▶ 0:13:49-- special committee on aging will now come to order. The biggest issues I hear about from seniors around the country is the growing threat of scams, fraud, and financial exploitation. Whether a phone call from someone posing as a grandchild in trouble, a suspicious investment scheme delivered through the mail, or an email from a government's or any jail time, they are targeting seniors with sophistication. Seniors are often especially vulnerable to this kind of fraud.
▶ 0:14:18For many old americans, falling victim to a scam doesn't just mean losing money, it also means losing peace of mind, trusting others, and confidence in themselves while navigating daily lives. As this committee has heard many times before, this is a multibillion dollar a year problem. 2020 five, americans over 60 losses, 7.7 billion dollars to scams. That is just scams that have been reported. The rise of artificial intelligence has offered scammers and new tools to proceed with criminal schemes.
▶ 0:14:48We must adapt and respond to these new threats. Ai can be used to make fraudulent videos known as deepfakes, in experts to fraud seniors in a variety of schemes. It can also be used to clone someone's voice, a terrifying development that has been misused in heartbreaking and evil ways impersonating a loved one. Has made existing scams more effective and lowered the barrier to entry for criminals.
▶ 0:15:17Real coding skill could not be done by anyone without an ai tool, the actions are highlighted within the fraud report. Artificial intelligence and older americans confronting new threats, unlocking new opportunities. I'm grateful for member gillibrand for putting the report together. The report available online includes helpful information, educating on the new threats of ai, and efforts you can take to protect yourself. Seniors live on fixed incomes.
▶ 0:15:45This kind of exploitation can be the difference between a secure, comfortable retirement and years of financial hardship, distrust, and isolation. That is where we are focused on combating fraud at any level. Seniors and families to protect themselves, they want us to fight back. That means understanding the new technology, supporting law enforcement, educating the public about how we protect americans. Understanding has to come first.
▶ 0:16:12That is why I introduced the bipartisan aging with artificial intelligence act of 2020 six. Senator mark kelly and roger marshall. The bill directs the national academies to study how older americans are using ai for its benefits and risks. Including the various scams and fraud we are examining today. Before we can protect seniors from this technology, we need to understand how it is reaching them. I'm grateful this effort has the support of groups like aarp, the american medical association, and medical psychological association.
▶ 0:16:43But only understanding the threat is not enough. Seniors need an easy way to report it. That is why senator hassan and I report scams.gov act, a bipartisan bill to establish a single federal portal where consumers can import scams, fight information about available assistance, and have the report to automatically route it to federal and state agencies. Seniors should not have to navigate a maze of bureaucracy to be heard. The report is only useful if law enforcement can act on it.
▶ 0:17:12This is why I joined senators and ranking member gillibrand to introduce the guarding unprotected aging retirees from deception act to expand existing federal grant programs. It funds specialized law enforcement training and provides tools for stolen conduct currency.
▶ 0:17:33That is why I introduced the national strategies for combating scam acts to require the fbi to develop a unified national strategy by victims, law enforcement, nonprofits, and the private sector. The federal government has to coordinate efforts to combat these complex schemes. Each bill attacks the problem from a different angle, but they all share one goal, making sure seniors are never left to face these criminals alone. Today's hearing is part of the effort.
▶ 0:17:59We will hear from experts on the ai policy, leadership and financial sector to stop these thugs and victims who have faced these crimes firsthand. We want to educate seniors about the rising threat of ai enabled fraud. To show them how to defend themselves and identify the policies federal government can act to curb the threat. Seniors deserve to feel safe when answering the phone and opening their mail, they deserve to know when they report fraud, they will be heard and action will be taken.
▶ 0:18:27Protecting them is a partisan issue and I'm grateful for the partnership I have with the members of this committee. I would like to recognize ranking member gillibrand for her opening statement. >> I appreciate the witnesses being here for such an important hearing. The question before us is not whether ai will transform our society, it certainly will. The question is whether we let it be turned against the people we love.
▶ 0:18:51Criminals are using ai to steal from families and seniors, cloning voices, faking videos, and tricking honest people. Americans deserve to trust their own eyes and ears. That takes clear rules, honest labels, and real consequences. In just a few years, it has become part of daily life for nearly every american, older adults included.
▶ 0:19:16Aarp found ai use among older adults nearly doubled between 2024 and 2025. That is no surprise. Ai holds real promise to improve seniors lives. In new york, the office for the aging is already connecting seniors with ai tools that fight scams, ease loneliness, and support caregivers. We should encourage those uses.
▶ 0:19:42We must also put comments and safeguards in place so this technology is never used against the people it is intended to serve. I often think about pope leo's first cyclical, magnificat queue monitors, his safeguard to call human dignity in the age of ai. Pope leo warns that technology is never neutral. The same tools that connect us can also be turned against the most vulnerable among us.
▶ 0:20:14Today, we will hear how that is already happening. Scammers use ai to generate deepfake images, clone voices, and launch phishing attacks that drain seniors savings. In many cases, ai did not invent these scams, it supercharged them, making old cons more convincing and far easier to pull off. Ai deception takes other forms, too.
▶ 0:20:42Tools that are built without real safeguards can hallucinate and feed older adults dangerously wrong information. Last year, reuters reported an ai chatbot that repeatedly insisted it was human and invited a 76-year-old man to an address in new york city. He fell on his way to the train station and died of his injuries.
▶ 0:21:10This year, the new york times reported an ai tool gave a 75-year-old man bad medical advice, and he delayed his cancer treatment because of it. Even one case of ai fueled deception is too many. We can choose differently. We can decide how ai shapes our communities, families, and the way we care for one another.
▶ 0:21:32This morning I sent a letter to the leading ai companies, -- to the ai companion companies, including openai, meta-, and x, asking them to explain how they safeguard their products for older adults and people with disabilities. I was glad to partner with senator kelly on this very letter and I expect these companies to respond promptly and fully. That letter is just one step, it can't be the last.
▶ 0:22:00We need a bipartisan framework to govern ai, one that ease pope leo's counsel by putting dignity first and protecting the most vulnerable. We must also confront the scams targeting our seniors head on. I've introduced two bipartisan bills to do exactly that. The national strategy for combating scams act, and the guard act.
▶ 0:22:24Both have federal agencies and law enforcement, both give federal agencies and law enforcement the tools they need to coordinate and to protect consumers from fraud. I look forward to working with chairman scott and my colleagues on this committee to ensure our older adults are protected from ai's harms and share in their benefits. >> thank you ranking member, I would like to welcome our witnesses to help the committee understand the landscape of ai driven fraud and ensure expenses dealing with these type of scams.
