Regarding the dangers of financial exploitation through n Community Organizations and places of worship and Community Centers and resources that might be available to them, to utilize organizations like the National Guardianship Association to play an Important Role by promoting standards of best practices for guardians and probate courts by providing education and training and provide advocacy on the issue and the impact seniors including that impact seniors including elder abuse and financial exploitation, develop Court Systems and processes that dont work against seniors and consider the urgency of time for the elderly such as the probate and the elder law and miscellaneous remedies courts in chicago because many exploiters simply try to wait out the life span of those of the elderly victims. You have the written materials that ive submitted that are premised large part on article that my deputy Public Guardian wrote and id be happy to share our experiences with individual cases. Thanks to all of our witnesses for your testimony. Recognizing myself for five minutes. Fraudulent deed, what happens with that . Someone comes doortodoor and says ill sell you some property . Well, no, actually what they do sometimes is they do quick claim deeds from the person, the elderly person. They forge those deeds, write their own names in or deeded to a third party and then they recorded against the property. And sometimes those elderly people never know about the crime. And then one day someone shows up and they no longer own their own homes. Sometimes they actually they have not purchased the home. Theyve just developed a deed. And recorded against their property. And youre able to intervene on behalf of that person . Oh, yeah. What happens is if a case is referred to our office and the person qualifies, first of all, they have to have a Cognitive Impairment that severe enough to qualify for our services. We would file a citation to recover the property thats been wrongfully taken from them. Are there other people within your county who would if someone wasnt suffering from a Cognitive Impairment where that could be remedied . Yes. Theres a Legal Assistance foundation that we have in chicago there are a couple of attorneys who work on cases who dont have guardians. Often they just have people that walk in. The office is very small and one of the biggest issues i think we are confronted with, not just on the deed, the fraudulent deed cases but some of our people that we work with make the worst witnesses because of their impairment whether this is severe or not. They need more help. Sometimes these are very intensive document intensive, financial intensive cases that requires a lot of work and detail. Thank you. Mr. Kaufman, thank you for being here this morning and i want to thank the ftc for always being willing to come and talk to our subcommittee and having us over to your offices earlier in the year. And having us to your regional offices in dallas. Ive learned about resource that is are available. Let me ask you about your question about a Foreign Agency involved, something called the jamaican lottery, which im not sure i understand what it is but what enforcement tools do you have to be able to put a stop to these practices and what have you learned about multijurisdictional enforcement . Thank you for the question. It is challenging. There are impediments when fraud is emanating from overseas to the United States. The tools that this committee has given us, the u. S. Safe web act have provided assistance but weve worked closely and built stronger relationships with Law Enforcement authorities in other countries in canada and the united kingdom. Weve seen a lot of scams emanating from jamaica and have a group were involved in caught jolt which is a number of Law Enforcement. To help assist the jamaicans in prosecuting these cases there as well as in the United States. What do you have at your disposal for spotting trends that you might anticipate if something is happening in one location that it might migrate to another location. Are there tools where you can keep track of popping up on the radar screen. We have Law Enforcement agencies and the Better Business bower owe. We track and look for trends and look for increasing spikes in order to find targets to pursue. I mentioned in my testimony that we have a Consumer Response Department where we accept complaints from consumers if our office, the office for Older Americans, we look at the complaints submitted by on behalf of older consumers routinely. And look for trends and spikes as well. Some of the information we pulled from the complaints if appropriate we send to our enforcement division. We will develop materials based on what we find. Part of the purpose of having this hearing, of course, is the expository nature of the services that you all have. I will tell you as a regular guy when i was caring for my parent as they aged i had no idea about the types of Services Available nor cognizant of the risks out there. Looking back on 10 or 15 years ago i realized there were probably some near misses. What i really hope this subcommittee hearing does today is make people, number one, aware of the problem and, number two, aware of where they can go for help. The gentle lady from illinois, the Ranking Member of the subcommittee. