[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Page 6773]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               GOLD SCAM

  Mr. NELSON. Madam President, while I had the opportunity on the 
floor, I wanted to call to the attention of the Senate that the Special 
Committee on Aging, which I have the privilege of chairing, held a 
hearing last week on scams particularly affecting senior citizens--but 
not limited to senior citizens--in the selling of precious metals, in 
particular gold.
  Basically, the bottom-line takeaway from the hearing is if you are an 
American getting a cold call suggesting to you that you should invest 
in a precious metal such as gold, more than likely it is a scam and you 
are about to be robbed of your money if you play along and start 
investing in this fictitious investment in gold. The testimony showed 
that most of the time the scammers do not even purchase the gold and 
certainly are not storing it--even though they are charging the poor 
victim, often a senior citizen, storage fees for this fictitious gold.
  I was astounded. We are accustomed to getting telemarketer calls--
unless you are on the Do Not Call list--but telemarketers still call 
through the Do Not Call list. That is another giveaway. If you are on 
the Do Not Call list and you are getting one of these calls to invest, 
they can make it sound so good.
  We had a man who was about to be sentenced and was one of the 
telemarketers. Why do these scams often end up being from South 
Florida? But it is true--not only these kinds of scams, but also 
Medicare and Medicaid fraud. It is concentrated in South Florida. This 
man was a part of this scam calling unsuspecting Americans to get them 
to invest in something that sounds too good to be true, only it is the 
gold standard. People fell for it, and then they sent him money. He 
showed us. They have four different stages: someone who first gets you 
interested, someone who comes in and closes the deal, another person 
who comes along and then gets up the deal, and then others who keep you 
hooked into the scam until you find out that you don't have any gold 
that is being held in trust for you in storage but, in fact, it is all 
a sham.
  I wanted to share with folks what the Senate Special Committee on 
Aging found out. If you get a cold call and they want you to invest in 
gold, chances are it is a scam and it is not real. It is a word to the 
wise: Beware. Don't fall for it.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COATS. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call 
be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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