Transcripts For CSPAN Hearing On Social Security Scams 20200203

recent victim. this is two hours. sen. collins: come tomittee will order. good morning. today, the special committee on updatin updatedng its 2020 fraud book. it lists the top 10 scams that have been reported to our committee over the past year. the good news is that the notorious irs impersonation scams, which have been the top scams reported to the committee for five consecutive years has , has fallen off dramatically. it used to be number one, now it is number seven. it is still a problem, but public awareness has certainly helped to decrease the prevalence of that scam. unfortunately, the social security impersonation scam, the topic of this morning's hearing, has risen to take its place. now reports of the ssa scam barely registered as recently as 2017, but then it began to take off, cracking the top 10 scams reported to our committee's fraud hotline in 2018 and becoming the number one recorded scam last year, as shown on the chart displayed on the monitor. this scam has resulted in $38 million in reported losses to americans in 2019 alone. i suspect that that is just the tip of the iceberg, because many seniors who have been affected by this scam are either too embarrassed to report their loss or don't even know who to turn to. the emotional and psychological toll for those who have lost hard-earned life savings are beyond measure. michelleear today from anderson, who has been a victim of this ruthless scheme, and i want to personally thank michelle for her willingness to come forward and share her story . because of her willingness to do so, i am certain that there will be other, older americans who now know to just hang up the phone when they are called by somebody who is asking them for money or gift cards and pretending to be from the social security administration. we are also very fortunate to have other terrific witnesses with us today and who are working very hard to combat this scam, and i will be introducing them at the appropriate time. today we will highlight the features of the social security scam that are key to defeating it. typically the scam begins with a unsolicited robocall with a spoofed collar i.d. falsely displaying the social security administration as the source of the call. now, naturally, most of us if we see on caller i.d. that the social security administration is calling us, we are going to answer the phone. the fraudsters making the calls will attempt to scare the victim by claiming his or her social security number has been suspended due to suspicious activity, deceiving the victim so that she or he will do as instructed, without question. now my own 92-year-old mother received five of the social security administration scam calls on her cell phone. fortunately, she was not taken in. she knew to call, me but they were so clever and so specific, telling her that her number has been compromised, has been used to commit fraud in taxes. there were so many details that she wisely chose to check with me to see if there could be any truth in it, but that is how clever and ruthless these criminals are. the scammer then attempts to isolate the victim, so that no one can warn him or her of the scam and break the spell. finally, the criminals claim that the only way the victim can resolve the problem is to provide sensitive, financial information over the phone and transfer thousands of dollars to them as quickly as possible. the speed and anonymity of gift cards has made than the scammers' current payment method of choice. to emphasize the need for urgent action and the dire nature of the victim's situation, the scammers often work in teams to impersonate local law enforcements, the irs , or other federal officials. in one particularly outrageous case, that we will hear about this morning, a criminal claims ed to be the head of the drug enforcement administration, and even suggested to its victim that she verify his identity by looking up his name and phone number at the agency online. to keep the victim under the spell, the scammers will demand that they cooperate with their fake investigation by the government or face severe fines or even jail time. they also attempt to isolate the victim by keeping him or her on the phone, uninterrupted for hours or even days at a time and , and by instructing them to not to tell anybody about the issue. what is going on. they will cite the confidentiality of the investigation. in a recent case reported by the "wall street journal," an oncology nurse in new york was instructed to leave work without notice, check into a hotel, and stay on the phone for nearly 50 hours. coached by the fraudster's through a series of transactions at her bank and credit union, she lost almost $340,000 to scammers over three days. educating people, particularly older americans, who are more likely to be the targets, is key to defeating the scam. in today's hearing, we hope learn more about how these fraudsters entrap their victims, as well as what the social security administration has done and plans to do to get the word out to the public, to consumer groups, to businesses, and to law enforcement at every level. we will also look at what should be done in response. in that area, i am pleased to note the late-breaking development that the social security administration, working with the office of the inspector general and the department of justice, has recently filed civil suits against temporary restraining orders in two cases against five companies and three individuals. that is finally progress. i also look forward to asking the inspector general about new enforcement activity to stop these harmful thefts. i appreciate all of our witnesses in joining in this effort. my hope is that our hearing today will help heighten public awareness about this scam, because the best way for us to prevent this scam from ever again robbing seniors of their hard-earned savings is to prevent the scam from happening in the first place. thank you. and i am now pleased to turn to our ranking member, senator casey, for his opening statement. sen. casey: senator collins, thank you very much. thank you for holding this hearing today to discuss these important impersonating scams. as everyone here knows, we are in a very important proceeding for the senate. at the same time, for americans who are worried about their loved ones being scammed out of their hard-earned savings, our efforts here in the efforts of -- and the efforts of others to stop con artists and fraudsters must be taken just as seriously. and it is for this reason that i am pleased this committee, this aging committee is taking on this topic as the first one that we examine in the year 2020. the social security impersonation scam is an impostor scam, plain and simple. in this case, however, the impostor diabolically is exploiting a public good. the benefit paid for and earned by hardworking americans. so we must not only be concerned for the sake of the individuals targeted, we also have to be concerned for the integrity of federal departments and agencies that are tasked with serving all of us. just last week, as we were preparing for this hearing, one of my staff members received this message from social security impostors. >> this coal is from the department of social security administration. the reason of this call is to inform you that there is a levy of enforcements under your name in the social security number and has been involved in a crime. this is an effort to suspend your existing social security number on an immediate basis. call us back as soon as possible on this number before we begin legal proceedings. sen. casey: you can tell from just that brief example how alarming this could be for someone, when they are using highly charged language to get that individual's attention. anyone, anyone could be a victim of this kind of crime. one thing we have to be focused on, of course, is tracking these people down, prosecuting them, and throwing them in jail, but we cannot just talk about that here, we have to talk about ways to prevent and , and that is one of the main purposes of the hearing. in this case, thankfully, my staff member recognized this for what it was, but not all americans are immersed in this issue every day. today we are here to make clear that no one from the united states government, no one from our government will ever make these types of threats. in some ways, as senator collins talked about, we have made some progress in the irs version of this by warning people what the irs would not do. we have to do the same in this case. so we need help getting this message out. every american, particularly seniors, must be armed with information. it will take an all hands on deck approach. the committee is doing its part by releasing its 2020 fraud book. when i visit senior centers in my home state of pennsylvania, i bring copies of the report with me. every single individual who wants a copy goes home with one. it is a real bestseller at senior centers, as long as we keep bringing those copies with us. this year, they will also, the same seniors, will also be going home with posters inserted in the book. it is in the back. if you take a look at that. we have a copy right here. i want to make sure that we use these visual aids. this poster, which is not huge -- that gives people a lot of information, so we are grateful, senator collins and i, and our staff helped us with those. that is another way of reminding seniors. we hope that this poster will be held up by the proverbial magnets on refrigerators or other ways to remind folks about this scam. public awareness alone is not enough. the federal government has got to redouble its efforts. i know we will be hearing about those efforts today. it is for this reason i joined senator collins and others in the committee in sending letters to the social security administration, the inspector general for social security, the other justice coordinating committee, and the federal trade commission, asking for help. i know that all of these entities are eager to help to engage. the private sector must also be involved. i have a bill with senator jerry moran, the stop senior scams act, which will help banks, wire transfer companies, and retailers to train their employees to spot a scam and to stop it before money exchange happens. passedmerce committee this bill last year without any objection. we are trying to get it to the senate as well. we know that con artists and scammers should not be allowed to steal money from our loved ones, nor should they be allowed to steal our confidence in government itself. we have a lot of work to do, and i look forward to hearing from our witnesses today in the proposals they have. again, i look forward to working with chairman collins, my colleagues on the committee, and others on the senate to stop these impostors in their tracks. thank you, chairman collins. sen. collins: thank you. i want to welcome senator martha csally and senator hawley in our hearing today. they have been very active members in our committee, and we appreciate them taking the time during this very busy time for all of us. i now want to turn to our witnesses, and i am very pleased to welcome our first panel. we have the commissioner of the social security