▶ 0:22:56I would like to recognize Dr. david amo david amron, founder of the roxbury institute. He joins us because he saw firsthand how the technology can be turned against us. Scammers use ai to create a deepfake video endorsing a fake miracle cream, a party never endorsed. Thank you for being here, you may begin your testimony.
▶ 0:23:23>> chairman scott, ranking member gillibrand, distinguished members of the senate, committee on aging. Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. I'm the founder and medical director of the roxbury institute in los angeles, california, founder and chair of -- a society. For more than three decades, I dedicated my career to treating patients with lymphedema, a chronic and often misunderstood disease that affects millions of women worldwide.
▶ 0:23:52I'm widely recognized as the pioneer of surgery in north america advancing treatment, educating patients, and advocating on behalf of patients to help them take insurance coverage for their care. As physicians, trust is the foundation of everything we do. Patients rely on us during some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives. I've spent more than three decades building that trust, artificial intelligence to exploit in a matter of moments.
▶ 0:24:21Although I know ai was rapidly evolving, I never imagine how quickly it could be weaponized to see patients until it happened to me. We first became aware of the scam in the summer of 2025 with reports increasing by early september. Patients began contacting the roxbury institute after seeing a video that appeared to show me endorsing a so-called miracle cream. Miracle liberty mcqueen. Many forwarded us the video.
▶ 0:24:49Some had already purchased the product before it was fraudulent, including some of my own patients. The video was disturbingly realistic. Scammers used actual footage from my youtube channel and combined it with fully integrated ai generated likenesses of my voice and colleague, the head of research and director at the roxbury institute.
▶ 0:25:13As well as ai generated celebrity images and stolen media logos to create polished advertisement that appeared entirely legitimate. As soon as we recognized it as a deepfake, my team immediately issued public advisories to warn patients, clarify neither doctor or herbs or I had any involvement and help our community recognize and report ai generated medical impersonations.
▶ 0:25:42Our web developer and digital marketing strategist began investigating the scam as soon as patients alerted us. Before taking action, he investigated the company behind the products and quickly confirmed it was not a legitimate medical entity. He reported every version of the advertisement, the fraudulent accounts responsible for publishing it, the domain registrars hosting the websites, and the major search engines directing consumers to the scam.
▶ 0:26:10Yet each time one version was removed, another quickly appeared over the course of 11 days. Despite these persistent efforts, the scam kept on recurring. It became clear existing reporting scams -- reporting them was not simply enough to stop a coordinated ai enabled fraud campaign. After exhausting every avenue available to us, we realized we needed to bring national attention to what was happening.
▶ 0:26:37We reached out to major television networks because we believe public awareness might accomplish what traditional reporting mechanisms could not. The today show responded, conducted its own investigation, and ultimately brought to scam to a national audience. The today show attempted to identify and contact the individuals behind it as we had. Like us, they found no legitimate company, no account representative, and no one willing to respond.
▶ 0:27:07The fraudulent video was eventually removed, but previous versions of the scam have, underscoring how difficulties ai enabled fraud schemes are to eliminate. What disturbed me most was not somebody misused my image, it was known scammers had used my name and reputation to deceive the very people I had dedicated my career to helping and protecting.
▶ 0:27:29The consequences extend far beyond financial loss, patients may delay legitimate medical care for a progressive disease like loop edema, place their trust in an unproven product and services and allow the condition to worsen. Perhaps most damaging, the scams erode the trust patients place in their positions. Once that trust is broken, patients no longer know who they can trust.
▶ 0:27:55Artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed the landscape of fraud, given scammers the ability to -- trust positions, fabricate endorsements, and to see patients on an unprecedented scale. What happened to me is not an isolated incident. Discovering images and voices and their work -- professional reputations are being used without the knowledge or consent to promote products. They have never re-out of the -- evaluated, recommended, or even heard of. The danger is clear.
▶ 0:28:24The scams put at risk and undermine the credibility of the medical profession. Older americans are especially vulnerable because they often place tremendous trust in their physicians. Many also rely on the internet, including social media and online search results, to learn about medical conditions, make them especially susceptible, when content appears to come from trusted medical professionals. When they see a realistic online video, they trust a physician recommending they make treatment, they have little reason to question the authenticity.
▶ 0:28:56That is precisely what makes today's a generation think of such a powerful tool for deception. The problem is no longer theoretical, it is happening now, and the consequences for patient safety, medical ethics, are profound. If we do not act, more vulnerable americans will become victims. So for sickly ar fraud.
▶ 0:29:18I urge congress to strengthen protections against ai generated per station scams, improve the ability for those who create and distribute them, and ensure our loss keep pace with technology there can be used too easily exploit trust for financial gain. Thank you for testifying and I look forward to answering questions. >> thank you, sorry that happened to you.
▶ 0:29:42I would like to introduce deborah del mastro, a bay area mother who became the face of the ai voice scam after they used her artificial intelligence to mimic her daughter's voice. She's a san francisco bay area senior, voice coach, and musician for voice trauma and trumpet over three decades. Sharing her love of music with her community. Thank you for being here, please begin your testimony.
▶ 0:30:10>> I'm very honored to share my story with you also. I think my main goal is to let people know that these criminals have technology that we don't know about. I called this the worst day of my life, it was may 14. Thursday, may 14. The day started with a phone call in the morning.
▶ 0:30:41My husband and I were at the breakfast table. I answered a phone call from a local number. I get a lot of my work that way, I didn't think anything of it. I answered and said hello, and a male voice said hello, who is this? I said who is this? Who said someone you need to talk to, I have your daughter. Is your dart are prone to panic attacks?
▶ 0:31:12Again, I'm sitting in my pajamas at the breakfast table. And I said my daughter, yes. And he put on -- I could hear a commotion in the background, he put on her voice, now I know her voice, and not her, saying I am so sorry, I'm so scared, crying and sobbing. It was absolutely her voice.
▶ 0:31:41Then he got back on and said he had 10 pounds of cocaine in his trunk and my daughter saw a deal go down that she should not have seen, and that his boss was a mexican drug cartels, and his boss told him to take her, and he says his cost doesn't care who he kills, and that he wants $20,000 for the return of my daughter, or he will sell her for what is between her legs.
▶ 0:32:11And he will kill me, my family, and my daughter if I don't do this if I don't have that money. And we don't have that money. We just don't. Incredulous, my jaw dropped. I could not speak to my husband. I quickly got dressed. I had him on the phone the entire time. As I left the house, I mouth to my husband that she had been kidnapped.
▶ 0:32:40He did not know where I was going or what was going on at all. But he could tell it was serious. This man was barking orders to me about having the money right away, he told me to bring a phone charger and not to let my phone die, or else I would never see my daughter again. He made demands for the next five and a half hours.
