[Senate Hearing 116-544]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                       S. Hrg. 116-544

                    COMBATTING ROBOCALL FRAUD: USING
                        TELECOM ADVANCES AND LAW
                      ENFORCEMENT TO STOP SCAMMERS
                          AND PROTECT SENIORS

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                       SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON AGING

                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS


                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             WASHINGTON, DC

                               __________

                             JULY 17, 2019

                               __________

                           Serial No. 116-10

         Printed for the use of the Special Committee on Aging
         
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]         


        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
        
                              __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
47-375 PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
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                       SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON AGING

                   SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman

TIM SCOTT, South Carolina            ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania
RICHARD BURR, North Carolina         KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York
MARTHA McSALLY, Arizona              RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
MARCO RUBIO, Florida                 ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts
JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri                DOUG JONES, Alabama
MIKE BRAUN, Indiana                  KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona
RICK SCOTT, Florida                  JACKY ROSEN, Nevada

                              ---------- 
                              
            Sarah Khasawinah, Majority Acting Staff Director
                 Kathryn Mevis, Minority Staff Director
                 
                 
                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              ----------                              

                                                                   Page

Opening Statement of Senator Susan M. Collins, Chairman..........     1
Opening Statement of Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr., Ranking Member     3

                           PANEL OF WITNESSES

Angela Stancik, Granddaughter of Scam Victim, Ganado, Texas......     4
Jerry L. Sanders, Jr., Sheriff, Delaware County, Drexel Hill, 
  Pennsylvania...................................................     6
Delany De Leon-Colon, Postal Inspector in Charge, Criminal 
  Investigations Group, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, 
  Washington, D.C................................................     8
David Frankel, Chief Executive Officer, Zipdx LLC, Monte Serano, 
  California.....................................................    10

                                APPENDIX
                      Prepared Witness Statements

Angela Stancik, Granddaughter of Scam Victim, Ganado, Texas......    35
Jerry L. Sanders, Jr., Sheriff, Delaware County, Drexel Hill, 
  Pennsylvania...................................................    37
Delany De Leon-Colon, Postal Inspector in Charge, Criminal 
  Investigations Group, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, 
  Washington, D.C................................................    40
David Frankel, Chief Executive Officer, Zipdx LLC, Monte Serano, 
  California.....................................................    44

                       Statements for the Record

Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr., Closing Remarks....................    53
Electronic Transaction Associaton, Letter........................    54

 
                    COMBATTING ROBOCALL FRAUD: USING
                        TELECOM ADVANCES AND LAW
                      ENFORCEMENT TO STOP SCAMMERS
                          AND PROTECT SENIORS

                              ----------                              


                        WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 2019

                                       U.S. Senate,
                                Special Committee on Aging,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:32 a.m., in 
Room 562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Susan M. 
Collins, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Collins, McSally, Rubio, Hawley, Braun, 
Rick Scott, Casey, Blumenthal, Jones, Sinema, and Rosen.

                 OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR 
                   SUSAN M. COLLINS, CHAIRMAN

    The Chairman. The hearing will come to order.
    Good morning. Protecting American seniors from scammers who 
seek to defraud them is a central goal of this Committee. In 
the past 6 years, we have held 23 hearings on frauds and scams 
targeting our seniors. Using just phones and the Internet, 
fraudsters have proven to be relentless. To protect our 
Nation's seniors, we must continue not only to prosecute con 
artists who steal literally billions from our seniors, but also 
to find new, more effective ways to block illegal spoofing and 
robocalls at the network level.
    Last year, robocallers generated more than 26 billion 
unwanted calls that reached Americans' mobile phones. When 
landlines are included, the number soars to 48 billion. In 
Maine alone, our residents received an astonishing 93 million 
robocalls last year. That is an average of 73 calls to each 
person in our State, so far this year, scammers are on pace to 
generate more than 58 billion unwanted, illegal robocalls 
targeting American consumers.
    These scams overwhelmingly are initiated by offshore 
robocallers who are using new technologies to perpetuate their 
schemes. Today we will focus on a practice called ``spoofing.'' 
This allows scammers to mask their identity by replacing the 
Caller ID tied to their actual phone number with one that fits 
their story. When victims see the ``Internal Revenue Service'' 
or the ``local Sheriff's Department'' pop-up on their Caller 
ID, they understandably answer the phone. They also are 
worried, scared, and often easily hustled into doing whatever 
the scammers demand.
    With the emergence of the modern Voice Over Internet 
Protocol technology--or ``VoIP,'' criminals can now operate 
from call centers anywhere in the world--as far away from 
American law enforcement as they can possibly get--using VoIP 
to hide their identity while generating millions of robocalls 
at a very low cost.
    Our Committee has called on regulators and the business 
community to work together more aggressively to stop scammers 
from using VoIP and other technologies to facilitate fraud. We 
have seen some progress on that front. US Telecom developed 
Traceback, a program to identify the source of illegal 
robocalls. Carriers are working to implement new technology 
called ``SHAKEN/STIR'' that will allow consumers to tell 
whether or not the Caller ID that shows up on their phones is 
legitimate or has been spoofed. But the implementation and the 
cost of these technologies to protect consumers has been slow.
    On the positive side, we are seeing a more aggressive and 
coordinated approach against robocallers by the Federal 
Government. In 2016, the Department of Justice led a Federal 
investigation that closed down five call centers in India. A 
few weeks ago, the Federal Trade Commission and its law 
enforcement partners announced Operation Call it Quits, a major 
crackdown against foreign and domestic defendants allegedly 
responsible for more than a billion calls to consumers 
nationwide.
    The Federal Communications Commission has also been more 
active.
    These Federal actions represent progress that our Committee 
has pressed for to crack down on robocallers. Now the Committee 
is calling for a next generation approach--not only to crack 
down on the criminals, but also to consider new network-wide 
solutions to prevent robocall spoofing frauds in the first 
place.
    We have recently taken an important step in the Senate by 
passing the TRACED Act, of which I was proud to be a cosponsor. 
I hope it will be signed into law soon.
    Today, along with many of my colleagues, I am introducing 
the Anti-Spoofing Penalties Modernization Act, which will 
complement the TRACED Act's provisions on robocallers by 
doubling existing penalties and by extending the statute of 
limitations on prosecuting illegal spoofing.
    Despite all of these efforts, the number of robocalls is 
expected to soar. To defeat these scammers, we need new 
technological approaches. We know from experience that the 
scammers are ruthless and relentless, and as long as these 
fraudsters can access our telephone network, they will continue 
to flood our phones with billions of calls in search of new 
victims. The key to defeating these scammers is to block the 
illegal robocalls from foreign call centers closer to their 
source before they can reach the American consumer. Today we 
will learn about new network level approaches with the 
potential to ultimately stop robocall spoofing fraud 
altogether.
    Beyond the technology--and we will be reminded of this 
today--we must never forget that our purpose is to protect the 
victims of these notorious scammers. Too many seniors continue 
to lose their hard-earned money and often their entire 
retirement savings to con artists.
    Even worse, as we will hear today, these scams can shatter 
the lives of seniors and their families and impose a cost that 
cannot be measured in money alone.
    I am now pleased to turn to our Ranking Member, Senator 
Casey, for his opening statement.

                 OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR 
              ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., RANKING MEMBER

    Senator Casey. Thank you, Chairman Collins, for holding 
this hearing and also for your opening statement.
    I know that many in our country are divided on a range of 
issues, but we are united as Americans in despising these 
robocalls.
    For some, these calls have become more than just a 
nuisance. The con artists on the other end of the line often 
turn a conversation into a heist--literally.
    They threaten our aging loved ones, and they rip away their 
hard-earned savings, and as we will hear today, these criminals 
can cause terrible tragedy. The perpetrators of these crimes 
must be pursued and prosecuted to the full extent of the law, 
and they should be behind bars.
    I was pleased to support resources for the Department of 
Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to successfully engage 
in two of the largest coordinated sweeps of companies 
facilitating these calls and the criminals making them.
    Unfortunately, even these actions that took place earlier 
this year have not deterred the con artists. As one of our 
witnesses, Sheriff Sanders from Pennsylvania, will explain, 
some fraudsters only seem ever more emboldened.
    They rig phone lines so the number that shows up on Caller 
ID appears to be the number of a local police or sheriff's 
office. Sheriff Sanders and local law enforcement officials 
across the country do not take such impersonation lightly.
    These schemes are requiring an investment of time and 
resources from officers across the country. Instead of focusing 
only on what they do best--keeping our streets and our 
communities safe--local law enforcement officials must spend 
precious time keeping the phone lines safe.
    This is one of the reasons why I am pleased to have 
introduced, with Senator Moran, the Stop Senior Scams Act just 
recently. This bill would create another line of defense 
against scammers by giving bank tellers, cashiers, and others 
the tools to spot a scam and prevent--prevent--someone from 
ever handing over cash to a stranger on the phone.
    We hope that this bill is enacted swiftly. Much of what we 
will discuss today is how these crimes occur, but we must not 
forget the important role that both industry and regulators 
play in preventing an illegal robocall from being connected in 
the first place, and so we must make sure that the rules are in 
place to allow industry to adopt and to implement the most up-
to-date call authentication and blocking technologies.
    I am pleased that the Senate recently passed the TRACED 
Act, as Senator Collins referred to, and that the Federal 
Communications Commission recently finalized new rules to help 
get this technology to every consumer with a telephone, but as 
we will hear today, we have a lot more to do. The mental and 
financial health, indeed the very well-being, of our loved ones 
is at stake.
    I look forward to hearing more from our witnesses. We thank 
our witnesses. And I also look forward to working with Chairman 
Collins and other colleagues to put an end to these destructive 
calls.
    Thank you, Madam Chair.
    The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Casey.
    I also want to thank Senator Scott of Florida for being 
with us today. He has been a very active member of the Aging 
Committee, and we are very happy to have him here.
    We will now turn to our witnesses. Our first witness is 
Angela Stancik, who joins us from Texas. She is the 
granddaughter of Marjorie Jones of Lake Charles, Louisiana. 
Today Ms. Stancik testifies in memory of her grandmother and as 
a voice for the scores, the hundreds of Americans who have 
fallen victim to elder fraud.
    I will now turn to the Ranking Member to introduce our 
witness from the Commonwealth.
    Senator Casey. I am pleased to introduce Sheriff Jerry 
Sanders from Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. Sheriff Sanders has 
served as sheriff of Delaware County since January 2018. He 
previously served as a sheriff's deputy in the city of 
Philadelphia and later retired as chief inspector. In addition 
to his law enforcement background, Sheriff Sanders is a 
minister in his church and is the chaplain at a local 
retirement community. As we will hear from his testimony, even 
law enforcement and religious leaders are not spared from 
getting tangled up in these robocalls.
    I would also like to welcome the sheriff's wife, Juanita, 
who I think is right behind him, over his right shoulder, and 
his chief deputy, Mike Donohue, both of whom have made the trip 
to be with us today from Delaware County, Pennsylvania, right 
next to Philadelphia.
    Thank you both for being here, and, Sheriff Sanders, I look 
forward to hearing your testimony. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Our third witness will be Delany De Leon-Colon, a Postal 
Inspector who oversees the Criminal Investigative Unit of the 
United States Postal Service. Throughout her 15 years of 
service for the Postal Service, she has managed teams focusing 
on various forms of theft, fraud, and money laundering that 
frequently result from these robocalls.
    Finally, we will be pleased to welcome David Frankel. Mr. 
Frankel is a telecommunications expert who has worked in high-
performance computer and networking technology since 1974. He 
helped to implement the telecom industry's Traceback effort, 
which assists law enforcement in tracking down the origin of 
illegal robocalls.
    Thank you all for joining us, and we will begin with Ms. 
Stancik.