administration, andrew saul. commissioner saul was sworn in as commissioner in 2019. he immediately began taking a leadership role in the federal response to the social security impersonation scam. he has a long-standing commitment to protecting and improving financial security for older americans, having previously served for nine years on the investment board which investmentirement board, which oversees the federal employee retirement system. our second witness will be gail ennis, the inspector general of the social security administration. inspector general ennis was sworn in as i.g. in january of 2019 after practicing law for more than two decades in securities litigation and banking enforcement. she has greatly increase to her offices and focuses on the ssa scam, and we are very pleased to have two such dedicated public servants with us this morning. commissioner saul, we will start with you. comm. saul: well, thank you very much, senators, for welcoming us here. as you said, as everyone said so far, the publicity, the education is really the most important thing, and by having this hearing, i hope we can further that goal. committee chair collins, ranking member casey, and ranking members of the committee, i am andrew saul, committee of social security. thank you for inviting me here today to talk about the scam crisis. everyone here has probably received one of these scam calls , and too many people have been victimized and lost money. it is a national problem. at first, we were not doing enough to combat the scams, that . that was shortsighted. the magnitude of this problem caught us off guard. america trusts our agency and our employees, and we can allow 't allow swindlers to erode that trust. in my first office visit, employees told me how these scams harm americans and our service. we have received more and more reports from people who have been tricked by or are worried about these calls. americans want our help on this crisis, and we also need to do critical, social security work , like processing benefit applications and making sure we pay people the right amount. within a few months of getting here, i made fighting the scams and helping our frontline offices a top priority. with inspector general ennis' help, we start fixing things. we have been working closely with oig, and i asked deputy commissioner black to lead our efforts to curb the scam and see what more we could do. now i believe we are on the right track. we are taking action at the national level to help frontline employees provide better service to their local communities, employees like mr. grosjean, a district manager in maine who will speak to you about his office's experiences last year before we had taken on this problem. let me tell you about some of the things we are doing. anyone who comes to our home page will see a bold, red banner with scam information, just like the one you see on the screens in this room. we are working to add messages to the pages people visit most often. here you see that this is from our actual web page on our home page. we developed an online scam reporting form to help oig get the information it needs to investigate and stop these crooks. since this form went live in mid-november, oig has already received over 100,000 written reports. we overhauled the oig fraud hotline and improved our 800 number. callers now hear about the scans ms and how to report them to oig online. we work with oig and major phone carriers to block calls that attempt to spoof our toll-free phone numbers from ever reaching the public. education is key. we are using email, television, radio, print, and social media, including youtube, facebook, and twitter. last week, we began rolling out emails to all 47 million social security account holders, and we are working to add a scam awareness message to the outside of our envelopes, which will reach millions of people. i made public service announcements that we released this month to tv and radio outlets across the country. i did an interview with aarp that focused heavily on the scams, and aarp plans to share scam information with its 38 million members. we appreciate that walmart worked with us and oig to display our message in over 2000 of its stories nationwide, and we are recruiting other organizations and agencies. we have issued to recent national press releases regarding the scams, and last month, we provided every member of congress materials on this scam, and i urge you to help us get the message out. everyone needs to hear this message. if a caller says there is a problem with your social security number or account, hang up. do not provide them money or personal information. oig.ssa.gov. this is a tough problem to solve. these scams evolve. as we work to shut down social security-related scams, crooks likely target another agency, just as they move from irs to ssa. our country needs broad national solutions. we all share responsibility to fight the serious threat to the public. if you have been tricked by the scams, you are not alone. these criminals are very good at what they do, and you should not feel embarrassed or ashamed if you are a victim. you can help protect other people by coming forward and reporting what you know to oig. i thank this committee for holding this hearing to elevate the visibility of these scams and for working on solutions. i would be happy of course to answer any questions. thank you. sen. collins: thank you. thank you very much, commissioner. inspector general ennis. i.g. ennis: chairman collins, ranking member casey, and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to raise public awareness and corrupt social security phone scams. for the better part of the decade, americans have been played by persistent robocalls and live callers who pretend to be government employees. too many americans have fallen victim to the scams believing sophisticated lies and threats, because they fear for their families, their livelihoods, and even their freedom. we have interviewed victims , including a 30-year-old mother of two in virginia, who paid a scammer $9000 in target gift cards, because she had no way to care for her newborn if she went to prison. a 75-year-old californian who was harassed and threatened for over a month by a fake police officer. eventually, he wired in totaling over $260,000. these insidious and pervasive scams have also impacted social security ability to deliver it's s vital services timely, and they have damaged the public trust and social security. them, we have dedicated significant resources to investigative efforts with working with the justice department another law enforcement agencies, and we have raised public awareness, working with other partners to reach as many people as we can with our educational message. i'm very pleased to announce that as a result of our investigative effort, the department of justice filed to civil complaints yesterday in the eastern district of new york requesting temporary restraining , orders, paramilitary and permanent injunctions against five telecommunication companies in their owners. as of this morning, one of the two temporary restraining orders covering three of the five companies and their owners have been granted, and we are hopeful the other temporary restraining order will also be granted. according to the complaints, these companies known as gate we carriers facilitate the delivery of millions of fraudulent robocalls every day from foreign call centers to the united states telephone system and ultimately to the personal phones of victims throughout the united states. these gateway carriers were notified repeatedly, they were passing scam calls yet they allowed hundreds of millions of scam calls into the u.s. telephone system, and they have earned a lot of money in the process. in essence, profiting off a scam victims. the civil actions is the result of months investigative work in close coordination with doj's consumer protection branch, which heads the trans national strikeforce. the u.s. postal inspection with apart in this effort and law -- including homeland security investigations, treasure inspector general for tax administration in the secret service. the ftc and the fcc provided data to support the investigation. i am particularly proud of social security's and oig's role in the collaborative efforts. our agents and investigative counsel advocated for this top -down approach to combat the scams. we took the lead and investigating the gateway carriers, and we have played a pivotal role leading up to yesterday's filings. we conducted a complex analysis of phone call routing, interview countless victims and methodically built the government's case. we still have a long way to go to permanently shut down these and other gateway carriers that facilitates can cause. perhaps more importantly, we need to ensure that we need to deter others from filling that void. we continue to conduct of their scam-related investigations. i cannot share many details, because our other investigations are ongoing, but we will update you as the invents unfold. notwithstanding all of our investigative efforts, i continue to believe that raising public awareness is the best, most effective way to combat impostor scams. no matter how many investigations we conduct or how many scammers we put out a business, there will always be more around the corner and they will devise new ways of scamming innocent victims. you can learn about our public outreach efforts in detail in my written statement for the record, and i will also take questions. despite all of our efforts, impostor scams are a bother problem than social security or oig can address on its own. we need a coordinated comprehensive approach that harnesses resources and expertise across the federal government for both investigative efforts and raising public awareness. therefore, we encourage congress to consider ways. we will like to see the law required gate carriers to know their customers and terminate service to scammers. to certain agencies allowing them to use for victim restitutions and consumer protection outreach. thank you for holding this hearing today. you are involved spurs increase attention to this issue and helps move us closer to a comprehensive solution. thank you again for inviting me to testify. i am happy to answer any let me begin my comments by thanking both of you for your efforts. i will tell you that when this committee first started becoming aware of this scam two years ago, we naturally contacted the social security administration, the ig's office and frankly we had a very difficult time getting them to pay attention and realize how important it was for the agency to be front and center in communicating with beneficiaries about the scam. that has completely changed since the two of you took your positions last year. i start my questioning by chastising the witnesses. in this case, i am going to start them by thanking both of you because you are the ones that have the access to the people that are most likely to be the victims and the means to meet them, such as through your messages to those who have online social security accounts, the public service messages and the enforcement work which i think is so important. i want to talk a little bit about the role of these gateway telecommunications