AI adds scarier scams, finds Senate hearing on seniors

Artificial intelligence has made it more difficult for seniors to identify scams, a problem for an already vulnerable population, witnesses at a Senate hearing said Thursday. 

Sen. Rick Scott, Florida Republican and chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, held a field hearing at the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office in Doral to bring attention to scams on seniors and highlight solutions.

“Whether it’s a phone call from someone posing as a grandchild in trouble, a suspicious investment scheme delivered through the mail, or an email from a government imposter threatening jail time, these criminals are targeting our seniors with increasing sophistication,” Mr. Scott said. 

The senator said in 2024 Americans over 60 years of age lost $4.8 billion to scams, likely an undercount since many seniors don’t report being ripped off because of fear, shame or the belief that nothing can be done. 

The witnesses, when asked about the latest scams, said they’re seeing more sophisticated fraud schemes with the rise of artificial intelligence.

Miami-Dade County Sheriff  Rosie Cordero-Stutz said AI-generated voice calls have become a growing issue. 

“So you’ll get a robo call that sounds just like a grandson or granddaughter saying that they’re in need of help immediately,” she said. “You cannot tell the difference. The voice, it will sound exactly like your loved one.”

Ms. Cordero-Stutz said law enforcement recommends families come up with a safe word to use when one of them is in trouble so it will protect other relatives from being scammed. 

Jeff Johnson, state director of AARP Florida, said AI and deep-fake technology are also being used in romance scams. 

“The evolution of AI has made it much more difficult to suss out who’s a scammer and who’s legitimate,” he said. 

AARP Florida’s fraud watch helpline has had calls from half a dozen people who’ve lost $100,000 or more to these romance scams, Mr. Johnson said. 

“It preys on the loneliness that many people have in older adulthood,” he said. “They look for companionship. It may not even be romantic, but they make friends with somebody online. They might have a couple of calls, and then it becomes something that either becomes extortion or else just outright fraud.”

Kathy Kraninger, CEO of the Florida Bankers Association, said romance scams are also at the top of the list of ones she sees, along with investment cons.

“There are a lot that are crypto-related, in particular,” she said. “You’re basically setting yourself up on what looks like a legitimate exchange, and they’re giving you a reward for signing up, and they’re hooking you and taking an initial amount of money where you’re buying the tokens. You can see that the investment that you have just made is increasing.”

The goal of the scam is to get people to put in more and more money. While banks will notice and question the account holder on whether it’s legitimate, Ms. Kraninger says the scammers prevent the investor from being able to withdraw money from the fake crypto exchanges. 

“They literally shut down your account and disappear,” she said. “It’s all coming from overseas, and it’s transnational criminal organizations.”

Mr. Scott said China and other foreign adversaries are using stolen data, AI technology and cryptocurrency to run large-scale scam operations from overseas call centers.

He has introduced a bill called the STOP Scammers Act to give the Treasury Department authority to formally designate scam networks as foreign financial threat organizations and freeze their assets, cut off their communication lines and block their access to the U.S. financial system. 

“This is more than just a consumer protection issue,” Mr. Scott said. “It’s a national security concern. We need to treat it like one.” 

Ms. Cordero-Stutz said investigators in her office’s cyber crimes bureau work with cryptocurrency exchanges around the globe, including in countries where treaties fall short, to recover stolen funds but more can be done to strengthen interagency collaboration.

She also said increased penalties for financial crimes are needed to provide more deterrents. 

Another challenge Ms. Cordero-Stutz cited is pushback from social media companies to shutting down fraudulent accounts. 

“It often feels as if more protection is afforded to those who are misusing the platforms than to those who are trying to protect people,” she said. 

Mr. Scott commended the Florida witnesses for their efforts to root out scams against seniors. He touted a bill he and the Aging panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, introduced to expand federal grants to provide state and local law enforcement with training to combat sophisticated financial scams.

“I look forward to continuing to work with community leaders on the front lines of this important issue to make sure we are empowering, protecting our seniors,” Mr. Scott said in closing the hearing.