           STATEMENT OF ANGELA STANCIK, GRANDDAUGHTER

                 OF SCAM VICTIM, GANADO, TEXAS

    Ms. Stancik. Good morning. Thank you, Chairman Collins, 
Ranking Member Casey, and other members of the Committee for 
inviting me to be here today. I am very honored. My 
grandmother, Marjorie Jones, was a victim of elder fraud. There 
are no words to express what she meant to me and my family and 
how much we all loved and adored her. The examples of her faith 
and love cannot be confined to words, and she will forever be 
missed.
    My grandmother was targeted and pursued nonstop by a ring 
of fraudsters. Over time, these individuals used creative and 
cunning tactics to gain her trust. They told her she had won a 
large cash prize and all she needed to do was pay the taxes and 
fees.
    I first realized my grandmother was a victim of elder fraud 
by the last conversation I ever had with her. Reliving that 
phone call is very painful. She explained that she needed 
$6,000 wired to her as soon as possible. Her forceful tone and 
desperation was very upsetting. I could hear the panic in her 
voice, and she was very, very afraid.
    This phone call set off many red flags, and everyone grew 
extremely concerned about her financial situation. We do not 
know of a single time in her entire life where she ever 
borrowed money from an individual. My father informed me that 
he had wired her $8,000 the week prior, and he assured me he 
was trying to find out what was happening. He mentioned his 
fears that someone was scamming her, but because she was so 
desperate and scared, he sent her the $6,000 she wanted anyway. 
Sadly, she died less than a week later.
    It pains me to talk about my grandmother's horrific death 
because she chose to take her own life. It is extremely hard to 
imagine a loved one committing suicide, but she did, because 
these individuals preyed on her and on her good heart. Her 
golden years and the last chapter of her life was taken from 
her. It is clear to us that the circumstances that led to her 
death were caused by these criminals.
    After her death we found out just how much these criminals 
had taken from her. We found hidden in a closet several bags 
full of wire receipts where she had been sending large sums of 
money overseas. My family visited these wire marketing services 
to talk with the clerks and discovered that they had warned her 
that this was not legitimate and they believed it was a scam. 
She continued to wire money, but used a different location.
    We also discovered not only did they drain her of all the 
money it took her a lifetime to save, but that she had taken 
out a reverse mortgage on her home and she cashed out all of 
her life insurance. My grandmother died with $69 in her bank 
account.
    In the summer of 2016, we were notified by the Department 
of Justice that the individuals who committed this crime 
against her were caught. One of them had been extradited from 
Costa Rica and was already in the sentencing phase for her 
punishment. I traveled from Houston to Charlotte, North 
Carolina, to read my victim impact statement to the court and 
to finally face one of the individuals who did this, because of 
that statement, I was invited to speak with former Attorney 
General Jeff Sessions in February 2018, when he announced the 
Elder Fraud Sweep. Since then, I have been contacted by many 
Americans who are facing this exact type of scam, and 
personally I know two other close family friends that have been 
impacted by the ``grandparent scam'' and the ``medical debt 
collection scam.''
    On behalf of my grandmother, Marjorie Jones, I want to 
thank the Committee for hearing and exploring the growing and 
difficult problem of fraud against the elderly. We live in a 
fast-paced, youth-oriented society, and elder issues are not 
high on the social agenda. But you have the ability to show 
great leadership by shining a light on this topic, so again, I 
thank you for your passion that has helped raise awareness. 
Thank you for recognizing that as a Government, as a society. 
and as individuals, we must increase our efforts to ensure that 
our seniors are protected from the criminals that prey on them. 
Our seniors in this country deserve to live out their lives 
with dignity and honor.
    Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you very much for your moving testimony 
and for your willingness to come forward and share such a 
painful, horrible story with us, because you have been willing 
to do that, I am sure that you have alerted so many around this 
Nation, and that is a tremendous way to honor the memory of 
your grandmother, so I thank you for your courage and speaking 
out publicly, and I am so sorry for what you and your family 
have endured. Thank you for being here.
    Sheriff Sanders.

          STATEMENT OF JERRY L. SANDERS JR., SHERIFF,

           DELAWARE COUNTY, DREXEL HILL, PENNSYLVANIA

    Mr. Sanders. Chairman Collins, Ranking Member Casey, and 
members of the Committee, I am Sheriff Jerry L. Sanders Jr., 
and I serve as the sheriff of Delaware County, Pennsylvania. 
Thank you for the opportunity to testify before the Committee 
about my office's experience with scammers using robocall and 
spoofing technologies.
    The Delaware County Sheriff's Office experiences occasional 
reports from citizens about receiving scam or ``robo'' calls 
from unknown persons.
    These scams vary, but the most common form is the caller 
claims the potential victim has missed jury duty, and there is 
a warrant for their arrest. The caller will identify themselves 
as a member of the sheriff's office, typically using a fake 
name. In one recent incident, the caller used the name of an 
actual deputy, going so far as to use the deputy's voicemail 
greeting as their own. If the sheriff's office is able to get a 
number from a potential victim, calling it back typically 
results in no answer. On occasion, someone will answer, but 
once they realize the call is from the sheriff's office and we 
are asking legitimate questions, they typically terminate the 
call.
    Another aspect of this is the callers often use 
``spoofing'' technology. This is when they are able to program 
the actual sheriff's office main number to show on the 
potential victim's Caller ID. This is often how we find out 
about the calls. The potential victim, in most cases people who 
realized something was amiss, terminates the call and calls 
back using the displayed number, which is the actual office 
number. We will tell them that this is a scam. The sheriff's 
office does not call people that we have business with, that it 
is either done through U.S. mail or in most cases in-person 
service by the deputy. In addition, under no circumstances 
would we ever ask for information over the phone and never ask 
for money or any other valuable thing to avoid obligation or 
arrest.
    In two separate incidents that occurred over the last 
several months, professionals were targeted. The scammers 
convinced two of them that they were subject to arrest for 
missing jury duty. In one case, they were able to get the 
victim to travel to a bank to withdraw $3,000 and then on to 
retail establishments where she was instructed to purchase 
thousands of dollars in money cards or gift cards and ended up 
mailing them off. The victim's husband grew suspicions and 
looked on the sheriff's web page on the county website and saw 
the scam alert, but it was too late.
    In the most recent case, a similar ruse was used, and they 
advised one of the victims, a 65-year-old doctor, that he was 
subject to arrest for not responding to a grand jury subpoena. 
They had him convinced enough that they had him on the phone 
for approximately an hour and had coaxed him all the way to a 
bank in Media, Pennsylvania, and that was approximately 10 
miles and 20 minutes away, and they instructed him to withdraw 
$6,000. They advised him that he should stay on the phone, not 
answer or communicate with anyone, and to follow their 
instructions. His wife in the meantime grew suspicious and 
tried to call him repeatedly. When she could not reach him, she 
called the sheriff's office. With that call and information she 
was able to provide, we were able to contact the bank and 
actually intercept the victim as he was parking his vehicle and 
thwart the execution of the scam and saved the victim thousands 
of dollars.
    In the most recent case, the victim was approached by the 
chief deputy, who was in plainclothes and arrived in an 
unmarked car. When the chief first approached, the man was 
skeptical as to who he was, saying that he had the sheriff's 
office on the phone. The scammer terminated the call by the 
time the chief took the victim's phone. Once the victim 
realized what had just happened, he explained that he was 
chiefly concerned about his medical license and that if he were 
to be arrested, that his license would be jeopardized, as well 
as his position as a medical director--losing sight of the fact 
that this was an elaborate ruse. With them keeping him on the 
phone, running him across the county, telling him to not speak 
to anyone, et cetera, this was, in fact, just a ruse. He was 
actually intercepted a block from the courthouse, with the 
building in view, but instead of going in to verify, he was 
actually going to the bank to withdraw the money. He then 
likely would have been directed to go the to a ``federally 
authorized retailer'' to purchase money or gift cards, which he 
would then be instructed to give all pertinent information over 
the phone, and in some cases to mail them.
    In the three most recent cases, it is believed the scammers 
were able to gather personal information on the potential 
victims, two medical professionals and an architect beforehand, 
most likely from the web. This enhances the scammers' ability 
to convince the victim that since they know much about them 
that the call is legitimate. This gets the victim off balance, 
and with the threat of potential arrest and then the offer of 
the out by paying a fine, they opt for that to avoid 
``arrest.''
    Frequent targets are older persons who typically have great 
respect for authority and tend to be much more trusting.
    These type scams circulate through the State. We will often 
see emails from other sheriffs' offices. In response, when we 
experience them, we push out press and social media 
notifications to warn the public, and we have a permanent alert 
on the county website.
    Unfortunately, given the limits of manpower and resources, 
local law enforcement can do little to investigate these crimes 
to arrest. Often trying to keep the public aware to avoid 
victimization is the best we can do.
    I was pleased to learn that Senator Casey has introduced 
legislation that would help train bank tellers, cashiers, and 
others about how to spot a potential scam victim and to 
intervene to stop it. In this way, they would serve as another 
line of defense, protecting our family, friends, and neighbors 
from these criminals. I also think that more must be done by 
the telecommunications industry to stop these callers from 
getting through in the first place.
    Thank you for the opportunity to speak before the Committee 
today. I look forward to answering any questions you may have.
    The Chairman. Thank you very much, Sheriff, for being with 
us today.
    Ms. De Leon-Colon? Did I get it close? Colon, right?
    Ms. De Leon-Colon. Yes, correct.

