When Janine Williamson’s uncle Larry Cook, a retired Navy commander living in Herndon, Virginia, died, she was appointed administrator to his estate and began receiving his mail.
On this Veteran’s Day, an elder fraud prevention advocate, Janine Williamson, has called upon Congress to address the alarming rates of financial fraud affecting American consumers.
This Veteran’s Day, elder fraud prevention advocate Janine Williamson is urging Congress to take action on S. 4943 and H.R. 9303, the Protecting Consumers from Payment Scams Act. “The American banking system is failing to protect its consumers from fraud. Last year, one in three consumers experienced bank fraud, allowing $10 billion to go to cyber criminals,” Williamson said.
Remember the Spider-Man meme where he points at himself? Banks and the federal government are in a similar situation, pointing to each other to solve the problem of online financial scams.
Older Americans reported losing more than $1.9 billion to fraud in 2023, but since most fraud isn’t reported, the actual figure could be as high as $61.5 billion, the Federal Trade Commission said in its annual report to Congress on protecting older consumers.
Written Testimony of Matthew Noyes, Cyber Policy & Strategy Director, Office of Investigations United States Secret Service Before Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions Committee on Financial Services United State House of Representatives On “Protecting Americans’ Savings: Examining the Economics of the Multi-Billion Dollar Romance Confidence Scam Industry”
Earlier in 2024, CBS News shared a story about the growing epidemic of overseas online scammers robbing vulnerable Americans. There is now an update on the billions of dollars being taken. CBS News’ Jim Axelrod spoke with a woman whose elderly mother lost her life savings.
Across the Hudson River Valley, the trees were turning yellow and red when 83-year-old Annette Manes began showing up at JPMorgan Chase & Co. branches, draining them of cash.
Her first try failed. The widowed social worker entered the bank’s brick building in the college town of New Paltz and asked to withdraw $39,000 in $100 bills — more than the tellers could scrape together. Over a week, she returned to Chase a few more times, taking a total of $169,000 out of her account. It was barely the start.
House Bill 692, or “Larry’s Law,” took effect today in Virginia. Larry’s Law lays the groundwork for financial institutions to train their employees to identify potential financial exploitation of senior citizens, report it to the authorities, and notify a senior’s trusted contacts of such exploitation. The law also directs the Bureau of Financial Institutions of the Virginia State Corporation Commission to establish training guidelines for detecting and preventing elder financial fraud by 2026.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a division of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, is sounding the alarm over challenges faced by elder financial exploitation (EFE).
In a newly released trends report, FinCEN highlighted more than $27 billion worth of “suspicious activity” across more than 155,000 filings of Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) data with FinCEN between June 15, 2022 and June 15, 2023.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a Financial Trend Analysis today focusing on patterns and trends identified in Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) data linked to Elder Financial Exploitation (EFE), or the illegal or improper use of an older adult’s funds, property, or assets.
A new law encouraging financial institutions to do more to prevent and report financial exploitation of older adults was prompted by a family’s discovery that their loved one lost more than $3 million in an alleged wire fraud scheme.