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and i appreciate your last comment. Hopefully we can drill down on this. I wanted to ask mr. Harris a question. You said that you represent, you are guardian for 600 people. How do those people get to you . How does that happen . We often have referrals from judges. We will be called from Law Enforcement, referrals from Banking Institutions as well. So would you estimate there are a lot of people out there who are who do not have the benefit of your guardianship . Yes. I do. A lot of people who either are fearful and theres a lot of people out there that are fearful even to call our office because they believe that the government stepping in will be a bad thing for them. If theres an appropriate family. Thats the preferable way to go. I think we do offer some services that specifically are through a unit that is unlike probably any other organization in our city and state. You said that a third of the people, so that would be about 200 of those are a victim of exploitation, did you say by families . By Family Members but often its a lot of other people. Theres a lot of people that hold great positions of trust. It can be a Family Member. Im wondering if you could describe some of the types of financial exploitations that seniors under your care have. Sure sh i remember a young lady to me, shes older, but shes still young in spirit, who was exploited by a woman who styled herself as her personal banker. She would go to the same Bank Downtown chicago, large banking institution, for years. She worked for r. R. Donnelly, which used to be a company that produced books and other things in the city. And she and her husband had amassed a small amount of money, about 300,000. This person, she befriended her, would sit down with her every time she came into the bank. She started to rely on her to write checks for her bills. And she ended up taking about 300,000 from her. The bank called us. We ultimately, after a little contentiousness, we ultimately were able to recover the money from her. But we have also had people who have been exploited who have gone to the hospital, elderly gentleman, 90 years old, met a cna at the hospital who ended up volunteering to become his caregiver who stole about 500,000 from him. Those are just some of the cases we have had all kinds of cases similar to that. Some of these are so personal. And i think i dont know if all of you, but i know mr. Kauffman said a lot of people dont report it. And i would think when families are involved, that it becomes even more difficult. How can we maybe this is for all of you encourage people to protect themselves to actually report when family or a former trusted friend has clearly exploited them . How do we break through that . Sure. I think a couple things. First, obviously, we would love to have the Committee Members providing information on their website and to the constituents about the resources we provide. Its important to help us get the word out. We would like the committee to assist us. For us, our Campaign Pass it on is premised on the notion that its Senior Citizens helps other Senior Citizens and not being afraid to talk about fraud and to protect each other. Thats been the focus of our Consumer Education is sort of breaking that barrier and getting seniors to talk about it with each other. Let me ask you did you have something . Well, i was just going to say that similar to the ftc, were out and about and encouraging the reporting of abuse. It is something that really needs almost a mass Media Attention to. We have the money smart for older adults, train the Trainer Program that we are out and about with intermediaries training people, constantly about how to spot and intervene and report when fraud is observed. Do you partner with Senior Citizen organizations like aarp . Yes. Were a very small office with 57 million constituents. So the only way that we could effectively do our job is if we connect with service providers, state, local Government Entities, other federal parter ins in order to with organizations that are on the ground providing services to seniors. Many of them have will engage in the money smart training for their clientele. Mr. Chairman, can i ask one short question . I wonder, mr. Harris, does the state attorney general have any role in helping your office with financial exploitation . Yes. In terms of some of the bigger cases, people who do systemic, exploitive of things, they do get involved, file lawsuits. As does the u. S. Attorneys office as well. I have to say that to me, one of the biggest tools that we can use is to get to the Smaller Community groups, to go to churches, to go to synagogues, to go to other places. We work with a small agency on the west side of chicago called south austin coalition. And they are they know people. They bring folks like myself and these two people here from their organizations to come and talk to the very smaller groups. I have generated certain cases where we have been able to help people from those groups. Because im not sure how much some of the folks on the west side, the south side and some of the north side of chicago are looking at bigger Media Attention on Something Like that or reading some of the brochures that are really geared toward helping the seniors. As simple as you can get it and as grassroots as you can get it, thats probably most effective tool that i have seen. Let me just say i would really like to meet further with all of you and talk about ways that we can partner on this. And i look forward to the Committee Following up on this. Thank you. Chair thanks the gentle lady. The chair recognizes mr. Lance from new jersey, five minutes for your questions. Thank you, mr. Chairman. My thanks to the distinguished panel for being here. I hear from constituents all the time about being