Sen. Maggie Hassan on financial scams

The victims of scams can face huge financial losses. Last year, Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H, launched an investigation into the role of private industries and federal agencies in combating those scams.

Following a hearing on the issue, the Democratic side of Congress' Joint Economic Committee released a report outlining its findings. The bottom line? Federal agencies and private companies must do more to combat fraud and financial scams.

For more on how people can protect themselves, “Marketplace Morning Report” host Kimberly Adams spoke with Senator Hassan. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Kimberly Adams: Based on this report, a lot of Americans have [been the victims of financial scams].

Maggie Hassan: Right. So, in the last year, Americans have lost $260 billion to scammers, which is an extraordinary number. It reflects the fact that scams have become a global criminal enterprise, and they've really been supercharged by AI, which means that the scale is now industrial.

Adams: What steps have federal agencies and even Congress taken to combat these scams?

Hassan: So, the good news is that there are more resources and more attention being paid to scams at the local, state and federal level. The bad news is it isn't nearly enough. So, the Trump administration has stood up a scam task force. There are many agencies, at least eight, that have some sort of jurisdiction over response to certain types of scams, but they don't work in a coordinated fashion as well as they should, and there isn't even clarity around how much personnel or resources these various agencies are devoting to scams.

Adams: What about the private sector? What is the private sector doing to try to combat these scams? Especially since, as you mentioned, they're being supercharged by AI.

Hassan: Yeah, the private sector has a spotty record here in terms of responding and trying to prevent scams. Depending on the sector, we see pretty sophisticated responses. The banking industry, the financial industry, has had a longer experience with scams. There are also a lot of social media platforms that are being exploited by scammers, and they are taking some steps to prevent scams, but not enough.

Adams: You know, one of the things that really jumped out at me in the report and in some of the other research I've seen about scams is just how broad-based the victims are. It's not just one kind of person, and yet there is so much stigma around it. What can we do about that?

Hassan: Yeah, I think this is a really important point. So, a couple of pieces of advice for people is, one, if you are being pressured to act really quickly, slow down, take a breath, call a loved one, talk to a friend, and say, "Gee, there's somebody on the other end of this email, or who called me and said they're calling back later.” Just by talking it out, sometimes you'll realize that this is a scam.

But the other thing that people really need to do too is, if you get contacted with a text or an email, in particular with a link, close out of the email or text. Go to the website yourself to see if it's a real contact. And so those are all some pieces of advice I have. But the bottom line is, the federal government needs to take the lead here. [Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla.] and I have a bill that would centralize reporting of scams to the federal government and give the federal government more tools not only to help victims but to detect scams in real time and shut them down much more quickly.