AARP Fighting for You Against Fraud

New York and Rhode Island: Gift card scam alerts

New York and Rhode Island created laws requiring businesses selling gift cards to post a notice alerting customers about gift card scams. This bill is an important step in bolstering efforts to curtail gift card scams and to reduce this source of criminal money transfer by educating consumers about the issue, helping them to identify potential warning signs, and encouraging reporting when residents are targeted by scammers.

Utah: Expanded funding for elder abuse investigations

AARP Utah has worked for several years to expand state funding for Adult Protective Services, lobbying division-level staff, advisers in the governor’s office and appropriations committee members, and providing supportive testimony for expanding the funding. In response, Utah recently granted an additional $317,500 to investigate cases of fraud, neglect or exploitation of vulnerable older adults. Utah’s investigators have been experiencing significant growth in their caseloads, and with this new assistance they will be able to give these cases more of the attention they deserve.

Wyoming: Allowing suspicious transactions to be held

Wyoming passed a bill that protects banks and other financial institutions from being sued for briefly freezing a vulnerable adult’s assets if they believe that person is being exploited. The bill creates a requirement for financial institutions to file a report with Adult Protective Services and law enforcement within five days of a suspected fraud against a vulnerable adult.

Oklahoma: Increased consumer protections against impostor scams

The governor of Oklahoma recently signed into law a bill supported by AARP Oklahoma that increases protections against government impostor scams by prohibiting misrepresentation of a state agency or affiliate through advertisement or publication. Many Oklahomans have lost hundreds of dollars responding to such “official” solicitations.  

Restitution for victims

AARP is also pursuing state legislation — a consumer fraud restitution fund — that would provide a means for a state’s attorney general to get money back to fraud victims.

Each year, attorneys general collect civil penalty payments from consumer fraud enforcement cases. When there are victims associated with a case, the money collected is restitution and goes to compensate victims of the fraud. Excess money, in most cases, will go into the state’s general fund. 

Under AARP’s model bill, excess money would be directed to a new fund, rather than to the state’s general fund. The state attorney general would then use the money in this new fund to pay restitution to consumers defrauded in other cases where the attorney general was unable to collect money from scammers to make restitution to the consumers for their losses.

There are few viable options for recovering money lost to scams. Funds like these could help solve this problem.

More ways AARP is working for you:

• The AARP Fraud Watch Network is leading an effort to fundamentally change how our country responds to the crime of fraud. The team is reaching out to federal and state agencies, other nonprofits, the media and consumers to change the narrative on how we talk about fraud victims. The goal is to grow understanding that fraud is a punishable crime, that the perpetrators are largely transnational organized criminal enterprises funding such atrocities as human trafficking, and that it is not the fault of victims who experience scams by deception. We aim to convince federal and state law enforcement to do more to pursue these criminals. Learn more by watching a Tedx Talk by Kathy Stokes, director of fraud prevention programs and lead of the Fraud Watch Network. 
  
• AARP, through its award-winning BankSafe Initiative, offers free online training to employees of banks and credit unions to help them identify and stop suspected fraud before any money leaves a customer’s account. The initiative has expanded to the retail sector to encourage frontline employees in stores to intervene when a customer appears to be trying to buy gift cards at the direction of a criminal under false pretenses. 
• AARP’s Fraud Watch Network site (aarp.org/fraudwatchnetwork) includes news on fraud and scam-fighting tips to thwart criminals. There, you can sign up for biweekly “Watchdog Alerts” by email or text to stay on top of the latest schemes.
• The VOA ReST (Resilience, Strength and Time) program, a collaboration between AARP and Volunteers of America (VOA), offers free online facilitated emotional support sessions for fraud victims.