Sheldon Whitehouse Shares Story Of Constituent Who Was Scammed By Fake 'Romantic Interest'

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At today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) discussed the problem of scammers targeting older Americans.

Transcript

00:00White House.

00:01Thanks very much.

00:03I just want to flag for any Rhode Islanders who might be listening

00:09that if you're getting texts and emails that say you owe a toll

00:16and that proceedings are about to begin against you

00:21because of unpaid tolls or tickets,

00:25consider that to be a scam.

00:28And be very wary about clicking onto any link in that text

00:37that purports to be the way that you're going to pay off the unpaid toll or ticket

00:46and know instead that this is almost certainly a scam.

00:53The Department of Motor Vehicles and the Rhode Island Bridge and Turnpike Authority

00:57have both put out notices that these are not their way of dealing with customers

01:07who owe them money, and so when you see that, be very, very wary.

01:13That's my public service announcement for the day.

01:17I'd also like to put into the record the story of a Rhode Islander

01:23who was the victim of a romance scam and lost a great deal of money to a scammer

01:34who was sentenced to serve 121 months in prison by then-Chief Judge John Jack McConnell in Rhode Island.

01:50It is hard to overstate what happens to an elderly person who is both betrayed by someone who she thought was a romantic interest,

02:08who she thought was a friend, who she had come to count on, and then also to come back from that

02:16and find that her finances are in complete disarray and she's going to have to really rethink what the rest of her life looks like,

02:24that it's going to change her entire financial position going forward.

02:28One of the things that helps the fraudsters is anonymity that is very often provided by VPNs or by fake names.

02:49Very often the big platforms have a role in all of this, and we don't have a whole lot of time right now,

02:58but I really would be grateful if each of you, if you have thoughts about what the best things that we could do

03:07to penetrate the anonymity where it is a part of the scam

03:15and to figure out how to hold the platforms more accountable for supporting these frauds,

03:25I would be grateful because I think, you know, this has been a good hearing, Mr. Chairman.

03:30It's been very bipartisan.

03:33Everybody has constituents who are being scammed by these predatory folks.

03:38Some of them are from overseas.

03:39When I was a U.S. attorney, we had what they called 419, I think they called them scams,

03:44where like a Nigerian minister suddenly discovered that he had $4 million squirreled away

03:50and just needed to get your account information so he could store it in your account

03:54and you'd get $2 million of the $4 million and he'd get the $2 million.

03:58It was going to be a great deal.

03:59All you had to do was give him all your bank information.

04:01Yeah, how did that work out?

04:02So the more we can drill into who is really behind these things,

04:09the trick with those is trying to figure out who was at the other end of it.

04:12And the Secret Service did a pretty good job of investigating,

04:15but now anonymity is even worse.

04:19And therefore these frauds are practiced more prevalently and with less accountability.

04:27So your thoughts on dealing with the anonymity problem

04:29and how we can break through that to find the perpetrators more regularly,

04:32I'd really be grateful for.

04:34And thank you for the hearing, Chairman.

04:36Question for the record, we'll call that.

04:43Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

04:44Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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