▶ 0:33:07First to send $2000 by western union to mexico. He wanted $2500, I told him I did not have it. He told me to go to a local walmart, and that is where I use money gram to send $2000 to mexico. I took a picture of it and texted him the receipt as he asked. Then he told me there was a problem with it, and error, and I needed to send the money again. I told him I did not have the money.
▶ 0:33:43And he said I would be reimbursed, it would be fine, just send it again. I said I did not have it. He wanted another $500. I said all right. I found in my panic I locked my keys in the car. Then I had to, has husband to come pick me up, which also brought his bank accounts into play.
▶ 0:34:05My husband drove us around with his phone on gps and my phone on with this person listening to every moment of it. He ran us around to a bunch of different places. 20 miles away to another walmart .
▶ 0:34:29Twice we were on the phone with this awful man the entire time, listening for every sound, asking where I was, if I was silent, threatening my families lives and telling me he could sell my daughter right now. I tried our local safeway to send it, it would not work. Went to walgreens, he told me not to speak during the entire time I was in any store doing these payments, and to leave the phone on so he could hear everything that happened.
▶ 0:34:58I took pictures of the receipt and texted him, now a different number. All the time he was threatening if I did not hurry, there would be problems. He said he was going to drop my daughter off, then he was going to drop her in another place, as we were driving to different places and sending money -- we sent $5,400 altogether in four different transactions.
▶ 0:35:30When it was over, it was about five and a half hours, by the time they probably figured we did not have any more money to give them, he ended it. He said it is over. We were now 20 miles away at another walmart. He said he had released my daughter in front of the walmart and we were there. He said go get her, go pick her up or call her. And hung up. I jumped out of the car, she was not there.
▶ 0:36:00I was in a total panic. Then I called her, and she answered the phone and said what is going on? And I was never so happy in my life to be scammed, so relieved, and furious that I had fallen for this. I heard her twice, I had to be silent even in the car driving.
▶ 0:36:26There was one time I muted the phone so I could speak to my husband and he started screaming no funny business or I would never see her again. He threatened to harm us, saying he had kids and he would kill anyone that got in the way of his kids were at risk, and his boss did not care about anyone. He talked how he would sell sarah for $20,000 or she could pay her way in other ways, hinting she would be six traffic.
▶ 0:36:54He was doing us a favor because we were respectful of him. I had asked many times if I can speak to my daughter, make sure she was ok. He had me speak to her again after I think the third amount was sent. He told me exactly what I was to say to her, that this nightmare is almost over, you will pick her up as soon as possible. I did that. I said exactly that.
▶ 0:37:23And my daughter's voice said I'm so sorry, mom, I love you. After that, another man's voice came on who was much more hard, who threatened harm to us and sarah if we did not come up with more money. That is when we sent another $1200, the last of our available accessible money. It was the worst day of my life, and my husband.
▶ 0:37:54Some people are just so broken. I am a navy veteran. I'm usually very calm and collected in the face of crisis. I'm the person that runs to the fire, not away from it. And I was totally convinced that this was my daughter's voice.
▶ 0:38:19It is the perfect scam, to talk to family and tell them that you are going to kill them, sell them, that is the perfect scam, because you are willing to do anything to get your daughter back. I spent most of that time in silence with my husband driving back and forth trying to figure out how to help her get through her life after, and thank god it was a scam.
▶ 0:38:53But I had no idea that this was a possibility, that ai could clone the voice. When I called my daughters, both my kids work in I.t., my daughter said that was an ai clone of my voice, she knew it immediately. I did not know. So there needs to be awareness about this and guardrails, and we need to find out how to protect those of us who don't know about this.
▶ 0:39:25Thank you for letting me testify. Appreciate you. >> and we are sorry this happened to you. >> thank you. >> executive vice president for risk, fraud, cyber security at the bankers association. Cyber security, physical security, immigration security.
▶ 0:39:55Thank you for being here, please begin your testimony. >> chairman scott, ranking member gillibrand, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. I think it proves why we are here today, to protect americans from these people doing these things.
▶ 0:40:14The central point in my testimony is straightforward per generative ai is not replacing digital scanners, it is making impersonation dramatically easier with very little technical skill, using personal information gathered online to make the scam feel authentic. Requiring significant time, skill, and resources, cannot be done quickly, cheaply and at scale.
▶ 0:40:38These crimes do not succeed because older americans are unsophisticated, they succeed because professional criminals are very good at exploiting trust, fear, urgency, and authority. Ai gives them powerful tools to do that. The recent fbi warning shows how the threat is evolving. That be are reported criminals are using ai generated videos, senior fbi officials, fake social media profiles, and spoofed government websites to impersonate the internet crime complaint center and target prior victims.
▶ 0:41:07The premise to recover stolen money becomes the mechanism for speaking even more. Bank impersonation scams are another serious example. The fcc warned the highest losses of any impersonation scam category and stressed one rule, banks will never ask you to move money to protect it. A survey of 14 large banks found identified bank impersonation scams rose 150 percent from 2024 to 2025.
▶ 0:41:32The threat is growing rapidly, and much of the deception occurs before a bank ever sees the transaction. Banks are responding aggressively, using ai and advanced analytics to recognize behavior that may indicate fraud and to interview before money leaves an account. Technology is only part of the defense. A trained banker may notice a long-time customer suddenly trying to send a large payment while appearing frightened, secretive, or coached by someone on the phone.
▶ 0:41:58In those moments, human judgment and the relationship between banker and customer can be just as important as any other. Education is equally critical. One of the 25 hundred banks that participated in the av foundation say thank for seniors program. The aba and fbi have developed materials addressing deepfake scams. We are expanding trainers to help bankers when a customer is drawn into a scam or story.
▶ 0:42:24For consumers, the answer is not to become experts at spotting deepfakes, the better approach is to react -- seniors who pause before acting, verify the story through a separate trust to channel, and consider establishing trusting a private password for real emergencies. If it is a secret, it is a scam. Criminals depend on urgency and not isolation, they don't want the victim talking to a family member, law enforcement.
▶ 0:42:51We also need to recognize where in the scam lifecycle banks enter the picture. We train consumers not to send money to someone they don't know and trust. The problem is by the time they are ready to send the money, they often believe they know and trust the person on the other end. Generative ai is making it easier for criminals to manufacture that trust. Increasing their accessible tools can alter a scammer's appearance in real time video conversation to match the persona they are impersonating.
▶ 0:43:19Ai can clone voices and transit conversations in real time, allowing criminals to communicate convincingly with an american victim. By the time the bank sees the payment, the relationship may have been developing for days, weeks, even months through telecommunication networks, social media, online advertising, or messaging platforms. The victim is no longer sending money to a stranger, in their mind they are sending it to someone they know and trust.