companies because in a reading about the complaints that were filed just yesterday, i learned that the companies that had been charged helped to funnel some 700 million calls through that were scam calls. that is absolutely outrageous and they are making money from fraudsters. mr. saul, you talked about the tremendous out we see that you are doing an inspector general ennis, you talked about working on this particular case. i'd like each of you to comment on what is the reaction of the telecommunications companies when you go to them and ask them to know their customers, to crack down and to help solve this problem? commissioner, we will start with you. >> i think that the inspector general has much more knowledge about this particular part of the function. as far as i'm concerned, i think that that is a piece of the whole problem. i think the real essence at my job as commissioner is to be sure that our beneficiaries, our customers are aware as to what a serious problem this is. what i am trying to do and focusing on the assets of our administration is on the public outreach. we are coming up with new things, actually, every week to improve the outreach that we have. we are not where we want to be at but we have come at the five months a long way. i think we were not doing the job as i said in my faith meant. this really snuck up on us. this has become a massive problem as we all know and it is a very serious thing. i cannot imagine an elderly person or somebody getting these calls depending on social security just by their groceries and they are getting threatened that if they do not respond, they are not going to get a payment in the future. we have a really big mess here. it is not going to go away quickly. everything we can to, and i said this too aarp when i went over there for an interview and i said whatever help you can give us, this is great. they have 38 million members. we spent the afternoon recording a whole message of a lot of which was dedicated to the fraud. these are things i think in the and will make a big difference. >> i agree. >> as far as the carriers go i would leave that to miss ennis but the outreach is what i am focusing on, senator. >> inspector general ennis, what has been the reaction of the telecoms carriers? >> the major telecoms carriers have been very helpful with both us and other agencies. one of the major efforts is that they helped us with the do not originate calls. so if we can provide numbers that we know are coming -- the spoofing numbers for example where there are spoofing social security numbers, if we get information to those telecoms in working with the major carriers, they can prevent up to 99% of those calls getting through. they have been a big help. there are pockets of rural areas and other areas that are uncovered by telecoms areas and there are hundreds of smaller companies and the agencies are taking over the do not originate effort in contacting and reaching out to those other telecom carriers. they have sometimes more success than others. some of the small companies do not have the technology to help king.th bloc some of them do not want to help before the major carriers as i said were up to 98% to 99% blocking and they have been very instrumental in that. the problem is with the gate we carriers, which frankly can operate out of your garage. they do not need a lot of infrastructure, they do not need a lot of people. you can set up a few servers in your bra should be up and running and help transmit millions and millions of calls into introducing those calls from foreign call centers into the united states telecoms system and they get routed around through various telecoms companies and we do not work with that we are working against him at this point in time and had some success yesterday but they are the crux of the problem right now. >> thank you. i think that is very helpful for us to know. one bill that i have introduced would double the penalties for people who are spoofing calls and i think that would be helpful, as well. senator casey. >> thank you very much. i want to salute the work that inspector general ennis and commissioner saul are doing as it relates to outreach and education as well as the effort to target those who are engaged in these kinds of scams. commissioner saul, i want to express my appreciation for the response of the approach you have brought to some of the work that we have tried to do, in particular reinstating regular meetings with stakeholder groups and abandoning any plan to use social media to monitor americans with disabilities. i appreciate that progress. i do have an issue i want to raise today because it is substantial and urgent. i just gave you a copy of two letters. one of which you have seen, your agency has seen yesterday. this involves continuing disability reviews. the social security administration issued a proposed rule that in my judgment and the judgment of a lot of folks around the country would not be in the best interest of people with disabilities. i want to quote from the letter yesterday, signed by 41 united states senators. the rule involves when and how often the social security administration's conduct these continuing disability reviews. this rule, in our judgment would dramatically increase the number of reviews that the agency conducts every year and burdens millions of americans with disabilities with more frequent and unjustified reviews of their eligibility for one social security disability insurance and two supplemental security ssaome known as the benefits. we go want to talk about our criticisms of the rule that the administration fails to clearly establish the need for the changes, to fully evaluate the effects these changes would be beneficiary, nor does it provide an adequate cost analysis. i will not read the whole letter. in my judgment, this will would bury hundreds and thousands of americans who have a disability with more administrative paperwork and also cost the agency almost $2 billion. at a time when i hope there would be more effort made and i know we have talked a bit about this and more effort made to reduce weight time and to reduce the hearing backlog. we know in 2017 an estimated died while waiting for benefits and i know you are aware of that challenge. letters.ed the two this is noteworthy, 120,000 as of today the common period ends the 31st, just two days from now. but 120,000 americans have submitted comments to the rule as of this morning. i know you cannot comment directly on the rule because of the process but i would hope, i would hope you would not continue to pursue the promulgation of this rule and before all my time runs out i want to make sure i put two questions on the record. number one, i have an additional letter that you now all have. i know you will take a close look at it. it is a long letter but it also has 37 very specific separate criticisms of the rule. i will ask you to make a commitment to provide detailed written response to me with regard to that letter. the second question i have is, would you meet with me personally so we can talk about this rule and the impact it can have? i await your answer simple questions. >> of course, the answer is yes to both of those. i'm glad to meet with you, which we have met before and i stand ready to meet with you and explain our position on these. i would just like to say for the record to answer, we would of course addresses package that you have given me in a timely fashion but let me just say nobody here, including myself obviously is happy with the way the disability process has worked over the years. you are absolutely right, we have had people waiting, it is a disgrace. years in some cases to get hearings, the system was -- in the the severe economic downturn that we and 2009.8 we are recovering from it now and if you look at our wait time for hearings now it has dropped further than a half of where was at its worst. i'm not happy with this. one of the things i want to do is fix the disability process so the next time, inevitably unfortunately because of the economic cycles we are going to find ourselves hopefully not like it was in 2008 or 2009, but we are going to have a downturn and we are going to have more claims coming in and we are going to have more hearings and everything that put us in the mess we are in. we are doing two basic things and i am glad, i do not want to take the time up here but just to give you a little overview. the first thing we have done is we have done is ask the johns hopkins physics department to have done a tremendous amount of work for the department of defense and navy on health care disability just very similar to what we have to come in and to study a whole disability process from beginning to end. they are in the midst of their survey. this is not a big expensive consultant thing but very limited with very few, very bright people from hopkins and understand this and we are in the midst of their work. i believe we will have a report within the next two weeks and from what i have heard, they are going to have a major recommendations to fix the way the work flows and the process is work in the disability operations. >> we are out of time. >> that is one and let me just say the second thing is as far as the regulations go, we have regulations that have not been updated for 50 years, senator. the workforce has changed completely. obviously, health care has changed completely. i feel it is my responsibility to bring these regulations and the disability of procedures up to date and that is why i feel so strongly about the regulations and i am glad to sit down with you at any time at your convenience. >> thank you. chairman collins. >> senator casey raises some important issues. i hope you guys can meet. i'm glad to get back at the topic of this hearing. theuld like to call next on senator. >> thank you to senator collins and casey for holding this really important hearing. as we already discussed yesterday, we learned that justice department sought restraining orders against two companies, one of which was in arizona, that facilitated hundreds of millions of fraudulent robocalls coming into the u.s. from overseas, tollfreedeals.com., in arizona. they carried 720 million calls in just a 23-day period, most of which lasted for less than a second. going after these companies is a first of a kind action and i really applaud all the effort it took to get to this place. as was also mentioned in this wall street journal article, it talks about the challenges that pulp these companies operate out of residential addresses with a little more than a server and other basic equipment. i have said this and this committee before, there is a special place for people who are scamming our veterans, i have said that before and our seniors. and figuring out how to profit off of taking a where their life savings in this way. i am disgusted that there is an arizona resident who is doing this but i want to applaud the efforts. how do even find these of people can operate with a server out of the garage? if you do not want to tip your hand as to how to do that but can you share a little bit more ennis about the challenges to getting to identify these awful companies that are praying upon our seniors and what more can be done? >> the challenges are great, it takes a