           STATEMENT OF DELANY DE LEON-COLON, POSTAL

          INSPECTOR IN CHARGE, CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS

             GROUP, U.S. POSTAL INSPECTION SERVICE,

                        WASHINGTON, D.C.

    Ms. De Leon-Colon. Good morning, Chairman Collins, Ranking 
Member Casey, and members of the Committee. I appreciate the 
opportunity to testify on efforts to combat fraud.
    My name is Delany De Leon-Colon. I am the Inspector in 
Charge of the Postal Inspection Service's Criminal 
Investigation Group. I oversee several national programs, 
including mail fraud.
    Prior to arriving to Washington, DC, I was the Assistant 
Inspector in Charge of our Miami field office. In that role I, 
with authorities in Jamaica to investigate lottery and 
sweepstakes fraud. I began my law enforcement career with the 
Immigration and Naturalization Service, later with the Secret 
Service, before being appointed as a Postal Inspector in 2004.
    Every day, consumers of all ages are bombarded by marketing 
pitches, promotions, and offers. As a law enforcement officer, 
I have seen how persuasive language and high-tech deception are 
used to catch the attention of consumers and convince them to 
part with their money.
    Imagine your phone rings and the voice on the other ends 
tells you it is your lucky day. However, you must first pay a 
little cash, called an ``insurance fee.''
    Once an individual has been persuaded to pay an initial 
fee, the scheme's operator takes the relationship to the next 
level, asking for yet more money, while emotionally isolating 
the individual from friends and family. Most of the victims we 
interview were not aware that call-spoofing technology existed. 
By their own admission, they overcame their doubts and bought 
into the caller's fabulous claims because of the information 
displayed on their Caller ID. Spoofed phone numbers were 
instrumental in leading victims to believe the call they 
received was for real.
    The case in which Ms. Stancik testified was investigated by 
Postal Inspectors in North Carolina with assistance from the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service, 
Homeland Security Investigations, and prosecuted by the 
Department of Justice Fraud Section.
    The investigation entailed an offshore call center run by 
Andrew Smith, a Jamaican national, and Christopher Griffin, a 
U.S. citizen, both living in Costa Rica. Smith and Griffin, 
along with others they supervised, posed as representatives of 
the Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Trade 
Commission. They contacted consumers in the United States, 
claiming they had won a prize.
    The Costa Rican call center took steps to conceal its true 
identity, using call-spoofing technology that made it appear 
the calls they made came from Washington, DC, which lent 
considerable weight to the scam. Other Internet-enabled 
technologies also played a part. At trial, one victim testified 
she was warned to keep paying as the caller knew where she and 
her family lived. He used images and other information from the 
Internet to make his point.
    Payments to Costa Rica were sent by wire transfer or 
through money orders sent by mail or private couriers. Smith 
and Griffin also hired runners to meet victims at their homes 
to collect their cash.
    Nine defendants were charged. Eight worked in the call 
center, while one was caught laundering funds between the 
United States and Costa Rica. Postal Inspectors identified 
approximately 1,800 people living who collectively lost more 
than $10 million just in connection with this particular case. 
One such person was Ms. Stancik's grandmother, Ms. Marjorie 
Jones.
    Several defendants were extradited to the United States, 
while others were arrested within the United States. Three 
remain fugitives. Smith and Griffin were both convicted and, in 
April of this year, sentenced to more than 20 years in Federal 
prison. Ms. Stancik testified on behalf of her grandmother at 
the sentencing of one of the defendants.
    The Inspection Service is aggressively investigating frauds 
where there is a connection to the U.S. Mail, even when the 
mail is not the first point of contact. We participate in the 
newly formed Department of Justice Elder Fraud Strike Force and 
have Inspectors working full-time in Jamaica and in EUROPOL in 
The Hague.
    We also know an issue as broad as this requires efforts on 
many fronts. We engage with consumers of all stages of life to 
teach them how to recognize schemes and take steps to safeguard 
their finances, including how to contact service providers for 
help blocking these unwanted and unsolicited calls.
    Again, I want to thank the Committee for holding this 
hearing. I applaud the Committee's efforts to address the issue 
of phone technologies that facilitate schemes and that give 
scammers an unfair advantage.
    Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you so much for your testimony and for 
the great work that you are doing.
    Mr. Frankel, thank you for being here.