▶ 0:43:45Will continue to intervene where we can, but responsibility has to extend to the tele-communications and online platforms where the impersonation begins, and trust is manufactured. The best fraud prevention is to stop the criminal from reaching and deceiving the victim in the first place. The written testimony lays out a policy agenda. We need clear national leadership, which is why we are proposing a national office for scam and fraud prevention.
▶ 0:44:07We urge congress to enact the scammer led by senator gallegos and mario saw online platforms have meaningful obligations to verify advertisers and rapidly respond to fraudulent hands. Stronger telecomm safeguards are needed to keep criminals off of networks and restore trust and caller id. Federal support can help state and local authorities build specialized financial crime capacity. Older americans should not be expected to distinguish on their own and in real time between a loved one at clone voice.
▶ 0:44:36Or between their bank in a criminal using their bank's name and telephone number. Banks will continue investing, educating, intervene, and helping victims recover, but durable progress requires a part -- every part of the scam ecosystem to prevent deception before the victims send money. Thank you and I look forward to your questions. >> I would like to introduce mathew ferrara, director in cromwell and cybersecurity group.
▶ 0:45:04Helping clients address complex regulatory managers at the intersection of an advanced technology, national security crisis management. Thank you for being here. Please begin your testimony. >> chairman scott, member -- members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today on this critical issue. I am a partner at the law firm or a council on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and regulation.
▶ 0:45:29I also previously served in government, most recently as senior counsel for cyber and emerging technology to the secretary of homeland security and previously as a U.S. intelligence officer. I have been working on the policy and legal issues related to ai generated media where deepfakes since 2019, I appeared in my personal capacity today, my views did not represent those of my firm or any of my clients. Let me begin with a rhetorical question.
▶ 0:45:57How often today heavily relied upon the voice of a loved one where the image of a trusted figure before sharing something of value. Perhaps your daughter called from college to ask for a few hundred dollars and you sent it. Maybe you have a video call with a tech support worker and share your account information. You may scroll through media tonight and see a doctor or an herbal supplement and decide to purchase it.
▶ 0:46:23Now consider, what if those representations were all fake, not your daughter, not the technicians, not a doctor, but voices and images forced by ai? Welcome to the world of deepfakes. A world we have been living in for several years where ai can create realistic audio, images, and videos that appear true to life but are forgeries. Nearly anyone can access this technology, often for free, and their creations can be sent around the world instantly.
▶ 0:46:53While I had generated media has legitimate creative uses, deepfakes can supercharge scams and cyber frauds. Especially those targeting senior citizens. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, financial losses from deepfake and able fraud exceeded 200 million dollars, according to an industry report. Generative ai could enable far losses to reach $40 billion in the U.S. alone by 20 to seven. Older adults bear a disproportionate burden.
▶ 0:47:25They are five times more likely to lose money in the scam than younger people. According to the aarp, the top digital risk for seniors is scams and frauds. The forms these scams take are varied. For example, fraudsters use ai to generate fake ads featuring the likenesses of celebrities and trusted professionals to sell a range of goods from cryptocurrency to medical purists, as we've heard.
▶ 0:47:52Families -- scamming family members, their love ones have been kidnapped and ransom, as was testified a few minutes ago. And scammers can use ai generated imagery to build emotional relationships with victims before stealing their money and personal information. So what can we do about it? I offer three recommendations.
▶ 0:48:17We must prioritize education and awareness for all digital media consumers, especially seniors. We should deliver that education through trusted community channels like senior centers, physicians, community groups, houses of worship. We must cultivate the appropriate level of skepticism and of discernment. Given the delusion of ai generated media that has and will come, the surest defender against deepfake dupes lies between our ears.
▶ 0:48:46Second, we should seek greater coordination across federal and save agencies and with industry. Existing laws already give regulators meaningful tools. The principle applies. If it is legal without ai, it is illegal with ai, better ensuring policymakers, law enforcement, and industry can improve efficiency, separate threat mitigation, and bold effective enforcement. We should invest in technology.
▶ 0:49:15We should promote the use of and detection tools and prominence technology that ties media as human created or ai generated, integrating those tools into our daily lives. Much as we do with email and spam filters, it can help all americans, especially seniors, telefax from fakes. I want to close on this note. We should not succumb to cynicism. New technologies married to ancient devices require responses.
▶ 0:49:46But they should neither slake our appetite for creation or our faith that we can with the right steps navigate the digital world with confidence. Thank you and I look forward to your questions. >> thank you. I would like to recognize ranking member of gillibrand to introduce the next witness. >> I want to introduce ben winters. He is the director of ai and privacy at the consumer federation of america.
▶ 0:50:12Where he leads the faa's advocacy efforts regarding -- regarding consumers. Previously Mr. whitcher has worked as an advisor for the civil rights division of the department of justice and senior counsel at the electronic private information center. >> good afternoon, chair scott, ranking member gillibrand, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today.
▶ 0:50:38I am ben winters, at a nonprofit organization serving consumers since 1960 eight. Online scam losses have been at an unacceptable rate for years but have exploded since generative ai became commercially available and aggressively marketed in 2023. Losses have ballooned from $3.5 billion in 2019 to $12.5 billion in 2023, to 21 billion dollars last year in 2020 five.
▶ 0:51:07That is just to the fbi, just who reported, and just online scams. Cfa estimates that the real number is closer to 150 billion dollars lost just last year with americans over 60 losing $55 billion. Given this prevalence and scale, it is not surprising older americans describe scams as unavoidable and it takes one minute of distraction to fall victim.
▶ 0:51:33Generative ai is not the sole cause of rising scam losses, but it is right now a scammers dream. It makes scams easier, more effective, and harder to trace. This is just one part of multiple trendlines convergence to these record losses. A companies that aggressively push tools have no regard for harm, and executive branch that refuses to hold tech companies accountable in confusion and uncertainty around health care eligibility, benefits, economic security that scammers are exploding in real time.
▶ 0:52:02Scam content generated by ai systems are just one part of the puzzle. Unregulated and under regulated technology is pervasive across the entire flow of how a scam is created, targeted, delivered, and carried out. Cfa calls it a scam stack. Everything from data brokers that sell detailed personal data, enabling hyper-targeted scams as we saw sensitive characteristics, lists of people battling alzheimer's.
▶ 0:52:28This goes through mass communication methods, robo textures and collars, social media companies like facebook through ads and feeds that allow scam content to remain despite having the technology detected. It goes to payment platforms, crypto walla providers that let the money go and allow obfuscation of custody, and reporting mechanisms on phones and social platforms ineffective and inconsistent, buggy, and other mechanisms that government agencies who can do enforcement.