lot of just hard work from our investigative team. we have had agents working on this for quite some time. it is just a lot of analysis, a lot of tracking things down. the new online form that the agency helped us develop has been instrumental in helping us move this case along a little bit better because we get more real time information. prior to our doing, getting realtime information from the on and recording we had processing time and things took days to get to us. realtime information is critical because these are fast-moving cases because once someone transmits their money to the money mule to move the money around, if you cannot track that money mule you have lost the lost the trail. it really has been many, many hours of dedicated work from our investigators to talk to victims, to look at phone patterns and to look at the data that we are collecting to do this. what more we could do is -- we are a small agency as compared to some other law enforcement. i have 550 give or take total employees only several hundred are in the investigative side and so what we have done is try to amplify our forces by joining forces with other federal law enforcement and state and local partners, which does give us a broader footprint around the country. we have also developed a major case unit within the oig so we can coordinate these efforts better and work better with our law enforcement partners. we are doing what we can being a small force but a mighty force and working with other federal law enforcements to help us. >> great. thank you. namedtituent of mind charles mick natalie, not related of tucson call the senate fraud hotline and spoke about what he thought to be a social security scam. thankfully what scammers instructed him to buy and send gift cards he became suspicious, cut off communication and he told us about the story but unfortunately charles had already given the scam or his social security number. in addition to seniors giving up their hard earned life savings, giving up their social security number can obviously to identity theft and other ways to rob them. are you also, either of you, have any perspective on sharing how we are going to the root issues of maybe someone realizes it as they are moving down the road that charles but he already gave up his social security number? >> the problem with identity theft is enormous and even though they are looking to steal money they can be stealing and selling identity information. it is a little harder to understand whether that information may be used came from this scam or something else because there are so many ways today that thieves can acquire your personal information through phishing emails scams on the dark sell it web. as we investigate these cases, if there are things we can do to prevent further use of personal information that might have been acquired, we will do everything we can to stop it. we advise everyone to see information about what to do if you believe your identity has been stolen and how to best protect yourself. >> thank you. i want to applaud the outreach efforts you are making. constituents are probably not on twitter and youtube so these traditional ways to communicate are important. shopper to secret see what emails are being sent out. i had a couple about reviewing my account for anything -- maybe they want to spam. i have not seen anything specifically related to scams. email, pushing out on many seniors like my mom and those on arizona, they will read up email and traditional through the mail. i encourage you to keep going. the more information the better. >> you have any other comments? >> just to tell you this is a .ontinuing effort you can be assured we are just beginning. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. >> thank you for hosting. commissioner, let me start with you. i am struck by the fact these reports of scams with the ssa has displaced what has been the most prevalent scam in recent years, which is irs scamming. have you consulted with officials at the irs to see what worked or did not work for them in combating the prevalent irs scam recent years? >> i guess we are the lucky ones. it has shifted to us. i do believe this will be expanded unless we can do a good job in cutting enough. our people have looked at other agencies and justice apartments, the inspector general of course is working with other agencies and so is our people. a lot of the efforts that we are doing with various mailers, social media, all of these efforts and a lot of it is based on learning from other agencies. >> are there lessons in particular that stand out from the agencies that you have consulted with whether it is the irs, doj or others? >> i am not sure of that. i know that this whole program that we developed has been aided by other people's effort in the area, so this is not something that we have invented completely on our own, it is a joint effort. >> senator, if you do not mind i have something if i could add. >> please. we have coordinated closely with treasure inspector generals office and learn from the playbook. the online form that the agency helped us develop was right out of their playbook but i will say that some of the efforts that they have done which i do not want to reveal worked for them but the scammers are very inventive and the minutes something works they change. we have to play catch-up. what worked then may not work again today so we are trying to always day ahead of it but it is difficult. >> very good. thank you. miss ennis, while i have you let me ask you a couple of questions. let me get back to the senate's questions on telecoms. is there more that we need to do, congress needs to do, in order to enable partnership, protective partnership with the telecoms, they seem so vital to this? >> if you look at the complaints yesterday, besides what i talked about the major telecoms, what they were also helpful was some of the major ones put on notice that the companies where the subject of the complaints yesterday. looking at the traffic in noticing some certain patterns of the traffic and putting them on notices, they will continue until they continue to do that because notice is a helpful thing from a legal perspective on companies to receive notice and they cannot say we did not know. they have been helpful in that regard. i'm not an expert in law related to telecoms but i will say hold the gateway accountable would be something that we would look to and that they should know their customer. call duration and hang-ups and huge volume like we have seen in the complaints is a huge red flag so they have to be charged with looking at the red flags and knowing who is behind that and instead it is as though they turn a blind eye. i would hope that you could look at that and will be happy to provide any information we can, should you be doing something in that regard. >> that is very helpful. we will follow up with you on that. let me ask you finally, i received my office received numerous complaints about social security impersonation scams. i'm just wondering to what extent did the social security administration has or is coordinating with state attorney general for other long enforcement officials? >> that is probably an area we should look into more, frankly. we have been partnering with other federal partners but, and there are many individual cases around the country were local law enforcements get involved or general,te attorneys but we probably could do a better job with that and thank you for identifying with that as a place we can partner up. we are always looking for partners to extend our forces so we will look at that. thank you. >> thank you, madam chair. >> thank you. senator richard blumenthal. thanks, madam chair and thank you for having this critical hearing. we all know from seniors how robocalls, spoofing, fishing, all of the techniques apply to so many other consumer areas and are also used in this one. like senator halle is a former attorney general, protecting consumers particularly seniors against the scams can be a life's work. i introduced social security 2100, which provides far reaching reforms along with senator van hollen and my colleague from connecticut, john larsen. these kinds of reforms are absolutely necessary to make the cost of living adjustment formula realistic so beneficiaries can actually get the benefits that are more comparable to the costs they face today and additional benefits for medicaid and other programs are not held against them and the bill would keep the program solvent through the end of the century, ensuring security for americans to come. i've also included in this bill measures to assure protection against these types of scams. i think particularly in the area of enforcement with respect to laws on the books as well as new laws, enforcement is critical. yesterday, the department of justice may have been raised already in conjunction with the social security administration, united postal service and others announced their first enforcement against telecommunication companies operating in new york and arizona who are facilitating robocalls in india. the department of justice is attempting to block these telecoms companies from making or facilitating future calls. i wonder if each of you could comment on the efficacy of crime force mint and what needs to be done to improve it. >> thank you, senator. yesterday, there were several actions. we have ongoing investigation work in part with our federal partners. we are hopeful that there will the pike.ming down as i have talked about the gate we carriers, there is room to do something legally there whether it is legislative or otherwise because they tend to ignore and turn a blind eye to what was obvious when looking at traffic pattern. i think there is a gap there. i think all of the stacks and proposed legislative that is out there will all help move the ball forward in trying to combat the scams but at the end of the day, it is still about educating and public awareness because as i have said the scammers are very creative and the minute we plug one hole frankly they will find another one. all efforts that you can make will be welcomed by us in our federal law enforcement partners and state and local, as well. the best thing for us to do is to educate the public. better coordination among federal agencies is what happened to allow what happened yesterday to occur and anything that we can do to facilitate that is also very helpful. it is a force multiplier for small agents like mine and there are expertise within the federal government and brings all that attention to the issues and that is a wonderful thing as well. that, ifollowing up on think, the education part of this and the outreach is probably the most important effective way to bring this terrible problem under control. i have outlined in my report, which you have a copy of, the efforts that we have taken here and we have attacked just about, i think at this point, pretty media,ery media, social whatever we can do to get our people, to our customers. that is my responsibility as the commissioner to be sure that we have turned every rock over to be sure that we have -- we are effectively communicating with our customer. if you look at the program, which we did not have in the beginning, over the last six months i