          STATEMENT OF DAVID FRANKEL, CHIEF EXECUTIVE

          OFFICER, ZIPDX LLC, MONTE SERANO, CALIFORNIA

    Mr. Frankel. Thank you and good morning, Senator Collins, 
Ranking Member Casey, and members of the Special Committee. My 
name is David Frankel; I am the CEO of ZipDX LLC, a provider of 
specialized telecommunications applications. I am honored to be 
here.
    I note that this week we are celebrating 50 years since 
some smart Americans came together and put our own on the Moon. 
I would like to believe that two generations later we can 
collectively across industry and enforcement and regulation get 
our phone network back from the scammers that have taken it 
hostage.
    In my remarks today, I want to share my perspective on 
illegal robocalls, including how they work technically and 
commercially and why they persist. I will attempt to convince 
you that this problem can be addressed through a cooperative 
and focused effort to stop robocalls closer to their source.
    I have prepared a diagram that illustrates the path taken 
by most robocalls. Before I start, I want to make a critical 
point clear: There is no way to send a call, robo or otherwise, 
to a U.S.-based consumer telephone except by arrangement with a 
so-called originating provider here in the United States. In 
other words, robocallers located outside the United States, or 
inside, for that matter, must buy what is called ``call 
termination'' service from an originating provider to get their 
robocalls onto our U.S. network. Calls typically pass through 
multiple subsequent providers before reaching the telecom 
carriers that directly serve consumers.
    These originating providers do not have to invest in any 
equipment. Standard computing resources can be used to process 
these calls, and those resources can easily be rented in the 
cloud. They do this with Voice over Internet Protocol and so 
are referred to as ``VoIP providers.''
    The robocallers' approach is to place an enormous number of 
calls through his VoIP providers in the hope of finding a 
handful of victims. If a robocaller snags just $100 from each 
of 50 victims a day, he could collect $100,000 a month. He will 
need to hire a few humans to close each deal, but the magic of 
robocalling is that most of the work, making millions of very 
cheap calls in search of potential victims, is done by 
computer. Even after paying his staff and those phone 
providers, our example robocaller could be clearing 70 grand in 
profit each month. It is no wonder that this is such a 
profitable endeavor.
    The select subset of VoIP providers that enable the 
robocallers are generally small operations with low overhead. 
On a monthly basis, a VoIP provider in this country serving 
multiple robocallers and placing 100 million robocalls onto the 
U.S. network could earn $50,000 to $100,000 in profit. Thirty 
such operators would account for 3 billion illegal robocalls 
each month.
    The best place to stop this illegal traffic is with those 
providers where the traffic is most concentrated. As the 
illegal calls move through the network, they disperse and are 
commingled with other calls, making detection more difficult.
    We should know the source of each call from its Caller ID, 
but that takes us immediately to the problem of spoofing. 
Illegal robocallers and scammers go out of their way to choose 
a VoIP provider that allows them to play fast and loose with 
Caller ID. Ultimately, the new SHAKEN/STIR protocol that 
carriers are implementing will help make clear whether a Caller 
ID is authentic. But while we wait for that protocol, the 
telecom industry today has a process called ``Traceback'' to 
identify the source of a given call. Providers have records of 
each call handled by their networks. Working cooperatively, 
each provider, starting with the carrier that serves the called 
consumer at the bottom of my diagram, searches its records and 
identifies the next provider in the chain upward that passed 
the call to it until the provider who allowed the robocalls 
onto the network in the first place is reached.
    Traceback used to be entirely manual and required subpoenas 
to each provider, taking weeks to months. Now the process has 
been automated and can be completed in days or even hours. We 
do not have to trace back billions or millions of calls. One 
successful example can get us to the source. By tracing back 
selected call examples from illegal robocall campaigns, the 
providers that allowed those calls onto the U.S. network can be 
identified and notified to take steps to stop the calls. 
Regulators must step in where providers refuse to mitigate the 
calls.
    In closing, we must be prudent about who gets what kind of 
access to the U.S. telephone network. It makes no sense for a 
robocaller in India, identified only by a gmail address, to be 
placing huge numbers of calls that look like they are 
originating from all over the USA. VoIP providers within our 
own borders that allow that to happen are the best choke point 
to stop the illegal robocall scourge. We must engage those 
providers to be part of the solution rather than contributing 
to the problem.
    I welcome your questions.
    The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Frankel. I am going 
to start with you because I feel strongly that, given the 
enormous creativity of these ruthless criminals, we need a 
technological solution that is closer to the source.
    I have been trying to sort out--and that is why your 
testimony is so helpful--whose responsibility is it to try to 
identify these bogus, illegal robocalls, and you talked about 
that they are small operators, but that they choose a VoIP 
provider that allows them in, so whose responsibility is it? Is 
someone making a lot of money from allowing these calls into 
the system? We know the scammers are making billions of 
dollars, as your example shows. But talk a little bit about 
whom we should hold accountable.
    Mr. Frankel. Certainly. Thanks for the question, so it is 
indeed these small VoIP providers that are allowing those 
scammers to make their calls. In the universe of 
telecommunications providers--and there are many, many 
hundreds, a few thousand of them perhaps, in this country--most 
of them are upright businesses, and they are providing various 
kinds of services to consumers, to other businesses that all 
have legitimate needs to use the telephone network.
    There are a small number of VoIP providers that cater to 
the kind of traffic that is associated with robocalling, and 
there are illegal robocalls, and there are legal robocalls, so 
we talk about prescription reminders and school closings and 
things like that which involve blasting out a lot of calls 
periodically, and those are legitimate robocallers, and there 
are providers that serve them.
    Those same providers or providers holding themselves out to 
serve that kind of need are the ones that are also potentially 
conduit for these illegal calls, and those are the ones where 
we need to have our focus and they need to be called upon to be 
more diligent about to whom they grant access that allows the 
massive calling and the spoofing that we see in the illegal 
robocall domain.
    The Chairman. Thank you. That is very helpful.
    Let me just ask one other question. Is there a 
technological barrier that makes it difficult to identify these 
bad actors?
    Mr. Frankel. Another great question, some might tell you 
that it is challenging to know what is a good call and what is 
a bad call. That is especially true because telecommunications 
providers generally do not have access to the content of the 
telephone call. That is private, and technologically they are 
not monitoring what is being said when a call is placed, so 
they do not know whether somebody is saying, ``Your 
prescription is ready,'' or, ``You have just won a giant 
sweepstakes.'' There are other characteristics that the 
telecommunications providers do have access to that can make it 
much more apparent and at least raise suspicions.
    For example, when a customer is overseas, or even when they 
are in this country, and they are making massive numbers of 
calls and each one is from a different number, the Caller ID 
shows a different number, that is suspicious. Why would that be 
the case? Who would legitimately be doing that? If I am a 
school, I am going to use the same number for every call I 
place. If I am the pharmacy, I will have perhaps a group of my 
pharmacy numbers in my library, but I will not be using other 
random numbers, thousands, millions of them from all over the 
country, so there are those clues, and the provider has the 
technology to screen what number their customers are providing 
as the Caller ID when the call is placed.
    There absolutely are technology approaches and solutions 
that can be applied if you choose to apply them. And you will 
know that, as I said, there are thousands of VoIP providers or 
providers of telecommunications services. These robocalls do 
not originate from the vast majority of them. They originate 
through a very small set of them, so we have an existence proof 
that they can be prevented.
    The Chairman. Thank you very much.
    Senator Casey. Thanks very much.
    Sheriff Sanders, I will start with you. You recently put an 
ad in the local people in Delaware County that we wanted to 
thank you for because you were providing a kind of public 
education campaign about this issue, and I have no doubt that 
that warning that you put in the paper prevented others from 
falling victim to this crime.
    I guess the question I have for you is: What did you learn 
from that experience, Number one. Number two, how would you 
recommend other law enforcement, especially local law 
enforcement officials, engage in order to prevent this kind of 
crime from being perpetrated?
    Mr. Sanders. I believe that some agencies----
    The Chairman. Could I ask you to turn on your mic, please?
    Mr. Sanders. When other agencies become aware of phone 
scams, I think that they should also make it known to the 
public. I think that we should participate more in community 
service in terms of going into senior homes, senior residences, 
and speaking about phone scams and making people aware. I think 
it is a joint effort that we all should, as we say here, make a 
concerted effort to inform the most vulnerable portion of our 
population.
    I believe that the danger in not doing so makes the job of 
law enforcement officers more dangerous because if people are 
paranoid about authority and legitimate authority and cannot 
tell the difference, our deputies, our officers on the street 
can be exposed to additional danger when they knock on the door 
and the citizen is paranoid about exposure to legitimate 
authority and overquestioning on both sides. The deputy may be 
there for a legitimate reason, may have a warrant, and deem the 
activity on the other side of the door as being suspicious 
enough to break, and here it is just a senior that has become 
so questioning because they have been exposed to a phone scam.
    I think that this is contagious, and it can spill into 
other areas of law enforcement and make it more dangerous for 
our officers and also more dangerous for the public.
    Senator Casey. One thing you mentioned as we were talking 
earlier today in the back is the potential to create both 
danger but also doubt. In other words, when law enforcement 
approaches a citizen, they may have doubts about that law 
enforcement official or about the institution they represent 
because of the proliferation of this fraud.
    Mr. Sanders. Yes.
    Senator Casey. And you have run into that directly, I 
guess, in some way or another.
    Mr. Sanders. Well, before becoming sheriff, which is more 
administrative than hands on, I was a deputy for 23 years, and 
when you knock on a door and you show your identification when 
someone answers, if they are suspicious of that, that is a 
situation that could escalate, and it could stem from paranoia 
that began with phone scams.
    Senator Casey. Well, we appreciate the fact that you have 
brought real-life experience to this, not just from a distance 
but from what you and your deputies have had to encounter.
    Your testimony also highlighted a situation where your 
deputies went to a bank to stop that resident from actually 
completing the transaction, which would have cost them 
thousands of dollars, and we are grateful for that. I have 
introduced a bill, as I mentioned, to help educate basically 
three groups of folks: bank tellers and others at financial 
institutions, individuals who work at wire transfer companies, 
and the third is those who work in a retail establishment.
    Tell us about how that might have an impact and anything 
else you hope that we would do by way of policy change or 
legislation.
    Mr. Sanders. Well, I consider all of these things that we 
are talking about connected. Being here today, I think it is 