bombarded with robocalls from scammers who have spoofed their phone numbers to look like a local call or like a state or federal agency in order to scam them out of personal and financial information. Indeed, yesterday my wife received such a call in new jersey. Someone claiming that we were in arrears with the Internal Revenue service. She chose quite appropriately not to return the telephone call. She telephoned me and our office looked into the telephone number. It was someone scamming constituents, i would imagine, across the country. Ive introduced a bill with grace mang of new york city and chairman barton called the anti spoofing act of 2015. It would target caller i. D. Spoofing. Specifically, expand protection of the Communications Act of 1934 to include spoofed Text Messages and voice over i. P. Calls. Mr. Kauffman, the ftc runs a do not call list. Would you please explain in detail what my constituents and others who are on the list should do if they believe they are being called by scammers or organizations in violation of ftc protection. Sure. Thank you for the question. Robocalls are a huge challenge. The first word of advice, if you receive one, hang up. Dont provide any information. Just hang up. I hope those who are viewing this hearing will take that to heart. Do not respond to such a call. The Technology Issues are challenging. It has become very inexpensive to blast millions upon millions of phone calls. Were bringing Law Enforcement actions. But the cases are challenging. The caller i. D. S are spoofed. It makes finding the perpetrator challenging. One thing we have done at the ftc that is innovative is we have issued a number of different public challenges to get people in the Technology Community interested in the issue of robocalls to figure out ways to block calls. We have had four separate events that have been successful. Its something we are continuing to pursue. We also, again, hang up on the calls, get yourself on the do not call list. We continue to work hard on n this area. Thank you. In one of the counties i represent in new jersey, residents were being telephoned by those who claimed to be from the county sheriffs office. This is clearly inaccurate, fraudulent. The sheriff of that county, the sherr sheriff has taken appropriate action. But this happens frequently. How do the ftc and fcc coordinate to combat the scams . We have frequent phone calls. We are careful were not overlapping in terms of the Law Enforcement actions. We try to harmonize our processes and implementation as well as we can. Thank you. Im interested in your office. I do not know much about it, as i understand it, you are appointed by the chief judge of the Circuit Court of cook county. And is that true of all the counties in illinois or only in cook county with several Million People . Actually, it is only in cook county that theres a Public Guardian like myself. The other Public Guardians are appointed by the governor. By of governor in the various counties or are there jurisdictions . It should be in the various counties, which becomes a problem sometimes because some of the counties are so small. Yes. Then do you report to the Circuit Court of cook county . How does that work . Yes. I act under the auspices. Im an appointed person on each one of my cases. We have to report the court on an annual basis. We file inventories. We file a yearly accounting and kind of a goings on, kind of a social on what we have done with the wards. We also file a yearly annual report with the cook county commissioners. Thank you. Very good luck with your continued work. It is certainly a matter of strong Public Policy as well as the other members of the panel. I yield back the balance of my time. The gentlemen yields back. The chair recognizes the gentlemen the other gentleman from new jersey, the ranking of the full committee. Five minutes for your questions. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask mr. Kauffman a variety of scammed emerge turning tax filing season, one of which is a person who claims to represent the irs. I think thats yes. Would the Ranking Member yield . This happened to me, my wife personally yesterday. I thought you were saying that when i walked in but i wasnt sure. Thanks. This person threatens a victim with arrest, deportation or suspension of a license if an amount of money is not paid immediately. These scammers are very aggressive and may use personal information to seem legitimate. It has affected many constituents in my district. Im not making this up. Including seniors, one of whom was recently threatened with a home foreclosure if they didnt pay a specified amount. Mr. Kauffman, i would like my constituents to be prepared when they receive a phone call from an irs imposter. I can absolutely confirm that, those are imposter scams and consumers should hang up and not provide any information. I appreciate that. Im probably going to repeat what you just said just so we dont so people understand that in my district. I wanted to ask also about reporting incidents of elderly fraud. Many consider financial exploitation to be a silent crime because victims are often too ashamed or embarrassed to report what has happened. Additionally, it can be challenging to serve as a witness and Law Enforcement officials identify lack of reporting and the difficulty obtaining relevant data as challenges to identity and to combat elderly financial exploitation. Can you explain the role the Consumer Sentinel Network has . Are there any challenges the ftc faces with respect to the database and what steps need to be taken to