think we have vastly improved our outreach and any comments, of course we would like to hear but i think over the next months as this rolls out even further, we are on the right track in educating our customers. >> thank you both for your testimony. my time is expired but i think a full court press on increasing the resources for enforcement is vital because we all know that the best laws on the book are dead letter if they are not enforced. thank you both for your service. thanks. >> thank you, senator. senator kyrsten sinema, welcome. chairwoman collins and senator casey, thank you for -- when i was a member of the house i was proud to have worked with chairman collins to pass to senior safe act into law. empower financial institutions to report suspected instances for financial abuse. this congress we have introduced a senior security act to create seniorsrce to protect from financial crimes. soon, i will be introducing the improving social security service to victims of identity theft act, a companion to the bipartisan house bill introduced by representatives jon larsen of connecticut and tom reed of new york. this bill will provide identity theft victims with a single point of contact within the social security administration when a fraud or steals and misuse is their social security number. rather than ask victims to retail the dramatic story to multiple employees, this assign individual will be their trusted navigator across different functions within social security to ensure they are not fighting these battles alone. i look forward to working with the social security administration on this effort. my first question is for commissioner saul but i welcome additional thoughts from inspector general ennis if you have anything to add. i want to share the story of a constituent of mine, liz whom it mesa, arizona. in a single day, she received over a dozen unsolicited phone calls and threatening messages falsely claiming her social security number had been compromised and suspended. the criminal sought to scare lives into divulging bank account information. luckily, she recognize that this was a scam but she sharing her story because she is worried that not everyone would recognize it. identity theft and scams can be devastating which is why i have previously worked with senator tom scott -- tim scott on the protecting children from identity theft acting with a social social clarity administration to help families whose children's social security numbers have been compromised back when i was a member of the house. people areere scammed, on the way to help them financially recover to secure their identities after identifiable permission has been compromised and if not what barriers help them getting their life savings back or secure their identities again? senator, we are obviously facing a really serious problem here and i don't think there's a really simple answer. it would be easy to say, here's what we need to do and you make and everything but it's not realistic, so again i go back to the education process which i know it sounds very simplistic but i do believe in the end to make our customer and beneficiaries aware of what's going on is really going to do the most for identity theft and all the terrible issues you brought up. i want to tell you one thing though, one of our major efforts that is underway right now is individual recognition, we have to do a much better job and affording our customers the ability to have identity recognition and it's something we are working, on it's not easy because of all the legal restrictions we have. but over the next year or two i do believe you are going to see individualized and any recognition rolled out and our agency in a very much efficient manner. we are in the working on it and i will help tremendously in the issues a race so we are very aware of it. we will be putting a tremendous amount of resources in to developing the proper individual recognition systems. >> thank you. >> so to follow on that i think the ubiquitousness of these social security numbers as a form of identity in every element of your life, i know that we are trying to change and the faster we can do that the better we offer everybody and i think it should not be used as a form of identification. every day you transact in your life people asked for social or last four digits, that would go a long way. if we are able to do things, we can seek restitution from bad actors. if there was a forfeiture for agencies where fraud is the crime we could look to have a victims fund to restore some of those funds and those are some of the things we talk about from an enforcement perspective. >> thank you so much. thank you for hosting this discussion. i yield back. >> senator gillibrand. >> i just want to thank the gentleman in the ranking manner member for this, hearing we have been tackling this issue in the new york state constantly. i can't tell you how many scams and seniors are robbed of all of their savings, of everything they have left to devastating their families and i have talked to law enforcement and i talked to are federal agencies and no matter how many reforms they put in place the problem continues to rise. we now have international networks coming from russia, coming from europe, coming from all over the globe, trying to attack our seniors because they have a lot of wealth. i think seniors have over $1 trillion and saving so it's just a great source of money for them to scam out of americans. just a couple of questions, what have you seen, what successes have you seen about combating scams? what are the busiest challenges you face right now and would better coordination between agencies and the development and implementation of new education standards help, something that senator collins and i are working on right now. >> i think we need all the hope -- all the help we can get to educate our customer and to educate the american public, so whatever you all can do i'm all for it. as i said in my statement and we've talked about this this morning, we rolled out i think pretty comprehensive program of educating our customer and our beneficiary through the help of a lot of media, a lot of outside organizations, plus our own internal communications. it is never enough. i mean, whatever help we can get, it is a continuing process. we are in the initial phases i believe of educating our people , in my statement you will see that where we've outlined pretty extensively our current efforts. i would appreciate any comments, any senator of course has or any of the staff but i do think at this point it's a matter of time now to roll out the initiatives that we have begun and i do think they will make a big difference and educating the american public. >> thank you. i want to talk to you about a broader issue since we have you about cutting social security benefits. i had the pleasure of traveling all across the country, because i was running for president for about eight months, and i got to talk to people in iowa, i got to talk to people and hampshire and michigan and pennsylvania, wisconsin, i can tell you they believe that social security is vital to their life and death survival. i saw the need for both our seniors and people who disabilities and i would really like to work with the committee and you on ways we can shore up social security. i was very worried when i heard president trump that he was thinking of cutting social security and other safety net benefits. that was shocking to me given all the things that i heard across the country. i was also interested and assessing how we can help people with disabilities. this may be a subject for a hearing, particularly the caregivers. have you ever investigated whether or not you think it would be inappropriate benefit to get up minimal benefits for social security and people with disabilities up to an average of $1500 a month? and second, would you consider ever allowing social security benefits for full-time caregivers? >> so i think that they take my responsibility and social security and administration really affects more people in this country than anything and -- next to the military. it is the most important thing there. we support almost 100 million people every single month and some of these people depend on this to buy groceries as you said. half the people that receive old age survivors benefits have virtually no other savings, no other income, and without the support, they would be in serious trouble. i want to show you i take this responsibility very seriously. i feel we need to do everything up socialsure security system. i leave that to you guys. i mean, legislative responsibility and i mean that. my job here is to be sure that with the resources that we have we deliver them in the most cost effective, best way we possibly can. i am here to serve the beneficiaries and our customers. since i have been here in june, that is our motto. every single decision we make is to serve the beneficiaries and i really mean that. >> thank you, sir. >> thank you. >> thank you. senator rosen. >> good morning. thank you for being here. thank you senator collins, senator casey for holding this hearing. it's pretty funny i want to say and -- but the topic hand will tell you i was on the senate floor and i walked into the cloakroom and i was suddenly beingtold my number was deactivated whatever the language they're using is and i think that was the week we passed, or introduced the robocalls. so it's pretty ironic that even senators get these calls when we're here doing this. we could be having them on our phones as we speak. only person from nevada targeted by these and in about a unfortunately has the most cases, most reported cases of fraud per capita. identity theft with over 7500 cases reported last year, you just mentioned you reach many people every month so as a former assistants analyst i was thinking of how we could play again, this is kind of a two per question for both. we have some existing infrastructure, our banks, our credit card companies i wrote , some of those programs robust fraud programs, how can we take this statistics that we know on this, plug into their existing infrastructure to warn, identify, let people know. secondly, we know that seniors probably get most of their bills i would suspect in the mail, their utility bills. month they get an electric bill and there is a way to put a little flyers, things in there that are instructive that a senior who may not be using the internet may not be capable because of age or disability but everyone has to, is usually being an electric bill, water, though. are there ways in our national infrastructure that we can connect with this nearly 100 million people every month you are touching already? so i want to assure you that we are in constant communication with our beneficiaries. for example, we just came up as far as the scam with fraud that i outlined in my initial remarks -- we came up with a way that all our mailers now on the outside of the envelope, just something you referred to, is have the scam message printed, fixed to the outside of the envelope so that when you get a normal statement, you will have something like that. >> may be their other family members, other partners in the community that this would be helpful too. >> whatever we can do. this is