▶ 0:52:58My written testimony goes into further detail how generative ai enables each level of that scam stack and the harm caused by its unchecked growth. It is not just scams. Ai systems like chatbots mislead by prevent -- pretending to be real, sounding authoritative, try to get you hooked, or giving dangerous medical or financial advice. And are also used by third parties to flood the information ecosystem with convincing falsehoods.
▶ 0:53:23That matters especially for older adults, isolated people, and those under health or financial stress. And genevieve misinformation erodes the trust -- everything people see and hear. It is hard to avoid using these platforms and scamming content scams and falsehoods are hurting us all.
▶ 0:53:40The devastating deception we are seeing is not a result of technological ineptitude for users, the excessive domain of the dark web or overseas scam compounds, or the crisis emboldened by the tech companies we know paired with a failure to rein them in. It is not an issue of personal responsibility but something congress is uniquely positioned to address. My written testimony details more than a dozen legislative recommendations with civic bills that have been introduced, but I wanted to spend a few talking about them today.
▶ 0:54:11Congress should hold platforms accountable for spreading, delivering, and targeting scams by passing a bill like the scam act introduced by senator moreno and gallego, should pass cumbrian's of data privacy laws, data minimization, and bans on sensitive data so it is no longer allowed to be able to sell this so people battling alzheimer's are targeting.
▶ 0:54:32To pass bills improving the reporting and statistic status quo with a bill like report scams.gov act, by chair scott and senator hassan, but would recommend improving that to require platform participation. The answer to what do I do when I have been scammed. And reject any provisions that prohibit states from regulated technology or ones being pushed by tech companies to limit their liability.
▶ 0:54:55Legislation must be paired with sustained oversight of enforcement agencies like the ftc, cfpb, and fbi to ensure key authorities are focused on collaboration, investigation, choking up the scam upstream, not just chasing individual scammers after the fact. There is no silver bullet for fixing the crisis, but continued in action only hurts americans. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I'm happy to answer any questions. >> thanks for being here.
▶ 0:55:27>> senator tuberville, would you like to start? >> thank you, Mr. chairman. We have a mess, we know it. Technology brings us more and more every day. We have heard the problems. But my solution is education. At a young age. Maybe boomers are in trouble, because we are all going to get scammed one way or another. Not just domestically, but internationally. It is big time.
▶ 0:55:59I hear a lot of problems with that. How do we fix this? We've got the problem, give us the solution. I will ask everybody this. Get your solution ready. >> there is no silver bullet, as Mr. winters said. But I think education is very powerful.
▶ 0:56:16If you are looking for an example, I would point to the example of finland, which has been aggressive in teaching both young and old about -- this information more broadly, but social media particularly. They found it works, you can misdirect people to look out for false media, to pause before you send any money.
▶ 0:56:42Double check and do the things we should do before we make any rash decisions. So I think education is quite important. From a government perspective, interagency cooperation is key. This is an area where there isn't now a quarterback, to use the metaphor of these issues. I think that is something the committee might want to consider. I think they are bills pending.
▶ 0:57:12And as I mentioned in my testimony, I think the technology piece is important as well. Draw the analogy to email spam, you receive thousands of pieces of spam every day, you just don't happen to see them because they are filtered out by spam filters. One could imagine a similar technology operates in the background on your browser or out -- on your phone to tag or remove ai generated media.
▶ 0:57:40That technology largely -- exists now. >> if you do anything in life, when you get a manual, you get ethics with him first. The same with ai, we have to teach our kids ethics. But our young kids can learn it. You have worked for dhs and deal w. Give us your solution.
▶ 0:58:08>> I think you are right, education is a key pillar. Stir not young. Having a national campaign how to fight deepfakes and scams is important. Integrating the ai is something we are looking at doing. The national campaign can address people of all ages. I have hope for boomers. I have boomers I love, and I think the focus needs to be on safe banking for seniors.
▶ 0:58:36How to get the message to them and channels they respect whether directly from a banker or -- the other thing I would point to his we have to stop the tech companies from allowing the impersonation that happens out there. You should be able to trust what is on your caller id. If you put a name and number on there, it is not the right person calling. Social media platforms need to stop the impersonation scams. They should not be allowed to post videos the good doctor talked about. Those types of things need more controls and there are legislative solutions out there.
▶ 0:59:10>> I feel your pain, my mother-in-law got scammed. This is internationally, she got a call from my granddaughter in europe, send $10,000, I need it bad, I've got to get out of the situation. She sent it. She wasn't in trouble, all of them the fact she just made money. Sensual kind of legislation do you think we need to do? Do you talk to anybody since your debacle?
▶ 0:59:38>> I have not spoken to any legislators until right now. I have spoken to a few experts in the field and I believe -- there are plenty of courses and education how to use ai, and that is something you see on social media all the time, take this class, learn how to use it.
▶ 1:00:08There's nothing out there on how to protect yourself from ai. So that needs to happen. We need to know how to recognize it. How to protect ourselves from it. Besides having a safe word, not answering the phone, all of the things everybody immediately goes to.
▶ 1:00:33To be an awareness that for senior citizens, certainly all of us don't know how to hand the remote to the queue to change things. We need to be aware. If I had been aware, my daughter's voice could possibly be in a iphone. What I did not know. I think education is key. And awareness is key.
▶ 1:01:06>> we're just now beginning, think about how much more they will be able to fool people. It will be worse and worse. Thank you very much, thank you Mr. chairman. >> thank you, Mr. chairman. Thank you for having this hearing. As I think all of us know, ai has a real potential of changing everything about our lives.
▶ 1:01:31It is changing how we work, how we make decisions, how entire industries are operating, reshaping our economy, energy systems, national security, it is affecting people's daily lives. And while it brings enormous opportunity, it also introduces risks that demand some serious oversight. That is where we are here today.
▶ 1:01:57Over the past year I have think about how we not been able to get ai to work for all americans, including a few big companies. That led me last year to put out a roadmap called ai for america. The ideas behind the roadmap are pretty simple.
▶ 1:02:18If ai is going to transform our economy, we need to have a real plan to make sure americans are not left behind and that the technology is developed and used responsibly. These systems are evolving very quickly. Even just quickly in the last few weeks. There is a lot that we don't know, and a lot the developers themselves don't know what these products are capable of.
▶ 1:02:48Older americans need to be included in this conversation. Not treated as just some afterthought us the products are deployed. About one in five arizonans in my state are over the age of 65. When I hear from seniors in my state, they tell me they are concerned about what is real and what is not real. You have certainly experienced that, and I'm so sorry for what happened to you and your family.
▶ 1:03:20Seniors are seeing more convincing phishing scams and forms of online fraud. Sometimes people don't know if they are talking to a real person. Just yesterday I was on the phone with my cable company, and I called, and I was convinced it was an artificial person, and I still think it may have been augmented by a real person. When I started questioning whether or not the person was real, it became the real person.
