Amy Klobuchar Discusses Efforts To Protect Older Americans From Scammers

Forbes Breaking News

At Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) spoke to witnesses about combating scams targeting older Americans.

Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Chair.

00:02Senator Klobuchar.

00:04Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

00:07And I want to thank my colleagues for the kind words about the murders that happened in Minnesota

00:11and the work that needs to be done going forward.

00:16The people we lost were tremendous people.

00:19And so I'll start with a question actually out of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota

00:23because they presented the evidence yesterday to the nation.

00:28In 2023, and they're fine people that work there,

00:31they successfully prosecuted three people who defrauded over 150,000 elderly victims across the country,

00:38stole nearly $300 million from them by convincing seniors to pay to enroll in fraudulent magazine subscriptions.

00:47It was one of the largest elder fraud schemes in our nation.

00:50Like Senator Moody, in my former life as a prosecutor,

00:54I actually started an elder white-collar crime division,

00:57in our county attorney's office and know how bad this can be.

01:02Mr. Finta, what barriers do these government and law enforcement agencies face

01:06in seeking information necessary to fight scams, securing information?

01:13Well, unfortunately, I think there's a pervasive thought process,

01:16particularly among our local law enforcement agencies.

01:21There's nothing we can do.

01:22Bad guys are overseas.

01:24Money's in crypto.

01:25It's already gone.

01:28There is always something we can do,

01:30especially if we just start documenting these cases and working together.

01:33There's plenty of people in the United States who are co-conspirators

01:36in these criminal enterprises that are necessary for them to operate effectively.

01:42Those turn into great leads as soon as they get arrested.

01:44Right.

01:46Ms. Gunther, in 2022, Senator Collins and I actually enacted a bill,

01:52passed a bill, Senior Fraud Prevention Act,

01:54to create an office in the FTC focused on fighting scams that target seniors,

02:00education, which some of you have referred to.

02:03Quickly, do you agree that investing resources targeted at stopping elder fraud scams

02:08is an effective strategy in trying to educate seniors?

02:12I definitely think that educating seniors is a part of the set that we need to have.

02:19We know that it's effective when we're actually educating people,

02:24and there's different ways to educate people with behavioral tools

02:28so they're actually making changes and can recognize and spot those specific red flags of a scam.

02:34So we do think, but there are other tools.

02:37We need to give tools to the financial industry to actually stop suspicious transactions

02:42because education isn't all, is not a one, it's not a one-size-fits-all.

02:47We need to give, we need to have a coordinated federal response.

02:51We need financial institutions to be able to stop us.

02:53So just, exactly, and then one of the things I'm concerned about

02:58is just slashing the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection Budget by 13%

03:03or effectively dismantling the CFPP, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

03:10To me, that seems like a bigger problem, which is what's in the budget right now

03:14that we just received from the administration.

03:18Could you comment on that?

03:20Yeah, I can't comment on that, but I can put you in contact with someone from our office.

03:25Okay, very good, but I just think we should realize what's going on.

03:29I want to turn quickly to AI.

03:31I actually have had in my, someone I know well, whose son serves in the Marines,

03:37he got a call when his son was deployed.

03:41That was his son's voice.

03:42It had been scraped off the Internet.

03:44This isn't a senior scam, but we're seeing so much of this with seniors

03:48and saying, I'm in trouble, I need money, basically.

03:51And he figured out something was wrong when he started asking questions and hung up.

03:56But I think the grandma might not have done that or the grandpa.

04:00Ms. Helm, you testified about some of the ways scammers have ruined lives.

04:04What should people know about the dangers of AI-generated scams?

04:09Yes.

04:09When my mother went through her scam, this was right before AI exploded.

04:14So they used very archaic tools of a video of a man in a dark room,

04:19and they would voice over the actor in the video.

04:23And they were actually pretty convincing, enough to convince my mom to give $350,000 away.

04:30But with artificial intelligence, this is going to explode.

04:34They are so convincing, and they've got money to back up,

04:38to back people up to make these scams even more convincing.

04:42They'll send you a $100,000 check, and it'll cash.

04:47Makes you think we should be doing some rules of the road on AI,

04:50which we've had a bipartisan effort going on.

04:53And one of my biggest fears of this is just the scams that are going to affect individual people.

04:59Senator Blackburn and Senator Coons and Tillis and I have worked on deepfakes.

05:04But we have to make sure this incorporates some of these scams going forward.

05:09What we do, Ms. Gunther, do you want to add anything on AI?

05:15Yeah, so with artificial intelligence, it is very scary.

05:21We're seeing them adopted.

05:22We're getting calls from hearing from our members where they're cloning voices.

05:27It's very difficult to use AI to detect that.

05:33And so that's why it's really important to have other tools as well.

05:36Not only do banks need to adopt artificial intelligence, but they need to do it at a faster pace.

05:41But they also have to use other tools in the bucket as multi-factor authentication as well.

05:50Senator Blackburn.

05:51Thank you, Mr.

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