Everyone makes mistakes, but when you make a mistake and you try to conceal it, that is really the question we should be asking. Who are these individuals who would alter data and hide the truth and prevent patient care . And that is a brief portion of our special looking into veteran health care issues. You can see the program in its entirety tonight at 8 00 eastern on our companion network, cspan. Here are some of the highlights for this weekend. Senate aging committee recently look in the phone scams targeting seniors. The focus was on skimmers to call pretending to be a Family Member or loved one to get the thick into buyer money. Americans lost over 73 million to phone scams last year according to the federal trade commission. Ftc and fbi officials testify about what they phone scam victim. This is just under an hour. Good afternoon. Ive asked all of you to join the table instead of two panels because we have a boat that is being called at around 2 20. So i want to take the advantage of going ahead and getting all of your testimony. This hearing is the latest in a series of investigations the committee has conducted on the devastating impact that fraud and scams have on Senior Citizens. Over the last two years, we have asked lord the rise of jamaican lottery scams, tax refund schemes and Social Security and medicare fraud. So today we are going to examine what is now making a comeback in the scam world and it is called the the great emporium for emergency scam. It is quite despicable. It preys on a Senior Citizens willingness to do anything to help a Family Member in trouble. For example, a skimmer convinces the demo for a telephone that his or her grandchild or another relative is in jail, is in the hospital or stuck in a foreign country needs money to get out of the predicament. And since the beginning of 2012, the federal trade commission has received more than 30,000 complaints about scammer who claim to be a friend or Family Member in distress and it cost americans more than 42 million just since the beginning of 012. Now, this doesnt tell the whole story. Since the majority of these crimes go unreported. What we do know is the ftc report that imposter scans have doubled between 2009 and 23rd and warn potential but the undisputed and we have some good news today from the green dot corporation. They make their product that has been one of the fraudsters in many schemes. We heard it first in the jamaican lottery scam. It has announced plans to retire from store shelves nationwide. They seeing how this product has been used by the skimmers and that is to pull it. Green dot, walmart and cvs submitted statements for todays hearing, which will be a part of the record and Going Forward we will have these companies, and to join in this committee to hear about their experience and their progress. We are going to continue to encourage other Debit Card Companies and retailers to do the same proactive thing. So little by little, we are trying to get visibility to this fraud that is being perpetrated particularly on our Senior Citizens. Senator collins. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And i apologize for being a few minutes late. Like view i am trying to balance a lot of different commitment today. I want to thank you for the danger is viacom artist looking to surrender Older Americans out of their life savings. This is our seventh year in on such scams and i appreciate your hearing the committee focused on this incredibly important topic. In fact, a great deal of what weve learned about is the reports of complaints made to the committee of the fraud hotline todays hearing is an impersonation scam that weve nicknamed the green parrot scam. A skimmer calls a potential victim and claims to be someone he is not remains to be caught immediately because of an emergency. He played some of the dems emotions by claiming to be a grandchild or another loved one. He says that he needs money because he has made in an accident, his car is broken down or he is stranded in a foreign country. I myself has received an email urchin of this scam from someone purporting to be my next few and it sounded just like him and he was overseas brought and needed money to fly back home. Perhaps im sympathetically i told him to go to the American Embassy for help i started thinking about it and called his father to see what was going on and found out that he was not in fact overseas. In many cases the skimmer asks the victim to send money and the fastest way possible, which is purchasing a Prepaid Debit Card and convincing the scammer of the code on the backs to allow them to transfer the value. Once that money is transferred, it is very difficult if not impossible to trace. One main green parrot was caught by a scammer. A socalled grandson was saying he got in a car accident in nicaragua and needed 1800 to pay back the rental car company where he wouldnt be allowed to leave the country. After my constituent went through the money from his savings and wired it to his socalled grandson, he got another call. This time the scammer said he was pursuing criminal charges against him because someone had been injured in the accident and they needed 4000 to hire a lawyer right away. Since my constituent out that his grandson was traveling abroad for a wedding, he went to his bank again and went through 4000 more from his savings. For the scammer pressed his luck and called back a third time asking for even more money, my constituent became suspicious and thought to ask him some simple questions that he wished he had asked from the start such as where are you bored who is your mother. It was only when the scammer couldnt answer those questions that this loving and trusting grandfather realized that he had been duped. Fortunately