▶ 1:03:50I think there are systems where you can have the ai overlaid and there is somebody monitoring. We sorted it out. I got the real person eventually. These are fair concerns that affect everybody. I share them. I do spend my former career as somebody who used a lot of technology.
▶ 1:04:16Last week I introduced legislation with senator justice called the senior chatbot protection act. This bill will require companies to clearly disclose when consumers are interacting with ai and safeguard sensitive conversations and address deceptive design practices in their products that put people at risk. We want to help people make informed decisions while supporting, not replacing human judgment and trusted relationships.
▶ 1:04:47Today, ranking member gillibrand, the leading ai companies to how you are making sure your products are safe for older adults or designing products with them in mind. And do you even know how many older adults are using your products? If we want to make sure ai will help rather than harm, we need to know about who is using it, how they are using it, how it reacts in the real world.
▶ 1:05:18That is the purpose of my bipartisan aging with ai act, which the chairman mentioned, which we introduced, chairman scott and I, in june. It will help us build evidence by supporting research into how to use ai and its risk benefits. Ai companies have a responsibility to make their products safe, to be honest about their limitations and protect their constituents who use them.
▶ 1:05:49Congress has a responsibility to sit clear rules and make decisions based on science, data, and the facts. We have an opportunity to get ahead of these problems. We often do not hear in congress. But we should, and we have to in this case. Because the window is not going to stay open forever on this. We've got to get this right now.
▶ 1:06:17In my remaining time, which I have none, may be the chairman can give me another 45 seconds. Based on the harms you have seen and talked about through your testimony, how would the protections in the senior chatbot protection act make ai chatbots and voice assistants safer for older americans? It is important for congress to do this? >> yes, thank you for the question. Some of the provisions in the bill are extraordinarily useful.
▶ 1:06:48As you mentioned, it is nonsense do not be able to feel confident you are talking to a person or not. That feels like an absolutely baseline thing we can do. We can also integrate significant restrictions on the way the chatbots are actually sort of looking to the user to make it more obvious that it is a chatbot, to make it clear the choices from those companies, the time that underlines the chatbot especially our products,
▶ 1:07:19Tech companies and choices about what gets spit out by those chatbots and how they are built and how you interact with them. I think there are legislations including the chatbot act which would absolutely be a positive step forward making sure those tech companies are pulling their weight and helping. >> thank you. Thank you, senator kelly. Dr., you discovered a video using your voice that you never made a never endorsed.
▶ 1:07:49Walk us through what you had to do to report it in the process to get it down. >> it was not easy, and it has continued to go on. I will refer back to some notes of my team that got involved on this. A lot of effort went into trying to get this down. Putting pressure on the meadow respond, and it took 11 days to get a response back from them.
▶ 1:08:22Never got transparency in terms of answers. A timeline, things like that. It was a very nontransparent process. There was no meaningful follow, the responses we got down were pretty generic. And you never actually knew that you were communicating with a real human being with this.
▶ 1:08:49We eventually got -- meda down in 11 days, websites continued to be up there. Then it reappeared, a perpetuating process. >> thank you. Miss del master, what did you do after realizing you had been scammed? How did losing those funds affect you and your husband's financial situation? >> thank you.
▶ 1:09:18We are senior citizens living on social security and are gigs that we do. So it affected us very greatly. It was all of our available, accessible money. What happened immediately, my daughter works in ai, she told me what probably had happened, that it was an ai clone of her voice.
▶ 1:09:49After that, we went to the local police, and the next morning, when I was a little calmer, I posted on social media are experience on facebook, and said let this be a warning to my friends and fans and everyone that these criminals have high tech and capability now.
▶ 1:10:22Forgive me -- I'm still completely traumatized by this. >> what happened is you talked to your daughter, then the next step is you are happy she is fine, but you are furious that you lost all your life savings, so you called the police department? >> we went to the police department.
▶ 1:10:48My husband and I went home, my daughter got off work and came over, I hugged her and sobbed for a while. Then we went to the local police office and reported it right away. >> did they act like they would be able to help you? >> the officer, the detective in charge we spoke to said that they see these by the hundreds, they see these kinds of things all the time.
▶ 1:11:18And probably it was out of the country, a call center out of the country. And that the money was definitely gone. >> you sent the money by -- >> money gram and western union. >> even though you had a record of it, -- >> cash pickup within 10 minutes anywhere in mexico. That is with these all work.
▶ 1:11:44So that money was gone -- >> and they take no responsibility? >> absolutely not. But when you go to do these transactions, there are signs everywhere telling you if you think this is a fraud, don't do it. However, you have somebody on the phone with you saying you don't speak to them, be discreet . We've got it right there.
▶ 1:12:16So it is a scare tactic. It is absolutely terrifying. Because again, when you hear -- when you answer the phone and you hear someone's voice, you know that person by their voice. >> and you get your guard down. >> right. So if you have an ai clone of a loved one's voice, you don't know anymore.
▶ 1:12:49Like I said, it is terrifying. >> you are now just trying to solve the problem. They have gotten you hook line and sinker. >> five and a half hours, yes. I was bound and determined to get my daughter back one way or another. Bound and determined. >> like we all were. >> absolutely. I said it is the perfect scam, an old scam with new technology.
▶ 1:13:24We just need to know that this is out here. After it happened, and I posted it, friends and fans and family that sent me money to help replace the money, and do a gofundme. I did, set it up a couple of days later for the amount we lost. The people at gofundme read my story and asked if I could -- if the local media could contact me.
▶ 1:13:56And that is why I'm here today, because of local media. C1 I was interviewed by a station where the actual broadcaster who interviewed me had an ai fraud a month and a half before that with a video of her daughter asking for money. Now her daughter was next door, so she knew it was a fraud. But they had a video of her daughter.
▶ 1:14:28Yes, it is frightening.
▶ 1:14:29Chair Scott: So were you able to raise the money on gofundme?
▶ 1:14:33Ms. Del Mastro: Yes.
▶ 1:14:35Chair Scott: There are a lot of wonderful people in the world.
▶ 1:14:38Ms. Del Mastro: I have a wonderful, supportive community of friends and fans and family.
▶ 1:14:51Chair Scott: There are evil people out there, but there are some good ones.
▶ 1:14:53Ms. Del Mastro: And we need to protect all of them.
▶ 1:14:54Chair Scott: Senator gillibrand.
▶ 1:14:57Senator Gillibrand: Senator alsobrooks, I'm going to give you my time but I will give you a minute to get set up. You can go ahead.
▶ 1:15:06Senator Alsobrooks: Thank you so much to chair scott and ranking member gillibrand for hosting today's hearing there is an old warning that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, but that assumes you recognize when something is not real.
