Machel Andersen became one of the thousands of seniors who are a victim of a Social Security scam in the U.S. when she lost $150,000 of her life savings to scammers.
Andersen transferred her money to off-shore accounts in Hong Kong after she was made to believe that her social security number was used in a case involving a Mexican drug cartel and that transferring the money was the only way to keep it secure. Andersen soon found out that this was a scam.
“Maybe hearing my story will protect some other family that would’ve had a harder time recovering from something like this. Maybe my story will help scammers stop once and for all,” said Andersen.
Andersen presented her story to the Senate Aging Committee during their hearing on Wednesday to discuss the efforts currently in place to protect seniors from Social Security scams. The committee reported that Americans lost $38 million in losses from phone scammers in 2019, estimating that the real number is likely higher due to underreporting.
The Social Security Administration has been working to inform the public on this issue to prevent people from falling victim to these scams.
“We’ve rolled out, I think a pretty comprehensive program of educating our customers and our beneficiaries through the help of a lot of media, a lot of outside organizations, plus our own internal communications,” said Andrew Saul, commissioner of the Social Security Administration.
Saul cites AARP and Walmart as organizations that have assisted with broadcasting information warning people of the potential scams. They have also created television and radio advertisements, as well as placed a red banner on their website with more information about the scammers.
The Social Security Administration also reported that they are taking legal action against telecommunication companies. Inspector General Gail Ennis reported that they have filed two civil complaints with the Department of Justice against five telecommunications companies and their owners.
According to Ennis, these telecommunication companies, also known as gateway carriers, are knowingly responsible for allowing robocalls from foreign call centers to reach the phones of millions of Americans every day.
“These gateway carriers were notified repeatedly they were passing said calls, but they allowed at least hundreds of millions of scam calls into the U.S. telephone system and they’ve earned a lot of money in the process,” said Ennis. “In essence, profiting off of scam victims.”
These social security scams aren’t only affecting the victims. According to Josh Gershon from the Waco, Maine Social Security Office, the number of calls that the office receives from people that believe they are being scammed has impacted their ability to do their primary work.
“The increased call volumes prevent our agency from being able to conduct legitimate business from those seeking our core services. For one main office, this increased call volume lasted almost 22 days,” said Gershon.
Often, the scammers are able to make their phone number appear as the Social Security Office’s number. Gershon estimates that the volume of calls the office receives has increased by 400% to 1000% due to the multitude of people receiving scam calls.
Gershon also cited a problem that when people file an online claim about a fake call, they are skeptical of the legitimacy of the office when they call back to fulfill their claim.
“Those claims sometimes require us to follow up with them to just clarify some questions or answer that they provided,” said Gershon. “In many of those instances where we reach out to them by phone, they don’t believe that it is actually us calling even though they had just filed an application online the day before.”
Nora Dowd Eisenhower, executive director at the Philadelphia Mayor’s Commission on Aging, said that she believes that the primary way to stop this issue is to increase the public awareness campaign.
Eisenhower cites the Consumer Protection Bureau’s guide, “Money Smart for Older Adults,” a research booklet created to prevent financial exploitation among seniors, as a tool being used to educate seniors. Eisenhower said that seniors are the prime target for these scams.
“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,” said Eisenhower.
This has been an ongoing effort for members of the Senate Aging Committee. Ranking Member Sen. Bob Casey has proposed the Stop Senior Scams Act, which would establish a prevention advisory group dedicated to creating educational materials for retailers, financial-services companies, and wire-transfer companies.
“We know that con-artists and scammers should not be able to steal money from our loved ones, nor should they be able to steal our confidence in government itself,” Casey said.
The bill has passed the House and is awaiting a vote in the Senate. It will help implement preventative measures that will train workers to be able to stop these scams before they take place.
Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Aging Committee, trusts that the testimony from the Social Security Administration will bring to light the severity of the scams targeting seniors. Collins said that the combination of legislative, educational and law-enforcement efforts will help reduce these scams.
“My hope is that our hearing today will help heighten public awareness about this scam because the best way for us to prevent this same scam from ever again robbing seniors of their hard-earned savings is to prevent the scam from happening in the first place,” Collins said.
Advanced Reporting Times, Spring 2020 