an ongoing thing. we are coming up with new ways to communicate with our customers. as far as using the banking system and other private sector corporations, we have an act that we are partnering with, the financial institutions and banks as we speak, we are rolling out in june, where we are going to verify the social security identity numbers for the institution. in, applying comes for credit, using their social security number, we will verify for that institution that they are legitimate. this is a major rollout. it has been done with consultation with legislation and consultation and participation by the financial industry. those banks are paying for the technology to support this endeavor. i don't know if you are here when i spoke initially. individual identity is going to be one of the most important technological things you will see come out of the social security administration in the next two years. we will be spending a fortune on this to develop a proper individual identity. it looks like it will be through the use of drivers licenses. all hear more about this over the next six months to nine months as we roll this out but it is one of my priorities. so there is a lot going on in this area, you are absolutely right to bring it up senator. >> thank you. i think i am out of town. >> we were just partnering with the postal inspectors about a post that's gonna go around to warn of this. we have reached out to other retail partners. but to your suggestion, there is probably other utilities and infrastructures that we can continue to reach out to. it's about resources to do that but we are working that way with retail, banks, financial institutions and educational materials as well. >> thank you very much. i want to thank our panel of witnesses, the commissioner, the inspector general for all the work that you are doing and for sharing with us your ideas. we look forward to continuing to have a close partnership so that an end to this pernicious scam that is costing so many of our vulnerable's citizens, literally their life savings, so i thank you for your commitment for the actions that you've taken and for being with us this morning. i would like to call forth our second panel of witnesses. we will hear from michelle anderson, who joins us from ogden, utah. s. anderson has agreed to testify about her personal experience with the social security scams. she is accompanied by her husband, utah state representative kyle anderson. witness we will hear from today is from the great state of maine. justin. manages the social security and willice in maine testify today on behalf of the national's account city -- it represents social security field office managers throughout the country. he has served the social security administration since 2004 and has managed this field office since 2011. we are very grateful for your service and your being here with us today. finally, i will turn to our ranking member to introduce our witness from the commonwealth of pennsylvania. >> i am pleased to introduce a good friend of mine, who is also a great friend to seniors in pennsylvania. she comes from southeastern pennsylvania, i come from the northeast. years known nora for many and for more than just a few years, she has been working on aging policy. she works as the executive director and the city of philadelphia. she previously served as assistant director for the office of older americans at the financial protection bureau. she was the secretary of the pennsylvania department of aging. she brings a wealth of experience through her testimony before this committee. i have known nora and her husband jim for many years. thank you for appearing. >> thank you. >> thank you so much for being here today. chairman collins, ranking member and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to tell you to steal $150,000 from me and my husband, money we have worked our entire lives to save. this happened on december 6. i was distracted that day because one of my daughters just had surgery and i need to help with the grandkids. i noticed i had missed three automated voicemails from what appeared to be the social security administration. with messages telling me my social security number had been compromised. when i called back, a man who claimed to be joseph answered. he said he was with the social security administration. he gave me his badge number and told me i was to look them up online. i found out he was chief counsel to the social security administration. then he told me some bad news. a car registered in my name was found with blood on it at a crime scene near the mexican border. he said my social security number had been used to set up multiple bank accounts associated with a drug cartel and then he transferred me to someone who claimed to be a dea investigator. this man told me my family was in danger. that my social security number was being used by a powerful drug cartel and they would be watching my every move. he said any accounts associated with my social security number would be seized as part of the dea investigation and that to protect my money, i would need to transfer all of it to a safe offshore account. i wouldif i cooperated, receive a new social security number and get all of our money back. but if i did not, i could be suspected of working with the cartel. he insisted i act normal and not tell anyone. guysminded me both the bad and the government were watching everything i was doing. by the time i arrived at the credit union, it was too late in the day to send transfers overseas but i was able to combine all of our resources into one account. that weekend, i called the scammer back to see if there was another way to handle the situation. he said the only other option was my arrest. monday morning, i went to the other financial institutions where we had accounts to transfer all of the money to hong kong. the scammer insisted i kept him on speakerphone the whole time i was in the credit union. when the clerk asked why i was sending so much money overseas, i said it was for electronics, just like the scammer told me. that was the only question i was asked. $154,000 ini sent it to transfers to hong kong. in hindsight, i realized there were many signs i should have recognized indicating i was being scammed. but the scammers had me so worked up, they told me i had to be convincing or i would get arrested. they even sent me fake arrest warrants. i also wonder where my financial institution did not ask more questions when a longtime customer who had never executed a wire transfer to large amounts of money from other institutions and transferred almost every dollar she had to an institution -- to a bank in china to buy electronics. having our life savings stolen big b realize there are out bad people in this world but losing the money made me realize my life is rich in many ways. i have a great husband and a great family. i am truly blessed. maybe hearing my story will help protect another family that might have had a harder time recovering from something like this. maybe my story will help these scammers stop once and for all. i hope so. thank you for allowing me to tell my story today. >> before we go on to the next witness, i want to thank you for your courage for coming forward and publicly describing what happened to you. that you,re you personally, are going to be responsible for many other people not getting scammed because they will recognize the signs due to your courageous testimony. i know it took a lot to come forward and tell what happened to you, but you have done such a public service and you will save so many other people from going through the terrible scam that $154,000. of over i just wanted to thank you before we moved on. >> thank you. i hope so. >> thank you. collins, ranking member and members of the ofmittee, i am the president new england social security management association. on behalf of the national council and my colleagues back home in maine, thank you for the opportunity to be here today and discuss scams. our national 2019, council conducted a survey on impersonation scams and the impact on social security field offices nationwide. we received responses from over 500 supervisors on the impact of respective offices. offices responded their had received reports from the public about impersonations of a social security employee. 70% reported this was a daily reporting, with 50% 15 contacts in a day. all of our field offices have been affected by scams. in many instances, and person eight or legitimate to their victims as they mask the phone number they are calling from with an actual social security office phone number. after receiving the impersonation call, a large number of people contact our offices to verify the authenticity of the call. in some instances, it leads to increased call volumes of up to 1000%. the increased call volumes prevent our agency from being able to conduct legitimate business. office, thee increased call volume lasted for 22 days and the office was forced to change its phone number. the people contacting our offices indicate the impersonators threatened them arrestgal action, finds, or make promises for increased benefits. there are other ways scammers have affected our ability to serve the public. several offices reported receiving automated robocalls. in one day alone, and office received almost 2000 automated calls and during that time, the office was unable to serve actual customers by phone. in my own office, the general inquiry telephone line was used in automated call scams. these scams occurred on three separate occasions, each lasting three days. it reduced our ability to serve the public. today, you have heard from an individual directly impacted by the scams. this should not be considered an isolated incident. it has become an unfortunate reality to hear from victims each week. their stories have become all too common. these schemes are not isolated to maine. they are prevalent throughout the united states. supervisors in offices across the nation have expressed the same concerns. it is important to note some of the feedback are managers provided, describing implications of his social security implication scam. the need for members of the public to visit our office and delays in processing claims. second, some customers are convinced social security employees are behind the scam calls and view our staff with this trust. this erodes the confidence the company -- public as in our company. we will do our best to assist customers with questions related to the cause. thank you for the opportunity to be here today. we want to ensure maine residents and the american public has faith in the social security administration. ask you consider our comments and appreciate any assistance you can provide in assuring the residents of maine received the services they deserve from the social security administration without fear of compromising their information. i would be happy to answer any questions you have. >> thank you very much. good morning, senators. a special thank you to senator casey for inviting me to speak today. as a government official and public interest attorney d -- attorney, i am pleased to present ideas for reducing vulnerability to social security scams. mayor'siate the leadership and public safety for all philadelphia