part of a multi-pronged, proactive effort to educate our 
seniors. I think that what we are talking about now should be 
part of our conversation wherever we are at, in the houses of 
worship, community centers, every level of government when they 
have the forum where the public can speak, they can inform the 
public, Federal as we are doing now, State, local--from all 
corners, multi-pronged and concerted to alert our seniors. They 
need us to do that.
    We also know that suspicion can be triggered by a senior 
that may have early onset dementia or some ailment that is 
associated with or more prevalent among our seniors, so we have 
to be there for them.
    Senator Casey. Thanks, Sheriff.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Senator Braun. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Normally, when we are talking about something like this, we 
do not have something as simple as a choke point. When you 
mentioned that, that really kind of converges on, you know, 
what the solution is to the problem. I have got several 
questions here, and this is directed at Mr. Frankel, if you 
could give me some quick answers. How long have scams been 
around before technology made it really easy. Has this been 
around since landlines, or is it----
    Mr. Frankel. Thank you, Senator. To my knowledge, my own 
personal experience, going back decades, the phone network has 
been a conduit for scams of various kinds. In the beginning 
they were scams against the phone company. There was a 
technology called ``blue-boxing'' that scammers used to extract 
money from phone companies, to get around pay phone charges and 
things like that, so it is as old as that.
    Senator Braun. The recent focus on the elderly has kind of 
been along with the technology that is present to do it?
    Mr. Frankel. That is correct. As phone calls have gotten 
cheaper--some of you will remember when we used to pay 25 cents 
to call across the country per minute, and now it is just 
included in your cell phone plan, so technological progress has 
brought the cost of calling way, way down, has made mass 
calling available more readily to more people, including more 
scammers.
    Senator Braun. How many VoIP providers roughly are out 
there? You said it is basically a small group that kind of 
specializes in the scam.
    Mr. Frankel. Well, I want to be clear that there are a 
number of VoIP providers, and many of them are legitimate.
    Senator Braun. Roughly how many would that be?
    Mr. Frankel. I think there probably are a few hundred 
businesses that use VoIP at the core of their business. Maybe a 
thousand even.
    Senator Braun. Yes.
    Mr. Frankel. I would wager that there are a few dozen that 
are positioned to have their platforms used for illegal----
    Senator Braun. That seemingly would even make it easier to 
remedy this.
    Mr. Frankel. You would think so.
    Senator Braun. I look at it kind of similar to the opioid 
crisis where now we know that distributors, you know, had all 
the data, saw something was askew, just did not do it. Here it 
looks like, you know, it is an issue where it should not be 
that difficult to flesh this out.
    The next question would be: Has any third party taken an 
interest in actually going after these couple dozen scammers in 
the same way when you need help, you generally have someone 
there that is going to help out the victim that has made this, 
you know, a mission? Is anybody out there trying to help the 
elderly that are getting scammed outside of the families?
    Mr. Frankel. Well, I do not know that I can speak to that. 
I can tell you that within the telecommunications industry, I 
think we are seeing more and more and more support for 
identifying and highlighting and dealing with these VoIP 
providers that are the conduits for the----
    Senator Braun. I think that would be wise for the 
telecommunications industry, because the middleman distributing 
drugs that were knowledgeable of it are all getting sued in 
some form or another.
    Mr. Frankel. I think it is a great analogy that you have 
brought up.
    Senator Braun. Yes. Have there been any civil or criminal 
cases filed against anybody within the telecommunications 
circuit, specifically the dozen or so VoIPs?
    Mr. Frankel. One of the things that has surprised me is 
that when the regulators have gone after the illegal 
robocallers, they go after what they call the ``callers,'' the 
``scammers.'' In fact, if you read the indictments and the 
other notices, they do not name who the VoIP providers are that 
enabled that to happen.
    Now we are seeing a shift. I have just this week been 
talking to enforcement authorities in this town, and they do 
have license revocation authority. They do have injunctive 
authority, and I am hoping----
    Senator Braun. They have not used it.
    Mr. Frankel. I am hoping that we start to see that happen.
    Senator Braun. I will finish with this: It is like many of 
the things I have been involved with here in a short time. It 
amazes me how the underlying industries have the knowledge, put 
up with it; it gets to a Committee hearing before anything gets 
done.
    I would say, like I have admonished the health care 
industry, when it comes to fixing itself in general, the 
telecommunications industry and VoIP ought to be concerned, and 
it is surprising to me that they have not been taken to task 
already. That is disappointing.
    Mr. Frankel. They are concerned, and I think we are 
rallying the troops.
    Senator Braun. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Sinema. Thank you, Chairman Collins, Ranking Member 
Casey, and all of our witnesses for being here today.
    Robocalls are the No. 1 consumer complaint that the Arizona 
Attorney General receives, and more than 550 million robocalls 
have been placed to Arizonans in just the first 6 months of 
2019.
    Robocalls are more than just a nuisance, and while not 
every call is a scam, we must go after the criminals who use 
robocalls to harass seniors. For example, some criminals pose 
as utility bill collectors and threaten to shut off people's 
power in the dead of summer. In Arizona, where summer 
temperatures can easily top 110 degrees, that is a threat to a 
senior's health and well-being, and some do pay out of fear.
    I also heard from Maggie, who is here today, whose elderly 
parents in Tucson, Arizona, were robbed of their life savings 
in a sweepstakes scam. Maggie's father is a 20-year veteran of 
the United States Air Force, living with Alzheimer's, and has 
lost much of what his family saved from his military pension. 
Their story is horrifying, but all too common, and that is why 
I have worked with Chairman Collins to pass the Senior Safe Act 
into law last year, which empowers financial institutions to 
identify and stop financial exploitation before families like 
Maggie's lose everything.
    I am proud to join Chairman Collins in introducing new 
legislation this Congress, the Anti-Spoofing Penalties 
Modernization Act, that updates existing penalties for illegal 
spoofing that have not changed since they first became law in 
2010. Our bill also helps enforcement partners by extending the 
statute of limitations for these violations from 2 years to 3 
years.
    There have been increasing reports of hospital systems 
getting inundated with thousands of robocalls a day, which jams 
their phone systems and puts lives in danger. I heard from a 
doctor in Scottsdale who is required to have her cell phone 
with her at all times. She worries that every wasted minute 
listening to an automated recording is a minute that is being 
taken from a patient or a medical emergency.
    This leads me to my first question to Mr. Frankel. What 
could businesses and organizations, especially those that serve 
vulnerable populations, do to combat these scams? To what 
extent do you believe these types of scams that target 
hospitals or pretend to be from law enforcement or from IRS 
impact public health and safety?
    Mr. Frankel. Well, Senator, thank you for the question. I 
think whether it is a hospital or it is some other agency, I 
mean, these are all damaging. And the robocallers are 
indiscriminate in who they choose to target. It is just a 
fishing expedition for them to see what works. They trade 
stories amongst each other about what the most lucrative scam 
is, and if it turns out the scam of the week is to target 
hospitals, then that is what they are going to do. It 
absolutely impacts the institutions, and I think that, again, 
as the recipients of those calls, their ability to mitigate 
that is--it is too far down the line to ask them to try to do 
that. We can make them cautious. We absolutely have to educate 
them. But we have to go back to the root cause.
    In fact, I will tell you that I have spoken with a VoIP 
provider in Scottsdale who admitted to me that he was allowing 
4 million calls a day onto our network from a customer of his 
in India, where all of those calls are spoofed. The Indian 
caller is claiming to be calling from the United States, and he 
is allowing this, and he is livid with me for calling him out 
on it, and he has told me he is not going to cooperate with me 
further, and that if I want to get more information from him, I 
can get a subpoena, and so, you know, now I will chase down 
authorities who can do that, but there is no excuse for that.
    Senator Sinema. My second question is also for you. Adam 
Dupuy is an assistant professor in the School of Computing 
Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering at Arizona State 
University. Experts like Adam have called for a national effort 
to build a detailed map of the robocall ecosystem and have 
raised concerns about Traceback and the new SHAKEN/STIR 
protocols not being a silver bullet.
    In your experience, do you believe there will still be gaps 
in how we protect people from robocalls? Are there specific 
challenges in rural areas that depend on older legacy 
telecommunications systems?
    Mr. Frankel. Thank you for that. I do not believe that we 
will ever get this problem down to zero. The scammers are very 
clever, and we will need to have programs and systems in place 
that react to how they react to what we do, so it is a moving 
target, and we need to plan for that.
    That said, I think that there absolutely are things that we 
can do that will dramatically reduce and limit this.
    With respect to your question about rural communities, 
certainly with respect to SHAKEN/STIR, call authentication 
technology, that is a new technology. It relies on new networks 
in order to work, and traditionally--and we know from the rural 
providers that they tend to be the last to upgrade their 
networks, so their ability to take advantage of that new 
technology and offer that new technology to their customers is 
some long way, years away. But these robocalls, these illegal 
robocalls do not come into our network through rural carriers. 
They come into the network, as the diagram showed, way upstream 
from them, and if we stop them there, we will stop them for 
everybody, and they will not be able to reach urban dwellers, 
and they will not be able to reach--or they will be at least 
very limited in their ability to reach rural customers as well.
    Senator Sinema. Thank you.
    Thank you, Madam Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Senator McSally. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I really 
appreciate you having this really important hearing today. It 
is impacting so many of all of our constituents around the 
country. And I do want to point out Maggie Dickens, who is here 
today--can you raise your hand, Maggie, and say hi?---and her 
story of her parents that were robbed of nearly $750,000 
because of these scams, and I want to share more of her story 
because I think it is so important as we look at this issue.
    The individuals who stole from her not only convinced them 
to wire the money, but trained her parents to wrap cash in 
magazines to send through the mail. They prepared scripts for 
them to read to a banking institution to legitimize the need to 
send these thousands of dollars internationally. They 
impersonated her parents over the phone to the life insurance 
company, allowing them to cash in her parents' life insurance 
policies.
    When the criminals did not get answers fast enough--and I 
am reading your testimony--from Maggie's parents, they ``sent 
taxicabs to my parents' home to deliver messages and try and 
get my parents into the cabs. Additionally, the individuals 
instructed my mother to open multiple credit card accounts and 
advance cash and buy a large number of gift cards from retail 
stores, all of which were sent overseas.''
    They are both elderly, and your father was at the beginning 
stages of Alzheimer's when all this happened, and he is a 20-
year Air Force veteran.
    As they have gone through this experience and Maggie 