▶ 1:15:35Senator Alsobrooks: Artificial intelligence is making that much harder. For older americans the harm from a senior scam does not end
▶ 1:15:41With: Money -- stolen money, it ends with stolen dignity. These scams can make our elders afraid to answer the phone -- phone. They cause paranoia. I'm a part of the sanders generation and I have been horrified watching my mother who is at home during the day, the predatory calls are absolutely unbelievable that she receives all day long.
▶ 1:16:10With: They take away not only from those individuals a sense of safety and it is not easily restored. Ai can help older adults remain independents and even improve health care, but left unchecked those tools embolden bad actors and have made our seniors especially vulnerable to scams.
▶ 1:16:34With: Congress I believe has a responsibility to set clear rules require safeguards and hold companies accountable when they ignore known risks. We know this harm is already happening and we should not wait for more families to suffer. Ms. del mastro, I was able to watch her testimony, and I want to thank you so much for being here and for being willing to share what happened to you.
▶ 1:17:00With: I'm also the mother of a daughter so I can only imagine the true trauma that you experienced that day. I'm so sorry for what you and your family had to endure. I want to be clear, I want to ask you a few questions, I know you believe your daughter was in danger and you did what any parent would do which is everything you could to protect her and the people who targeted you counted on your motherly reaction.
▶ 1:17:31With: If you are comfortable sharing, what has stayed with you most since that day if you can say and how did you feel knowing the seasoned criminals manipulated your emotions to create a sense of false urgency and emergency?
▶ 1:17:45Ms. Del Mastro: I was absolutely furious when it was over. Absolutely furious. I'm quite certain I screamed and no parking lot of that walmart, I'm sure I did. And I was so incredibly relieved that it was a scam. So relieved it was a scam.
▶ 1:18:14Sen. Alsobrooks: But what would you say the part that stuck with you the most has been.
▶ 1:18:16Ms. Del Mastro: I think what stuck with me the most is how real it was. Absolutely how real it was. It was her voice. It was her voice. Even though they never spoke to her, they more than likely got her voice of social media would be my guess.
▶ 1:18:45Ms. Del Mastro: But yes, it is frightening how precise it is.
▶ 1:18:52Sen. Alsobrooks: Once he realized what happened would you say the institutions you turned to for help were able to provide appropriate resources or were you left to navigate the aftermath largely on your own?
▶ 1:19:16Ms. Del Mastro: I went to the police immediately afterward. My daughter and I went to see that same detective a couple of times. It was pretty clear there was nothing he could do. It was pretty clear they were not going to find these people. There was no way to get the money back.
▶ 1:19:37Sen. Alsobrooks: My time is going quickly. In 2020 five over 4500 marylanders age 60 and older filed complaints and reported more than $176 million in losses. When an older customer tells a bank that they were deceived into sending money, the question is what happens next and how quickly can the bank act and where does this lead to trace or recover the money depend on?
▶ 1:20:07Sen. Alsobrooks: Does it depend on another institution or law enforcement?
▶ 1:20:09Mr. Benda: I think one of the challenges we have is following the money. A lot of folks are focus on reporting to law enforcement, the best chance to get the money back is stopping -- is reporting your bank. The first place to report to a bank or your credit union or reach out to them and there are wire recall procedures that can be done.
▶ 1:20:41Mr. Benda: To allow banks to freeze funds faster. If it goes to a crypto firm or a fin tech firm it becomes a lot more challenging. If it goes to a money service business like western union or another business, it becomes even more difficult.
▶ 1:21:04Chair Scott: Thank you all for your testimony. Ms. del mastro and Dr. amron, I'm furious on your behalf. I'm stunned with how much injustice there is around these type of scams. I have personal friends who got targeted and wind it up sending money in a crypto machine to some unknown place.
▶ 1:21:32Chair Scott: My hand was scammed into bank $5,000 because somebody told her she didn't pay her taxes right. I have listened to our seniors about what happened to them, the boyfriend scam the child scam, the ground -- the grandchild scam.
▶ 1:21:57Chair Scott: These are seasoned, sophisticated criminal networks targeting our family members and loved ones to separate them from their hard earned money. It is a disgrace. I think it is incumbent on congress and this administration to do a hell of a lot more to do then we are doing. It is not acceptable that this has metastasized into a cancer harming new yorkers, harming americans every day.
▶ 1:22:25Chair Scott: I'm furious with the president for deleting so many of the organizations and personnel that are supposed to protect you and stand between you and the scammer. Since taking office, president trump has taken a hacksaw to the very agencies that protect americans from scammers and bad actors, barring the cfpb from bringing enforcement actions, moving to shut on the cfpb entirely, slashing cisa funding
▶ 1:22:57Chair Scott: Anda workforce, dismantling organized crime drug enforcement task forces. These are all terrible outcomes. I don't know who is supposed to protect to protect who at this point? Let me start with you, Mr. winters and I will talk to you all about the situation that is unacceptable. How these policy changes affected our ability to stop scammers?
▶ 1:23:17Mr. Winters: Everything we all talked about today was the problem and already in place before this administration did all of those things you talked about, but before that, there were people at the cfpb chased down the money they lost. There were people at the federal trade commission that were getting that upstream after that had their case reversed after this ai generated thing.
▶ 1:23:46Mr. Winters: All these actions have devastated and sort of failed americans. This is only going to get worse because of the lack of those cops on the beat, we need more, not less.
▶ 1:24:04Sen. Gillibrand: From your perspective, what investments and protections are in place so we have more safeguards for people who are being scammed?
▶ 1:24:09Mr. Benda: Thank you for the question, senator. I share your rage at these incidents. A local caller id had been used. If it's at international caller, would that have raised some eyebrows or unknown caller. People are convincing americans through technology.
▶ 1:24:34Sen. Gillibrand: But may be questions at the credit union. I've heard many examples where bank tellers saved the day saying can I ask, this seems like a lot of money, is this important to you, is this someone you know? That one intervention stopped $10,000 from going across.
▶ 1:24:54Sen. Gillibrand: May be more requirements at all of these transmitter locations where they are using and demanding money being transferred to have questions that someone being rushed, someone clearly on a phone call, somebody showing this, without be helpful?
▶ 1:25:12Mr. Benda: Having training programs for everyone makes sense. I think exactly those indicators you said to make them stop, think, pause, and educate.
▶ 1:25:29Sen. Gillibrand: Mr. ferraro, you have deep federal experience at that apartment of homeland security, odni, in 2025 the government accountability office found there was little coordination with federal agencies and I worked with chairman scott to introduce the national strategy for combating scams act which put the fbi in charge of a multiagency effort to build national strategies on scams.