residents. this committee continues to shine a light for the needs of older people in the country. the executive director on aging in philadelphia, where almost 295,000 older adults live and work. locally, nationally and globally, people are living longer. longevity bonus demands a new approach in our way of thinking. philadelphia seniors are a diverse and culturally vibrant part of our neighborhoods and many live with family and loved ones and multi generational settings. four or nearly one in 24% of older philadelphians living alone see friends or relatives less than 1%. this can lead to isolation and vulnerability, and should be considered when developing interventions to help protect them against fraud. philadelphia has also helped a large percentage of seniors and overall populations in the cities of the country. i think a latest variation on telemarketing fraud that we have been working to prevent her many, many years. but i think we need to look at some of the solutions that have worked and look at the change in scams in the top 10 from the irs number one come from the social security scam being a want. many people now know that those irs calls that have been coming in for years are phony. the same has not reached people about the social security scam. in fact, i did not hear it until i got a call from senator casey's staffer coming t telline to call and testify on this. we just went through the open wherement for medicare, counselors are talking to older philadelphians everyday about medicare and what to choose, and often come the social security up.s world that was a missed opportunity, we certainly will be looking at the social security scam, looking at the materials, especially those materials created, in partnership with the federal trade commission, and the social security administration my former agency, the consumer protection bureau. they have already created an excellent piece it's a one page document come similar to what is in the back of your most recent reports. it is brief, concise and really helpful. now we need to get the word out. i also recommend that we pass act"stop seniors scam sponsored by the ranking member, senator casey, and the commerce subcommittee on trade. the act recommends an advisory council be created, that it collect and develop model educational materials for retailers, financial banks, credit unions, and why a transfer companies to share with their employees. employees are often at the front line. as we heard, that last moment in time when we could have that money from going abroad, never to be returned in many instances. we can examine the way the businesses can use their platforms to educate the public on scams. we can provide additional helpful information to retailers, financial institutions and wire transfer companies as they work to prevent fraud affecting older adults. they need this information. we can publica report information about the newly created models, as well as recommendations and findings from the advisory council. also we should look to successful models that are already out there. created money smart for older adults, in recognition of the reality that older adults have been and continue to be prime targets for fraudsters. it raises the awareness of many frauds and scams. that is important because a scam today, social security, which is a terrible thing. next year, it might be something else, in the following year, something else again. so we need to have a mechanism in place to educate people about those scams as they are changing faster than the fraudsters can change them. outreach and education that the federal government is already funding called senior medicare patrols are currently conducted in every state. it could be replicated with a focus on social security scams. this could take resources. the smp model is one of prevention. smp's have empowered medicare beneficiaries since 1997 to scrutinize their medical bills and statements. they say that reports and covers medicaid attributed -- from 1997 through 2018 were over 100 million dollars. total savings to beneficiaries and others were approximately $7 million. but that is an undercurrent, i'm sure. i'm grateful for your attention to this matter and i thank you for the opportunity to speak with you about it. other opportunities could exist with meals on wheels and other agencies on aging, that are already communicating with older americans, especially shut-ins. thank you. >> thank you very much testimony and your recommendations. mrs. anderson, in your written testimony, you mentioned that the criminals also tried, after they had received all of your life savings, to get you to remortgage your house. could you tell us a little bit about that? >> yes. they called and asked if i had a mortgage on my home, and i said, no. our home is paid for, we have no mortgage. he said, that's what abou -whats trade-off. we have got to secure your home. before it is seized. he asked what your home is and he told me, we need you to come up with 45% of the value of your home. he said what do you think your home is worth. he said, it means you have to come up with $200,000. he said, you will have to find someone who can give you that money or you will lose your home. i kind of just put it away because i was with the grandchildren, picking up one of them from preschool. i went about my dad. he called again, i said, you will have to seize my home, i don't have that kind of money, i don't know anyone who does. no, you have to start calling people, you will lose your home. and this was a serious threat. i thought i was talking to a d.e.a. agent at the time. i said, ok. i hung up the phone and called my best friend who i thought maybe would have that kind of money. he said, i don't have anything liquid right now, i am so sorry. then called me back a few hours later and said, i can get you $60,000 today, i can get you the other 140 on monday. i said, thank you. i had told him, i can't tell you what it is for, my husband can't know,and your wife can't and he was still willing to loan me the money. i am so grateful that i came to looknses and was able to some of this up online before i went any further. : did he ask you whether you might be being scammed? >> my friend did. he said, michelle, are you sure you are not being scammed? and i said, i am sure i am not. i'm not being scammed. sen. collins: was that because you thought you were dealing with a d.e.a. agent, with the social security administration, with trusted federal agencies? >> yes. sen. collins: so what do you think would have been helpful in stopping you right from the beginning? now, you were in a very stressful situation, your daughter had had surgery, you were taking care of your young grandchildren, so you had a lot going on in your life personally that was causing stress, but tell me what you think would have been most helpful. i know that at the credit union, they asked one question, and we passed a law that i wrote with claire mccaskill and senator nema was helpful in the house, to give immunity to banks and credit unions so they could those kinds of questions and not violate privacy laws. do you think further questions would have been helpful? what do think would have alerted you? >> i do, i think their frontline is a banks and credit unions. we have talked about it since. wase were many signs that i being scammed. in hindsight, i can see now. but the banks would have been ie frontlines for me because watch very, very little tv camera and a very rarely listen to the radio. so maybe it sounds like i live butr a rock, i don't know, -- sen. collins: no, you have a busy life. less fish i think all of us might be better off not watching television these days. [laughter] that is a joke, for all the news media here today. [laughing] >> if i had been asked those questions, i think that would have helped. to. collins: that is helpful know, because getting the word out is so important. mr. groshon, you have given us a whole different picture today in and are really important one. you mentioned that every single field office in maine has had to deal with the flood of these numbers.th spoof how many field offices do we have in maine? do you know, off the top of your head? >> i believe we have eight offices. sen. collins: so it sounds like this was overwhelming, their ability to carry out their day-to-day business of enrolling in social security, giving them advice, making sure they had the forms for medicare. is that accurate? >> that is correct. it was to different degrees and a different offices. i can certainly speaks to portland and auburn, they had the most catastrophic of those. numberses of spoof where our numbers were used on the caller ids for individuals. so that when they return phone calls, for all intents and purposes, it rendered them almost useless for the day as far as serving our actual customers in our local service areas. sen. paul: -- sen. collins: you mentioned another fact which i think is really imported. that this scam not only has heard so many people's nationwide, but it has eroded trust in federal employees and tose who are working so hard serve the public. could you talk a little bit about that as well? >> absolutely. there are a few different ways -- i talked about delays in processing claims. one good example is we are trying to get individuals that are capable of doing so to file certain claims online. those claims sometimes require us to follow up with them to just clarify some question or answer that they have provided, and, many of those instances where we reach out by phone, they don't believe it is actually as calling, even though they had just filed an application online the day before. often times that requires an in person visit. or anywhere that has large geographic areas, that could mean somebody driving upwards of an hour, and in the northern half of the state, over two hours to their local field office to have an in person interview. that shouldn't be necessary. so that is certainly one way that this trust is exhibited -- distrust is exhibited for us in trying to conduct financial official business. again, we make phone calls, and even though we just received paperwork from this individual and w they know they sent us something, they just don't believe we are who we are. and unfortunately for us, for us to identify you over the phone so we can disclose certain pieces of information to you, we will ask you six what should be private questions to you to make sure we are not as close in the information to somebody else. obviously, that creates a cut its -- creates a because theyroblem don't believe who we are. sen. collins: i think you brought up a very good point, that has not been discussed before. it, if you see on your caller i.d. that it is social security administration calling, then the person is asking you for personal information, how is the average person -- how is anyone going to be able to distinguish between whether this is a scam call versus a legitimate call from social security, following up on a claim that has been filed? >> that is a great question. i can tell you as somebody who has received these calls myself, somebody working in the agency, sometimes i can ask questions, or i have been known to call back. i have received these calls often enough that i will call