he was able to limit his losses because he hadnt yet released the code to transfer the money to nicaragua. Another constituent, mrs. Sandra jagr got a call last fall from someone who claim to be her son. He said he had been in a car accident, that he was his fault and he didnt have insurance. He asked her 1500 to pay off the other party and mrs. Jagr did so using Western Union to fire the money. Now here is the point. When she realized she had been scammed, she contacted everyone she could think of to report her case and get how. Local and state on enforcement, the fbi, but she was told there was nothing they could do for her. As we have learned, the scammers are not only unscrupulous, convict and dozens of times, but they are also technologically savvy. They know how to route their call using voice over internet protocol, which is very hard to trace and they know how to spoof caller i. D. To make it appear they are calling from a trusted source. Another version of this impersonation scam might be called the tax man and in this version, the con artist used to spoof caller i. D. That represents a legitimate washington d. C. To contract taxpayers and to be calling from the criminal Investigative Division of the irs. The scammer identified themselves as the investigation chief and tells the taxpayer that he or she owes more than 5000 in back taxes. Well, to make a long story short, my staff actually spoke to a taxman scam artist as part of the committees investigation. We suspect that the scammer who called himself steve parker was located outside of the united states. But this scam is so elaborate that the scammer was able to claim he was calling from the federal Investigative Department at the irs, was able to get the correct address for irs headquarters here in washington and actually included a room number, but not surprisingly that remembered does not exist within the irs building. Mr. Chairman, the scammers are a plague for all americans, but especially to our seniors. I thank you for continuing to shine a light on their appalling practice is and i look forward to hearing from eyewitnesses. And you notice a pattern here of all of these hearings that we have in having on scams that are perpetrated against Senior Citizens. Absolutely. And this is just another version and it is a particularly disrespectful one. First, we have a victim of a grandparent scam and we arent using his full name because he doesnt want the scammers to try to reconnect him. And we will call him mr. W. He is accompanied today by one of his grandson. Next, kevin rupy, Vice President of law at the u. S. Telecom association. And then, lois greisman, associate director of the federal trade commissions director of marketing practices in the bureau of consumer protection. Ms. Greisman. And then, joseph campbell, the assistant director of the fbis criminal Investigative Division. Mr. Campbell, your written statement should be very specific on the grand parent scheme and the fbis website has more information on these type of scams compared to the statement that you have submitted. So i would like in the questioning for you to provide additional details. Now, because of the fact we have god a vote coming up at 2 10, i am going to hold you to five minutes so that we can get through everybody and cannot need to questions. Mr. W. , you are up. Turn on your microphone. Thank you, chairman nelson and Ranking Member columns for the opportunity to tell my story before the special committee on aging. I am an 81yearold grand pier from cincinnati, ohio. Last december i asked answered the phone and sent my world into a whirlwind. The caller had a job voice into grandpa, this is her favorite grandson. To which i replied, i have six grandsons and theyre all my favorite. His reply was, while this is your oldest grandson. To which i replied tai, how are you . I cant remember exactly his reply, but it was Something Like i am in jail and i need your help to get me out of jail and i dont want mom and dad to know about this. Talking to this Police Officer. I cant remember the officers name, but he said the car contained for young men on their way to a football game. He searched the vehicle, narcotics were found. All four men were arrested on narcotics charges. All four denied knowledge of who the narcotics list, but i have been the most cooperative and now he needed was 3000 cash to get out of jail. I told the Police Officer that i needed i was told by the Police Officer that i need to go to bombard for cvs and that a total of 3000 into green dot money cards in 1000 denominations and i need a cash to purchase this card. I cash a check for 3000 at my bank and went to walmart and bought three money pack cards, each loaded with 1000. I returned home and called the Police Officer at the number with the 438 area code. The area code for montreal, canada and gave him the scratch off numbers on the money pack cards. Later, the Police Officer called again and said they needed an additional 4000. However, my Checking Account would not cover that amount. My wife went to the bank and withdrew 4000 from her savings account and went to walmart and loaded for money pack cards with 1000 each. I told the officer the scratch off numbers. Subsequently, i received another call from him saying they needed another 2500. At this point my wife suggested we call subbase twin brother to see if he had been him today. Dillon said he saw him before we went to work that morning. He called his cell phone and he answered. It became obvious that grandpa and grandma were to set a scam. What cannot the money pack card, there is a warning that says small print, and i repeat in small print it says if anyone else asks you for your number, your information from your receipt is a scam and green dot is not responsible for paying me back. I believe putting not warning in such small print is unconscionable and it has some liability in as much as they profited from these transactions. I also believe walmart has them as possibility and facilitated and profited from the scam. I reported this scam for the cincinnati police. I also contact dave the investigations are referred me to the federal trade commission, but i am not sure what they have been able to do about it. I have some suggestions about what prepaid Debit Card Companies could do to protect consumers, which i hope to get into later on. Thank you for listening to me and giving me this opportunity to testify. Im happy to answer questions. Thank you, mr. W. Your courageous to come and share this with us. Mr. Rupy. Chairman nelson, Ranking Member collin, members of the committee. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is kevin rupy uni service Vice President of blonde policy at u. S. Telecom. U. S. Telecom share the concern about the problems and impostors scans targeted at seniors. Calls using protocol or Voip Technology when combined with caller i. D. Spoofing can be used by scammers to mask their identity and location, giving our target a false sense of confidence of who is calling. Three important developments have occurred in the last year that could help address this issue. First, our Member Companies continue to work with government and industry stakeholders to develop a more secure form of caller i. D. Authentication and order to more effectively address caller i. D. Spoofing. Last summer the Engineering Task orders or ietf created a formal working group focused on creating a secure caller i. D. For voip calls. The secure telephone identity revisited group has been working since then to achieve this goal. Despite technological challenges , stakeholders from the ietf for voa p. Can provide a much stronger in spoof of oil a proof of identity and the legacy Telephone Network provides today. Members include representatives from industry, including many u. S. Telecom members and government including the technologists. In may, they develop highlevel requirement and less than two weeks ago to reduce the document with a maximum originators of voip telephone calls. Any solutions developed by this group will become most effect if on a full transition to ipbased communication networks, a process that is well underway. Sakic, u. S. Telecom Member Companies and independent Application Developers offer Services Today that help Older Americans release unknown and potentially fraudulent calls. Consumer subscribing to Digital Voice Service can utilize the do not disturb feature, which prevents some or all incoming calls from wearing any customer sound. Sending them instead to voicemail for general announcement. They can be activated for sec. Or left on indefinitely and also lets consumers establish an accepted callers list for twotime numbers that will bypass the safeguards and allow the call to ring through. Similar offerings are available from century link, at t and others. In addition, thirdparty services such as the ftcs robocall challenge winner rowboat may also be available to consumers. Finally, our industry has ramped up a concerted broadbased publicprivate effort focused exclusively on the issue of telephony abuse attorney existing framework of the message in now way or a local antiabuse working group. Participates in the working group include the sec, the ftc, the department of Homeland Security and a broad range of industry members. The mod voice and telephony accrues group is addressing abuse occurring over Telephone Networks. It was created to help protect Telephony Services from criminal activity and abuse by developing best practices, technologies and not its for mitigating phonebased attacks and scams. In closing, let me think again the committee for holding this timely hearing. We share the committees can turns. We look forward to her continuer together to to address this constantly evolving challenge. Double your efforts, mr. Mr. Rupy. Missed that one. Atrovent, chairman nelson, Ranking Member collins and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the commissions role in combating telemarketing fraud. As weve heard, the injury inflicted by telemarketing fraud is on no. However, stories abound the harm is just but emotional as well. To tackle phone fraud, the ftc uses a three prong strategy. The federal and international counterparts, education and outreach and an initiative to spur technological innovation to the tools that help consumers avoid unwanted calls and also help one for search tracked on the fraudsters. First, Law Enforcement and with a focus on impostors scans. Each of us in her own life seeks out and relies upon trusted sources here that is the very thing scammers years whether they pretend to be from the government, Family Member hide behind a recognizable name. The person in his summa trust is more than a door opener. Its an invitation to come in and sit down. And when successful, people lose money coming in or miss amounts of money at her testimony indicates during the past two and a half years, consumers report having lost when the 200 million to impostors scans. Not surprisingly the complaint reported to the commission, consumers indicate the contact was by the phone. Hoping perch matters is one case we filed early this year typifies the work to call people, many of whom were elderly and the family or friend had offered them a medical device alert. And then they lied about whether they would have to pay for it. Given the nature of such conduct and the fact we see at least some telemarketers engage emanating out of canada and also jamaica, or criminal liaison unit has worked closely with criminal aut