations. I would encourage you to take a look at our pass it on brochure. We have a one pager on imposter scans. It describes what the scans are, what theyre trying to do and what consumers should do. We research with seniors to find out effective ways to communicate it. I get that, but what im saying is there an enforcement problem here, because it is growing. It is not going backwards. Obviously it is profitable or they would not be doing it. So, how can we help you on the enforcement side of it . There has to be someone knowing that if you do this, there is a better chance youre going to get caught, not a slim chance youre going to get caught. We continue to be cases. Theres always more we can do. Theyre more criminal lawenforcement agencies interested. I think the combination of the ftc working with other lovers and agencies is starting to make a dent. It is a problem. I believe, if if i understand correctly you have uncovered roughly 50 million in stolen assets. Yes. What are your best tools . Maybe we can Work Together here. If they ever recover that out of one county, i am just ward. I think we too are a civil organization. For us the more practical thing is to get the money back because they need it. The people we work with need it. I think criminal enforcement is important. When i first became Public Guardian almost 11 years ago i think it was fear cases, criminal, criminal cases being brought against these people. There are problems with witnesses and recordkeeping. Since then, it has increased the amount of litigation, both from the States Attorney Office in cook county as well as the u. S. Atty. Office. So what i am trying to get to, is what is the most effective tools you are using to make that happen, in one county to recover . We largely work with the probate activists. The specific section i call the citation section. We can recover recover properties that have been embezzled, stolen, concealed and so it is really lawyers doing our work and during our job. Howdy by the people . We get referrals from all sources. From banks, neighbors, churches, hospitals. Once we have an intake and if they qualify those are the cases we go up there. So basically you have to spend the time. You have to have the resources to spend the time. Of that is absolutely true. When i first became Public Guardian we had one person working the line. Because of the growth in this area we have added more resources, i and other people work on it. I appreciate it. Mr. Kaufman and others i appreciate what youre doing but i think we have to step up the enforcement side of it. As i go back to say what i said earlier, we have to make it where they believe there is a better chance they are going to get caught that a slim chance theyre going to get caught. Mr. Chairman a deal back. The chair thinks the gentleman. Yet five minutes for questions. Thank you mr. Chairman. In my home state of indiana, our attorney general is taking lead in combating fraud. Six years ago they launched a free senior workshop that is travel to all counties in indiana and reach over 200,000 elderly and their families. I appreciate that we have to take a multilevel approach in working on this, whether as whether as the federal, state or local levels. I do have to say when we think about Retirement Security and i talk about security a lot when im out talking with constituents, people often are embarrassed, they dont want to share if they have been scammed, i appreciate the work you are all doing. They dont want to share their families. They dont want to talk about and i might even take a while for them to realize it i am curious, im a former u. S. Attorney and im curious if any other u. S. Attorneys office in the Civil Division or Criminal Division are engaged . I know they are on Identity Theft and thats something weve been working on for a very long time as the Justice Department is working on it, im curious if any of you are working with any Attorneys Office on task forces or civil or Criminal Division . This is for any of you we have a criminal liaison at the ftc we realize a lot of art cases should be prosecuted criminally to criminal lawenforcement since we started this program in 2003. Well over 700 of our defendants have been prosecuted