▶ 1:25:55Sen. Gillibrand: Based on your experience, how does a lack of coordination affect our ability to push back and what would a national strategy do to combat ai driven scams?
▶ 1:26:06Mr. Winters: --Mr. ferraro: I think the lack of coordination can be a signal failure and lack of coordination. One major problem is information gaps. There are things some actors know when others don't. The second is unclear accountability.
▶ 1:26:27Mr. Winters: When there is no coach on the team were no quarterback, you don't know whom to hold accountable for success or failure and discordant or dis-aligned incentives without clear direction or strategy, bureaucracies can simply not act or not act with alacrity. I do think that your strategy bill is a good one because I think it would know a lot of those.
▶ 1:26:57Mr. Winters: They can offer reports, solve information gaps by directing that they share information and that they could help align incentives.
▶ 1:27:12Sen. Gillibrand: I'm out of time so I just want to end with Dr. amron and Ms. del mastro. What happens to you is unacceptable. It is pure criminality, it is undermining to your sense of safety, what you have accomplished in your life, Dr. amron, for you, Ms. del mastro, the safety of your family and your well-being. These are very traumatic experience is.
▶ 1:27:36Sen. Gillibrand: What do you want from congress and law enforcement to do to help others who don't know this could happen to them to give you better recourse when it happens? If you could just have a magic wand and solve this problem, what advice would you give to the senators?
▶ 1:27:52Dr. Amron: It's a very pervasive problem. Mr. scott apologized to me for what I went through, but the victims are not me, it is my patients and the people I care about. It's a big problem and Mr. tuberville had this idea of educating, which is I think is a great thing, but that is only part of it. You can't have this buyer beware mentality that that is going to be enough with it.
▶ 1:28:22Dr. Amron: At least with what happened to my patients, it has to be put on of the platforms. The platforms supporting this have to have consequences. There has to be a lot more.
▶ 1:28:46Ms. Del Mastro: I agree with what Dr. amron said and Mr. benda. If I had seen that that wasn't -- an international call --
▶ 1:28:57Sen. Gillibrand: You would have at a different view.
▶ 1:29:00Ms. Del Mastro: Completely different outcome. Also your example of having a human teller asked the questions . The thing is is that so many jobs are being replaced by ai, where you don't know if you are talking to a human, but if you are face-to-face with someone.
▶ 1:29:21Ms. Del Mastro: If you are able to actually speak to a human being, I think that would help stop the whole scam from happening to begin with. So I don't know how you can keep ai from replacing everyone, but I think it is a noble cause.
▶ 1:29:46Sen. Gillibrand: Thank you for sharing your story. It is infuriating and we are up against hundreds of thousands of criminals doing this every day, stealing billions of dollars for americans. And we are very trusting. They use their good nature against us. We have to do more.
▶ 1:30:13Chair Scott: Can you please explain to the committee the dangers ai is imposing by the scale of damage done to successfully trick americans into believing these impersonations and what are strategies to combat the fraud?
▶ 1:30:35Mr. Benda: I think the education is a key piece to it going forward. I think people need to recognize the risk to ai. The criminals are engaging with the same thing. We are going to continue to see this kind of activity.
▶ 1:31:05Mr. Benda: We really have to restore trust in our telecommunications and social media ecosystems. We have to ensure the caller id is accurate, we can't allow those to be fake. We have to ensure that when someone's visage is used on an online platform that that visage is accurate. I use google photos, I can find pictures of my daughter in an instant.
▶ 1:31:34Mr. Benda: You're telling me an online platform cannot tell me when someone is impersonating someone else? And the ability to take down those scams. When we know people are being actively wrong -- robbed. This is a doctor who has a practice who has been internationally known. Those are the types of activities we need to take.
▶ 1:31:55Chair Scott: Mr. ferraro, ai scams are inherently borderless. Can you talk about deepfakes and the kind of threat they pose?
▶ 1:32:05Mr. Ferraro: You are absolutely right that it is an international phenomenon and often times it is a conspiracy that there are actual warehouses of people operating to execute these frauds which I think underscores something we haven't talked about yet which is the importance of international cooperation because the folks who are going to shut down or going to be local law enforcement.
▶ 1:32:35Mr. Ferraro: There was a recent example of that in vietnam where the vietnamese police worked with the american government to go and literally arrest people who were running deepfakes scams. And they run the gamut across all the different types of scams. Romance scams, the impersonation scams.
▶ 1:32:53Mr. Ferraro: There was a report recently in the new york times about ai avatar doctors selling supplements and often times that is in some sense legal but you can probably still work with the chinese government to seek some redress against them. Particularly when things are illegal without ai, they are illegal with ai.
▶ 1:33:17Mr. Ferraro: In some ways this speaks to the need for and all of government response, which would include the state department, the fbi, dhs, and others.
▶ 1:33:25Chair Scott: Mr. winters, you have a background in law enforcement. What a centralized reporting portal encourage more victims to come forward?
▶ 1:33:33Mr. Winters: Absolutely, it would facilitate those people coming forward. Right now you should say where could you reported? Go to the fbi or your local police department or the aarp, I could name 15 different times or do it on a platform and none of those things are talking to each other. The onus should not be on the victim to figure out what the most effective way of doing it is, so yes it would facilitate a more accurate picture of what is actually going on because you get more reports.
▶ 1:34:05Mr. Winters: It would also help facilitate this better education. The fact that it is so fragmented makes it harder to educate people about what to do and how to educate yourself. If you have this, it would be massive.
▶ 1:34:18Chair Scott: Do you think it is realistic to get all these agencies to work together?
▶ 1:34:22Mr. Winters: I think so. I think everyone wants to stop this exact thing from happening. It is not that hard, but it is hard to coordinate everyone to do it. >> I have hours of questions. I literally have hours of questions for all of you, so I just want to thank you for testifying and bringing your stories here and bringing all your recommendations.
▶ 1:34:49Mr. Winters: For our three expert witnesses you have given us a lot of good food for thought, but I want to thank you all because this is such a big problem and this is just the tip of the iceberg. These are just two scams out of millions and I'm just so grateful that you are focused on trying to solve the problem and I really appreciate you Mr. chairman for having the hearing.
▶ 1:35:09Chair Scott: And we released today a bipartisan report. We have had some luck, we did a big one on the generic drugs. We have very close to getting the bill passed. I think we will get some of this stuff done if we continue to work together. Thanks everybody for being here today and participating. Look forward to continuing to work with the members here.
▶ 1:35:32Chair Scott: I want to remind seniors and families that the senate aging committee operates a fraud hotline for anyone who believes they may have been targeted or victimized. If any seniors have additional questions -- senators have any additional questions, the record will be open until next wednesday at 5:00 p.m.. Thank you all for being here. [gavel] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap.org]