started--as you understood what happened, you think about how 
many people were touched just by what I just--how many people 
they interacted with through this whole process. It starts with 
a robocall. But then there are so many other people who are on 
the front lines of identifying that something not right is 
happening here, but nobody acted.
    We have had a lot of great discussion today about what more 
can be done. First, we have got to stop the robocall in the 
first place. But there were so many other indications that they 
were about to be robbed. What more can be done, Sheriff 
Sanders, what you have seen in your experience, to address this 
at the front lines of all these other people who were touched 
in the midst of this scam as their life savings were robbed? 
This is so tragic, and, Angela, your story is similar, but it 
is happening everywhere. What else can we do, Sheriff?
    Mr. Sanders. Well, the typical answer would be more police. 
That is not the answer here. The answer is what we are doing 
now. The answer is requiring the laws that are being proposed 
by Senator Casey to be passed so that the technological 
industry has some constraints and expectations, legal 
expectations that it has to live up to. It is everything that 
we are talking about. It is everything. It is family looking 
out for elderly relatives. It is friends looking out for 
elderly friends and making them aware of what we are aware of. 
Everyone here needs to be making this part of our daily routine 
and dialog when we come in contact with a senior, and they are 
coming at us in a technological way, but our response has to 
be----
    Senator McSally. In a human way.
    Ms. De Leon-Colon, you said that veterans are more likely 
to be scammed. Maggie's dad was a veteran, so can you elaborate 
more on this? As a veteran myself, this is deeply disturbing.
    Ms. De Leon-Colon. Yes, it is because the scammers, they 
are going to lock onto victims that will provide a benefit to 
them through their schemes, so the veteran's benefits, it 
entices the scammers in order to obtain access to their 
information.
    In order to add to what Sheriff Sanders said, education is 
a great piece. We have to educate our veterans and their 
families the same way that we have to educate the elderly. But 
it is very important that we education the community as well as 
their families in order to be able to identify when one of our 
family members, elderly or a veteran, is being targeted.
    Another aspect that we have to look to veterans is because 
they utilize emotion, so they know that the camaraderie within 
the veteran community is large, so when they entice them, they 
tell them that they are veterans as well. They come into 
conversation scheming up situations where you are going to help 
other veterans, creating charities as well in order to help 
your brother, and that is how they entice veterans.
    Senator McSally. There is a special place in hell for 
people who are preying upon those who served and sacrificed for 
our country. We need to go after these people. But it starts 
with a phone call.
    I have got a neighbor. She is in her 60's. She is pretty 
technologically savvy, and she all of a sudden is getting 
nonstop calls. We do not know what shifted and what list she 
got on, but nonstop robocalls, and the technology has got to be 
there to stop it. I know we have talked about it. She has gone 
to the provider, and they are saying, ``Well, you have got to 
upgrade your phone if we are going to try something else on 
it.'' She does not have the ability to upgrade her phone. She 
cannot afford to upgrade her phone.
    What else can we do, Mr. Frankel?
    Mr. Frankel. Well, I hate to sound like a broken record, 
Senator----
    Senator McSally. I know.
    Mr. Frankel [continuing]. but by the time the call gets to 
your neighbor and to her provider, it is lost in a sea of 
millions of other calls, many of which are legitimate, so 
identifying it at that point is very, very difficult for her 
provider. The stopping of the calls needs to move upstream to 
the point where that concentration of millions of illegal calls 
is coming into our network. That is the provider that has the 
ability to identify and stop the calls, and unlike the rest of 
the telecommunications community that is rallying and, like 
you, is livid about these calls, these guys are just asleep at 
the switch and letting it happen.
    Senator McSally. They need to do more. In fact, the guy 
there at the store said, ``Well, I just ignore them when they 
come in.'' You cannot ignore hundreds of calls every day, and 
you are missing out on loved ones and others.
    I know I am way over my time, so thank you all for your 
testimony, and thank you, Madam Chair.
    The Chairman. Thank you very much for describing Maggie's 
story as well. We appreciate that.
    Senator Jones. Thank you, Chairman Collins, and also, thank 
you, Chairman Collins, for all your leadership on this issue. 
It is so important. As someone who has elderly parents, one of 
whom still lives by her telephone, it is really important.
    I want to highlight something because one of the problems I 
see that we have--the education, we have talked about it. 
Everybody has talked about it, and I want to come back. But 
when elderly folks get calls from someone who appears to be a 
legitimate law enforcement office or whatever, you can talk to 
them all day long. But if the sheriff calls, they are going to 
take that call, and recently, we had a constituent--and I think 
this is all important for us on this dais here--call us to tell 
us that they had gotten a call from Senator Jones' office 
checking up on their Social Security benefits, and they have to 
verify information about their Social Security number because 
they are in--we have checked and my office knew that they were 
about to lose their benefits if we did not get their number and 
help them verify that. Now, that senior was smart enough to 
call our office and say this is happening, so we are doing 
that.
    We can talk about education a lot, and I agree, and I talk 
to my mom all the time about this. Where are our seniors, 
though, getting most of their information so that the education 
can be there? There are not that many of them out there that 
are watching C-SPAN today to watch this hearing. There are not 
many out there that are going to always read--my mom cannot see 
good, so she gets something in the mail, she cannot see it.
    Sheriff, Ms. Stancik, I think you can answer this better. 
When we are educating folks, where are they getting their 
information? Because it is a different generation that is not 
getting it all on their telephone or their iPad. They are 
looking at TV; they are listening to radio. Where can we do 
that? Where are they getting their information? I will leave it 
to anybody to answer that.
    Mr. Sanders. Mr. Jones, I believe one place that should be 
informing our seniors is places of worship. Many of our seniors 
attend regularly, and I think that the leaders in faith-based 
organizations should make this information available to our 
seniors.
    Senator Jones. Okay. Ms. Stancik, do you want to--where was 
your grandmother getting her information?
    Ms. Stancik. I would say doctors' offices would be a good 
place. Anyplace like you said, in church, even with PSAs or 
other mailers that they can get, they do get a lot of mail. But 
things that are easy for them to understand and easy for them 
to read I think would help. But doctors' offices, places of 
worship, all those are really good places to reach our elderly.
    Senator Jones. Okay. Is it television? Can the media 
companies help with this when they understand and know a scam, 
that you report a scam, can somebody--can we tell the FCC or 
somebody to say, for God's sakes, do some public service 
announcements about this? And not just do it on the nightly 
news because they do not always watch the nightly news. Would 
that help?
    Mr. Sanders. All of the above.
    Senator Jones. All right. Mr. Frankel, let me followup with 
you real quick because technology jumps way ahead quickly, and 
I think that the generation--my mother's generation now and 
maybe mine--I am 65, and so maybe even mine--they are not 
always as technologically savvy. But as our population ages and 
my children and those in the 50 or so range, they are going to 
know about this a lot better. They are going to be better 
educated. But there is going to be something else.
    What is it we have got to do to stay ahead of the game? 
What are we looking at in 5 years, 10 years down the road so 
that folks that are 50 years old now or 55 years old now, who 
are pretty technologically savvy and they know when they get a 
call from the sheriff that they are going to come arrest them 
because they did not pay a parking ticket, they know that that 
is a scam. But what is the next big thing here that we need to 
be looking at? How do we stay ahead of the game?
    Mr. Frankel. Well, sometimes I say, Senator, we need to 
think like a robocaller or think like a scammer. First of all, 
the stories we have heard, the scammers are employing a broader 
range of technologies. It may start with a robocall today. I 
think as long as the telephone is around, they are going to 
continue to use it. We have seen scams that originate in email, 
so that is an ongoing threat. But I think, my prediction is 
that they are going to become more targeted. There is going to 
be more social engineering. We have got so much information 
about ourselves now out on the Internet that it is very easy 
for a scammer to go and research all the details, and now you 
have gone and admitted exactly how old you are and who your 
parents are and so on, and they can go find all that 
information pretty quickly.
    Senator Jones. It has been out there for a long time 
anyway, so that is OK. But I get what you are saying.
    Mr. Frankel. I understand, but it is becoming more 
available and more detailed, and scammers are going to become 
more resourceful in using it to establish credibility and to 
perpetrate scams of larger scale, more damaging scams in a more 
targeted way. That is my prediction.
    I also think that it is going to move to businesses, so you 
are going to see--we have seen it a little bit, but there are 
businesses that have been bilked out of hundreds of thousands 
of dollars and millions through wire transfer scams and things 
like that where people impersonate the CFO or the comptroller 
or the treasurer or something like that, and they can do that 
credibly because they have gone and gathered a lot of 
information on the Internet, and then they use the telephone as 
an entry point.
    Senator Jones. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you very much.
    Thank you, Madam Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Senator Hawley. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for 
holding this hearing on such an important topic, and thanks to 
all of you for being here to discuss an issue that, 
unfortunately, affects all of us every day.
    You know, I served as the Attorney General of my State, and 
I can tell you that this was the top consumer complaint to my 
office by far, and just last year, 2018, we had nearly 50,000 
complaints in the State of Missouri, 50,000 complaints of 
illegal telemarketing calls, and many of those came from 
residents who were signed up on the State's no-call list. You 
can imagine their incredible frustration to understand why in 
the world they are still getting these calls.
    As Attorney General, I joined a multi-State coalition of 
other Attorneys General to seek ways to stop and reduce 
robocalls, and these fraudulent schemes are outrageous 
violations of privacy, I know firsthand, and frustrate and harm 
Missourians and Americans on a daily basis.
    Like many of my colleagues here on the Committee, I was 
proud to cosponsor the TRACED Act, which passed the Senate in 
May, and I am proud to join Senator Collins on the Anti-
Spoofing Penalties Modernization Act, which I hope will soon 
move forward, and I hope that both of these will make a real 
difference.
    Mr. Frankel, can I just start with you? I want to come back 
to the topic that Senator Sinema raised about rural 
communities. Looking at the STIR/SHAKEN authentication 
technology, a lot of rural carriers still use the legacy--and 
you were, I think, alluding to this with Senator Sinema---the 
legacy time-division multiplexing, TDM, networks rather than 
the voice IP technology, so am I right in thinking that the 
STIR/SHAKEN authentication technology cannot be used by 
carriers that use TDM networks? Is that right?
    Mr. Frankel. In its present form, that is correct, Senator.
    Senator Hawley. Can you just give us a brief description 
for the lay person as to why those two are not compatible, why 
we should care about that, why that is a problem?
    Mr. Frankel. Well, you should not have to care about it. 
