Brown Chairs Hearing on Protecting Ohioans’ Savings from Fraud and Scams

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, held a hearing on protecting Ohioans from the new threats posed by fraudsters because of changing technologies and techniques. The hearing featured testimony from Cuyahoga County Director of Consumer Affairs Sheryl Harris.

"Criminals are using increasingly sophisticated and hard-to-detect scams to steal the retirement savings that Ohioans have built over a lifetime of work," said Brown. "Ohio leaders are doing important work to protect people from scams - big tech companies and financial companies need to listen to them, and do more to protect people's savings."

"Protecting our residents from scams is more important than ever," said Sheryl Harris, Director of the Cuyahoga County Department of Consumer Affairs. "We need stronger regulations to protect all consumers, especially our older residents, from life-altering losses to scams. Thank you to Senator Sherrod Brown for bringing awareness to this issue and supporting Cuyahoga County's efforts to ensure everyone can live with dignity, security, and peace of mind."

"The majority of our scam reports come from our older residents. We interview people who report scams to us, regardless of whether they lost money, to help consumers limit the fallout from scams and spot changes in scam techniques and payment methods," Harris testified. "What I can tell you from these interviews is that scammers have designed psychologically complex scams to make people believe the scammer is a trusted authority. The scammer tells the person they're facing a dire problem - for example, they're about to be arrested, or the government is about to seize their bank account. The scammer is able to isolate the victim by giving a plausible-sounding reason they can't tell anyone else. The victims then become reliant on the scammer, whose "solution" routes money to the scammer"

Brown's full opening statement can be found here. Harris' full testimony can be found here.

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