a phone number that does not lead to a field office and does it to somebody or tenant be in a field office somewhere. we can ask certain questions about what office are you in, what phone number should i call, who else works in that office, questions like that. typically if you ask enough questions, they will start to stutter. i think asking to call back typically, they don't have enough good answers. that is not to say that, as was pointed out, the level of sophistication that the individuals have described for this problem is more than it would have ever anticipated or imagined. this is not somebody just calling you on you their own from their basement, this is a very well organized attempt to steal your personal information or finances. sen. collins: it is very sophisticated. i have gone way over my time, but i will just ask you one more question before yielding to senator casey. i apologize, but i know we will be wrapping up the hearing. that is, when someone does contact the local field office or comes in what has been , what stepsa scam do your employees go through to china to assist them? steps doin -- what your employees go through to try to assist them? >> so again, it will depend on exactly what their allegation is. did they become victim to some kind of financial exploitation? in which case we refer them directly to local law enforcement. we also make our own referral to the office of inspector general so they have enough information that they can work with and contact by individual directly for an investigative piece. if it is just a case of losing personal or identity information, we make the referral to the individual, to the federal trade commission, to the major credit bureaus, to understand what they can do to talk to protect themselves, but at the end of the day, the fact that we use the social security number as a form of identity is problem. unfortunately, a lot of those people come to us because they believe there is something we can do to help protect them. there really isn't a mechanism point.to do that at this sen. collins: thank you very much. senator casey, my apologies for going over. >> chairman collins, thanks very much. we could spend a lot more time -- i wish we could, but i am grateful for the questions you asked. i will be following up on the first line of questioning. >> i want to start with mrs. anderson. thank you for your testimony and your appearance here. as senator collins said, your example, you're coming forward is going to help a lot more americans, not just a few, many. have seen in recent american history, where sometimes one brave citizen coming forward demonstrated uncommon courage, can really change the way that we approach a problem, the way others will be inspired to be more aware and more vigilant. i just can't even imagine what you had to endure. what jumped out of your testimony on, i this it was the third page of the testimony, where you talk about your seven month old grandson with you in a when he had to go to the credit union's, that kind of pressure and trauma i think demonstrated the kind of assault and you are an enduring. one point you made in your testimony on that same page, and in light of senator collins questions about credit unions, or build that senator moran and i have been working on and got through his committee, helps sometimes when committee chairman's are working on a bill with you will return to get it to the whole senate, one of the things we are trying to do is provide an opportunity for more training for those working banks,unions, and the like. i am assuming that part of the response to what you had to live through was that kind of legislation. there may be other ways you can provide help, not just on a bill like that, but for other strategies as we go forward. i want to commend and salute your work and taking the time to be here. >> thank you. sen. casey: in light of that, i want to turn to miss eisenhower about the bill. in light of this testimony and also anything else that you want to the list or the itemization of the solutions, in addition to the bill, my bill but you spoke about, anything else you think we should be doing? one thing i brought it will say is that we are trying to do everything we can not to just simply focus on retribution, because if we do that all day long, we will not get to wowention and all that, but , when i hear mrs. anderson's story, you want to just seek vengeance, as we should. that is what law enforcement is for, partially and sanctionsm, so i hope that everyone who engages in this kind of conduct can go to prison for, not years, but decades. in addition to that, i hope that we can share some stories about ,hat works, what doesn't work and other solutions, so if you and anyone else in the panel wants to speak to that before we wrap up? >> i think aggressive enforcement is critically important. i think we all agree with that. it is hard to sit here and here ms. anderson's story and not want to throttle someone did it's just terrible. -- want to throttle someone. it is just terrible. we had been successful in the past working together and educating people. 10,000 people a day turned 65 in this country and are relying on the social security administration to help them through that process. of, do i claim social security now, do i wait later? it is a critical time in our country. the fact that social security is being used as becky imposter key impostere scam, means we need to pay attention to it. i engage with older people across philadelphia. we were are the firehouse senior center recently in philadelphia. that is a vulnerable population i am most concerned about. they rely on social security. some may be isolated. this term, isolation. =not real having engagement with the world as others d, they may be even more vulnerable, and so i think that is something we need to work on. your scamsstops in act, because it brings people together. it helps us engage, not just in education, but in education of institutions. you and i know that the individual now who worked at the bank that mrs. anderson went to will have that on their conscience. i am sure they know about that now. it is not good for the financial institutions either. they want to educate people and stop scams. so we need to help them with that. and that partnership is a key way to do that. sen. casey: anyone else? of theink on behalf management association, we would agree that public awareness is critical to this, and anything that can be done is helpful, and i mean anything. there are still a number of people who are not aware this is going on. thank you. sen. casey: thanks very much. >> thank you, senators. sen. collins: thank you sen. casey:. thes evident from hearing two panel's today, and the excellent witnesses, let combating these scams is going to take a coordinated, all hands on deck effort. that is what we are committed to doing. -- as i as a mission mentioned, the releasing our book, andk, -- fraud it has tips for seniors. i try to getcasey, these into senior centers all over the state of maine, area agencies on aging are also helping distribute them as is aarp. if we can heighten public awareness, we can prevent people from being victimized. but i don't think that we should underestimate the ruthlessness, creativity and pressure tactics that are used by these criminals. i called them fraudsters, but in fact, they are criminals. they are stealing money. and personal information, and that is just so troubling to me. the 25th hearing that our committee has held on , and that target seniors that ought to tell you about our commitment to stopping them, but it also ought to tell you about the infinite variety, and the persistence of criminals who perpetuate th these scams. so i am pleased to hear today that the social security administration and the inspector general are working with government, with law enforcement, with industry partners, with consumer groups like aarp, to raise public awareness and disrupt attempts in progress, but mrs. anderson, i will tell yoi, that there is nothing more effective than for people to hear a first-hand account from someone who is just like them. that is the most effective means of education. the department of justice for taking enforcement action. for many years, the department of justice said, well, these are too small-dollar, individually. fact, the latest statistics show that sunnis are losing close to $3 billion a year to these pernicious scams. again, that is the tip of the iceberg, because many of these scams and losses are never soorted to law enforcement, i hope that we are also encouraging more people to come forward, to report to law enforcement. our committee has a hotlin fraud hotline. beginning, this social security scam is now the number one reported scam to our hotline. we are going to continue our educational efforts, our and ourive efforts, attempts to encourage further law enforcement. one final point on law enforcement, a lot of times, as we have learned, these gateway communication companies are very small, they are easy to put together, and they are hard to locate. the scamer problem is may actually originate overseas. in fact, india has been a source of call centers for these scams. thus, we have to have federal law enforcement involved. down those close overseas call centers. that is really important as well. determinedr, we are to continue to work with all of you, to fight his ruthless criminals who are targeting our nation's seniors, and often those who are most vulnerable, who are living on their social security checks, who have very little by way of savings. do have any final comments you would like to make? just to say thank you for this important hearing and thank you to the witnesses. we heard today how worthless these scammers can beep -- how ruthless these scammers can be. we ought to continue our work to protect the sunnis from these criminals. the words that are collins used important to use, context, especially when these criminals present themselves as the united states government. i am glad that today we are releasing our 2020 fraud book gives seniors important information about these scams. we know that this can have information alone will not solve the problems. you have a lot of work to do. i mentioned my senior scams bill which will help better prepare and train retailers and brands and wire transfer companies who are involved in the fight. chairman collins, i want to thank you and our witnesses for making it possible to get the word out today. sen. collins: thank you. in addition, i want to find our hard-working staff, who put together this hearing and identified witnesses. they are very committed as well on that, and i find them. committee members will have until friday, february 7, to submit additional questions for the record. if there are any, we will you.rd them promptly to thank you again to all of our witnesses and all the committee members who participated in the hearing today. the fact that we had so many members drop by at such a very busy and it tends time that intense time for the united states senate, speaks very well to the desire of committee members in helping this effort to halt scams. this concludes the hearing. thank you. [gavel bangs] sen. collins: thank you. 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