The industry should care about it for you. But a brief 
explanation, the TDM technology dates back to the late 1970's, 
deployed largely in the early 1980's. You know, the same reason 
that you cannot run modern programs on a 20-year-old computer, 
these protocols do not work in that old technology. It is good 
enough to carry telephone calls, but it is not good enough to 
carry all of the signatures and the encryption data that is 
associated with this latest STIR/SHAKEN.
    Senator Hawley. Got it. What are some other ways, then, in 
your view, that we can protect rural residents and others who 
use carriers that rely on TDM networks? You mentioned stopping 
these calls up network. What are some things, what are some 
solutions for folks who use these networks that we can be 
pursuing?
    Mr. Frankel. Well, I really do believe stopping it up 
network where the calls do enter our U.S. telecom system, that 
is the right place to stop them, and that is not dependent on 
all of the technology down at the customer-serving, the 
consumer-serving level, be it rural or otherwise. That is 
dependent up higher in the system where we have a small number 
of providers through which the bulk of these calls come. That 
is where they should be stopped, and the providers down there 
at the consumer level I think should actually be demanding of 
the rest of the industry upstream, saying: Do not send us this 
garbage. We will not accept it, and we require that you and the 
people upstream from you, everybody up the chain, needs to be 
responsible and needs to be diligent and do whatever it takes 
to stop those calls.
    Senator Hawley. Are there policy steps that we could take, 
regulatory or otherwise, incentives that we could put in place 
to help stop these up network?
    Mr. Frankel. Well, I think there is certainly encouragement 
that you can provide to do that. Certainly I also hear concerns 
from the industry. We are a very litigious society, and so, for 
example, providers are concerned that we are going to get in 
antitrust trouble if we all agree down at the customer-serving 
level that we will not accept this garbage from up higher. Is 
somebody going to accuse us of colluding to stop robocalls?
    Now, I think that is ridiculous, and you are smiling, but I 
hear that, you know, routinely from people. We need to be very 
careful what steps we take because we do not want to get in 
that kind of trouble.
    I will tell you that I went to a few having identified a 
couple of these providers, I called them, engaged with them via 
email and telephone, saying, ``Please can you stop.'' And what 
I got back from two of them was threats that they were going to 
sue me for fraud and harassment. Can you imagine, these 
providers that are putting millions of calls, garbage calls, on 
the network every day are telling me that I am acting 
fraudulently and harassing them?
    Senator Hawley. That is incredible.
    Thank you, Madam Chair.
    The Chairman. Thank you. That is absolutely outrageous.
    Senator Blumenthal. Thank you all for being here today. 
Thank you, Madam Chair, for having this hearing.
    If this is the fifth hearing on robocalls since I have
    been in the U.S. Senate, it is probably the 150th. I was 
Attorney General of my State as well. This problem has been 
endemic as a consumer challenge for years and years, and the 
technology is there to stop these calls, correct? I do not see 
anyone disagreeing. It is there.
    I have introduced a measure called the ``ROBOCOP Act,'' 
which would require telecom companies to verify Caller ID and 
provide--here is the important part--free robocall-blocking 
technology to consumers. We have taken action in the Commerce 
Committee to approve a measure that is called the TRACED Act. 
It is on the floor of the Senate now. But it still fails to 
require this technology, which is there and it has been there 
for years, to be provided to consumers.
    Is there anyone here who opposes the ROBOCOP Act? Or to put 
it more positively, would all of you support a measure to 
provide this existing technology to consumers to block 
robocalls? And we are not talking about public service, you 
know, your community is about to be flooded or there is a 
criminal shooter in your midst. We are talking about commercial 
robocalls that are done to harass and exploit seniors and the 
rest of us. Anybody here who opposes it? Would everyone here 
support it?
    Mr. Frankel. Senator, if I may, I do not oppose the bill, 
but I have to tell you that the blocking technology at the 
terminating end of the call where it is about to be delivered 
to the consumer is trivially defeated by a robocaller.
    Senator Blumenthal. Well, with the great scientific 
knowledge we have--and we are celebrating the Apollo 
anniversary. If we can put a man on the Moon, can we defeat 
that kind of robocall ingenuity?
    Mr. Frankel. That is absolutely what we have to do, but you 
have to recognize that for every phone call that there is a 
point of origination and there is a point of termination. There 
is the caller and the called party, and if the caller's 
provider is complicit in the perpetration of these illegal 
calls, then at the terminating end they are virtually helpless 
to do anything about it, so engaging the major providers to 
provide the best blocking technology they have is not going to 
work if there is somebody at the originating end that is 
complicit in defeating that technology.
    Senator Blumenthal. What would be necessary in terms of 
technology to block that complicity?
    Mr. Frankel. Well, you have to hold those originating 
providers accountable for what they allow onto the network.
    Senator Blumenthal. Are suggesting that holding them 
accountable, holding them legally liable would be the answer?
    Mr. Frankel. I think that would be helpful, yes.
    Senator Blumenthal. That should be part of the bill?
    Mr. Frankel. I am not a law writer, but I think we should 
figure out, yes, how--they are so obstinate, this handful, I 
think there are tools that exist today that we need to fully 
deploy to rein them in, and to the extent that can be 
backstopped with legislation, I think we should be pursuing 
that.
    Senator Blumenthal. Thank you.
    Thank you, Madam Chair.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Rick Scott. Thank you, Chairman Collins and Ranking 
Member Casey, for doing this. Clearly, in Florida, as Senator 
Rubio and I will testify, both of us have had plenty of phone 
calls from people that have been scammed, and we have got a lot 
of senior citizens in our State.
    Ms. De Leon-Colon, thank you for being here from the great 
State of Florida. What else can we be doing to just get the 
public--I mean, the best thing is that the public would know. I 
think we ought to pursue what Senator Blumenthal was talking 
about, what legislation we can do. But what should we be doing 
to get people more knowledgeable?
    Ms. De Leon-Colon. What the Postal Inspection Service is 
doing, we have compiled a series of public announcements that 
they are focused toward elderly and they are provided across 
the Nation, and we have actually collaborated as well with the 
National Center on Elder Abuse in order to prepare literature 
that will actually focus and speak to that senior citizen so 
that the information that they are receiving is good for them 
and is in a way that they can understand, and they are informed 
on how to avoid being targeted, also where to report and what 
to except and what the trends are as well.
    We have national campaigns, National Consumer Protection 
Week, that we do in collaboration with the Federal Trade 
Commission, and we do that yearly. We go out to the post 
offices, and we provide talks to our customers.
    We also have first-line--we have our clerks out there that 
have the interaction, and they usually know at the small post 
offices, they know their customers, and they identify--they 
also speak to them as well, and also they call us. They know to 
call us.
    Education is key, and it is not just to the elderly 
community. It is society's responsibility, so we need to go to 
those churches, we need to go to those doctors, medical 
facilities. We need to have those social workers aware, and law 
enforcement has to be a part of it. It is a holistic approach.
    Senator Rick Scott. Just take seniors in Florida as an 
example. What percentage of seniors in Florida do you think are 
aware of all the games, how they can be taken advantage of?
    Ms. De Leon-Colon. I do not have that information. I would 
like to provide it to you at a later time.
    Senator Rick Scott. OK. Do you have any feel for--I mean, 
are people getting more knowledgeable about it?
    Ms. De Leon-Colon. I think there is, and the way I believe 
people are getting more knowledge on it is that we are 
educating their family as well, so when we go visit our elder 
parents, we look through the mail. Tell them to look through 
the mail. Sometimes you are there, we see the phone calls. They 
do have to have their autonomy, but it is okay. They took care 
of us. It is our turn to take care of them. Actually, letting 
society know that it is society's responsibility, it is not 
just the elderly's responsibility to take care of themselves, 
so I believe that has helped put the message out there.
    Also, legislation, the cases that we are working in 
collaboration within the State, local, and international 
authorities helps as well, has helped shine a light on this 
issue.
    Senator Rick Scott. Thank you.
    Sheriff Sanders, what have you been able to do that has 
worked in your area to get--take whatever group, but seniors 
more knowledgeable about what is going on?
    Mr. Sanders. Community affairs, going out to the public 
arena in terms of senior centers. We schedule with their 
directors to appear and give advisories on this. We also put 
out public information articles about web scammers, and we also 
ask for suggestions as to what more we can do because all of 
us, if we invite comments such as you are doing today, we are 
collectively stronger. In my office, we ask for suggestions as 
to what more we can do.
    Senator Rick Scott. Ms. Stancik, you have been trying to 
make people more aware because of what happened to your 
grandmother. First of all, my heart goes out to you. What do 
you think has worked the best as you have watched what is going 
on around the country?
    Ms. Stancik. I am not an expert. I can only speak from my 
grandmother's situation. I wish that there would have been more 
things in place to alert her. I know so many people that this 
has happened to now. I mentioned in my testimony I know some 
very close family friends who are victims of the grandparent 
scam, and I wish that I would have reached out to them more to 
explain to them the way that these criminals are reaching out 
to them. They lost I believe $4,000 through this scam, and they 
live on a fixed income, and this really hurt them.
    I tell everyone I know, when I hear of a new scam, I call 
my parents. I tell them. I live in a very rural area, but 
everyone that will listen, I tell.
    Senator Rick Scott. Thank you.
    Ms. Stancik. Thank you for that question.
    Senator Rick Scott. Thank you, Chairman Collins.
    The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Scott.
    Senator Rosen. Thank you for bringing this very important 
hearing. I know we are here on Aging, but these robocalls, 
these scams, they affect everyone regardless of age, and so we 
need to bring this probably to every committee, to the whole 
Senate, because it is very important.
    I have to say that I have a little bit of an irony here 
because I was on the floor voting in the Senate last week, and 
I stepped away. I was waiting for an important call, so I had a 
call from a number I did not know. I thought that was the call, 
so I stepped off the floor, and I answered the phone. Well, 
unbeknownst to me, my Social Security number had been 
deactivated. I am standing off the floor of
    the U.S. Senate as a Senator receiving a robocall you know, 
with: ``If you do not press this number, you will be 
deactivated.'' I mean, the whole robot voice and everything.
    Now, that is--excuse me--pretty ironic when you think about 
that, so--excuse me, I am suffering from a summer cold, so 
nobody is immune to that, not even United States Senators.
    My question is--excuse me one moment. I am sorry.
    Many people, especially the elderly, have plans where they 
have to pay for every incoming call--I really apologize, so do 
you think--I have had calls from constituents. This really 
increases their bill, so can we require cell phone companies to 
have some kind of mediation so that people do not have to pay 
for these incoming robocalls? Anyone have a comment on that?
    Mr. Frankel. Senator, I do not speak for the industry. I am 
very familiar with it. It is very difficult--in fact, as I 
explained, it is virtually impossible for the terminating 
carrier, for AT&T Mobility or Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, 
Sprint, to know that this is a scam call and to block it or to 
not charge for it or count against a minutes plan for it.
    I mean, in some cases, when they do manage to block the 
call, the good news is it does not go through; you do not get 
charged for it. If they put ``Scam Likely'' on it and you 
decline the call, you will not get charged for it, but beyond 
that, there is not a mechanism, certainly not an automatic 
mechanism, and I would just tell you--I will just stop talking 
at this point.
    Senator Rosen. Because of my summer cold, I apologize. 
Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you, and we wish you better health 
soon.
    Senator Rubio. Thank you. Thank you all for being here. Let 
me just say the numbers are startling: 26.3 billion of these 
type of calls in 2018. It feels like at least 5 percent of them 
were to me, I got to tell you, because just in the last 6 
months--I just wrote some thing I remember: this robot voice 
telling me I am going to jail; I forgot who I owed money to on 
that one. There was another one saying they had stolen my 
Social Security number at the border--these are actually 
voicemails that they leave. ``Somebody stole your Social 
Security number at the border. We need you to call us right 
away.'' Some are in a foreign language, like a recorded 
statement, so I do not know what those are about.
    The point is I think I count last night I had 106 or 86--I 
forget--blocked. You know, every time when you get one of these 
calls, you just put it on your block list. I have more blocked 
numbers than I have contacts at this point, but, you know, they 
keep moving on these things and the like, so it is just 
overwhelming.
    Part of this, too, is you get afraid--you cannot answer 
your phone for legitimate calls anymore, right? Like you pick 
it up, if you do not recognize it, just because it says ``John 
Smith,'' it is not John Smith. You know, they have figured out 
a way to spoof so it is your local area code.
    The purpose of this hearing in particular, I want to focus 
on two parts. First, Ms. De Leon-Colon, being in the Miramar 
office, between Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, a huge 
concentration of elderly citizens, and particularly in addition 
to that, a huge number of elderly citizens who perhaps are not 
fully proficient in English, making them, I think, even more 
vulnerable to sort of the fear, and on top of everything else, 
you know, senior citizens have good credit ratings, have 
complied with the law. The last thing they want to do is be 
outside of it and someone is calling them telling them, 
``Unless you pay us, something bad is going to happen to you.''
    I think you have touched on it, and maybe I missed it 
before I came in, but this really seems to me like something 
that calls for a much broader, with industry participation, 
public awareness, public service campaign that we have led on 
multiple other efforts. Everybody knows now you do not leave an 
animal in a locked car with the windows up--or even with the 
windows down, for that matter, in the middle of the summer--or 
at any point, for that matter. People now know you should not 
be eating foods that the package has been tampered with. You 
name it. On numerous occasions, with sudden infant death 
syndrome, this Nation has undertaken an effort to inform people 
about the dangers and the types of dangers that lie out there, 
and I guess it is for everybody, but most certainly knowing the 
intricacies of Florida, it just seems to me like this is 
something that is beyond just the elderly population. 
Oftentimes the people who spot this are their children or their 
caregivers, and a lot of times, the other thing I have come 
across is that when someone falls victim, they realize it, and 
there is shame associated with it, so they do not want to tell 
anybody about it.
    That is why I think it is so important that we have a broad 
sort of public awareness campaign that includes everyone from 
retailers and others. You know, if an elderly person shows up 
at your point of sale and is buying--I do not know what this 
year's scam is. It used to be--what was it, iTunes or cards? I 
mean, that is suspicious, you are buying 100 iTunes cards or 
something, all the way to their caregivers, their children, and 
themselves. I really, really think that this is the kind of 
issue that really calls for a much broader public awareness 
campaign. Everyone knows these calls are coming in. I still am 
shocked at how many well-informed individuals fall for this for 
whatever reason.
    I do not know if that is something any of you have had 
experience with, or do you think we are doing enough to inform 
people? I have got to tell you, most people know these calls 
are annoying. I am not sure how many people know the risks of 
the scam end of it.
    Ms. De Leon-Colon. Senator, education is key. Prevention--
you prevent a crime, it is not going to be enticing for the 
scammers, so prevention is key, education as well, and 
legislation. It is a holistic approach. Educating the elderly, 
educating society does help. We brought this issue to light 
today, and you can tell word of mouth, you go, you visit your 
parents, you visit your grandparents, the caregivers. It has 
made an impact, and I think it is important to continue because 
scammers change their tactics. Technology evolves, and they 
will evolve with the times as well, so it is a continuous 
effort.
    PSAs are very powerful. I think that also a lot of the 
people who have been victimized do not want to come forward 
because it does not seek certain structure. It happens--some of 
the elderly, when we have sat with them during our enforcement 
operations, and we speak to witnesses and victims. They come 
forth and say, ``This was my last opportunity to leave 
something to my family.'' It is not a matter of their 
education. It is our responsibility and it is their opportunity 
to leave something behind, so education is key to prevent.
    Mr. Frankel. Senator, if I might, I am all for education 
campaigns, and I think doing it through caregivers and through 
places like where my parents live, continuing care facilities, 
those are all great places to do this, and I know it is 
happening and I applaud it.
    I would just tell you, if I were a robocaller, down the 
road I am going to call you, and I am going to say, ``Hi. I am 
from the IRS. I know you have heard our announcements that we 
do not make phone calls and we do not collect money via gift 
cards, but we have got a new program, and that has changed.'' 
You say that to a million people, a few of them are going to be 
compelled to believe it. You are going to sound so credible: 
``It was my department that put that ad on television. That was 
2 years ago when we produced it, but we have a new program 
thanks to new technology, and it is actually cheaper for you 
now to deal with us over the phone and to pay your tax debts 
via this new''----
    Senator Rubio. I am out of time, but just say that I 100 
percent agree that we can tell people not to leave sugar out 
because the ants are going to come, like in your example, but 
you have still got to go after the ants. I ran out of time, but 
I do think it is worth--it is outside the jurisdiction of this 
Committee, but the idea that--one of the points you made is 
that there are very few legitimate entities that need the 
ability to make millions of calls per day, have a valid reason 
for using different calling numbers, and it makes no sense when 
they are outside of a country and their only identifier is 
gmail. I think that is really worth exploring further, because 
I think that is a great point.
    The Chairman. Thank you very much. That is a reason for you 
to cosponsor my bill to double the penalties.
    It is very clear that we need an all-of-the-above approach 
to this issue. We definitely need to get the technology 
implemented that can stop these calls and the spoofing, which I 
think is what causes people to answer and believe those calls, 
and we also need effective enforcement, law enforcement for 
those who have ripped off people in this country, and we need 
the educational campaign.
    All of you have played a role in each of those areas, and I 
want to thank you so much for your participation today in this 
hearing. Each of you has really made a difference.
    We are going to pursue this because when you look at the 
numbers, as Senator Rubio has said and as I outlined in my 
opening statement, it is billions of calls coming in, and I 
talked to a veteran in Portland, Maine, who testified at one of 
our previous hearings, and he said, ``When I saw the IRS was 
calling me, I assumed that I must have missed a tax bill.'' 
Then when the next call was the Portland Police Department 
saying, ``We have a warrant for your arrest unless you pay up 
your tax debt immediately,'' no wonder he believed that, so the 
spoofing is so much a part of these scams.
    I want to thank the Postal Inspection Service for your 
enforcement, and the Justice Department. All the agencies are 
much more activated than ever before. The TRACED Act 
legislation that each of us has introduced, the Senior Safe 
Act, which became law last year, is making a difference, and 
allowing financial institutions to question these transactions 
without worrying about violating bank secrecy or privacy laws, 
so it is an all-of-the-above approach.
    Our votes have started, so much as I would love to do 
another round of questions, we are not going to be able to. I 
would ask Ms. De Leon-Colon if you would leave with us some 
copies of the literature that you held up, because we can help 
distribute that. We have a Fraud Book that we put out every 
year, and that would be a welcome supplement to our educational 
issues.
    Mr. Frankel. Most certainly, we will be glad to. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Committee members will have until Friday, July 26th, to 
submit additional questions for the record, and again, I want 
to thank each of you for being here, for putting a human face 
on the problem, talking about law enforcement, the educational 
campaigns and technology. We need an all-of-the-above approach 
to put an end to scams perpetuated through robocalls that are 
literally costing Americans, but particularly our seniors, 
billions of dollars each year.
    Senator Casey. Madam Chair, thank you very much. I want to 
thank our witnesses. In the interest of time, I will submit a 
statement for the record, but I do want to thank you for the 
work you did today because you have helped advance the ball on 
this. We have got a lot more work to do at the prevention 
level, but also at the choke point that was discussed earlier 
about making sure we are doing both prevention and, frankly, 
prosecution and using every bit of technology to stop it.
    Ms. Stancik, we are just grateful you are willing to bring 
your personal story. That has got to be very difficult to do, 
but you are helping a lot of other people by doing it, so we 
are grateful.
    Sheriff, I will see you back home, and I will submit a 
statement for the record.
    Senator Casey. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    The Chairman. Thank you very much.
    This hearing is now adjourned. I also want to thank our 
staff for their hard work, too.
    [Whereupon, at 11:14 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
    
     
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                                APPENDIX

  
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                      Prepared Witness Statements

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                       Statements for the Record

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                        Closing Remarks

          Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr., Ranking Member

                         July 17, 2019

    Thank you, Chairman Collins, for holding this hearing 
today.
    As we learned today, scammers are still using illegal 
robocalls to pick the pockets of our aging loved ones. We also 
heard about the devastating impact these calls can have on 
seniors and their families. We cannot sit back and let this 
continue. It is our sacred duty to step in. This is why we must 
re-double our efforts to make sure that older adults are made 
aware of potential scams before they send money to these con 
artists. We must also continue our efforts to stop these con 
artists from ever connecting with consumers. Our nation's 
seniors are depending on us.
    I look forward to continuing the work with you, Senator 
Collins, on this important issue, and hope that we can find 
some way put a stop to this once and for all.
    Thank you. 
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                        [all]