By Brian Tate
IPA President and CEO Fraud and scam activity can happen to anyone. By anyone, I mean it always seems to happen to someone else, or in other words, someone you don’t know. I have worked in the financial services industry for over 20 years and I have given advice to countless people regarding how to protect oneself from fraud or what to do once a fraudulent act has occurred. Like most things, fraud hits a little differently when it is closer to home. Just a few days ago I learned that my mother was the victim of bank account fraud. We believe it may have been an account takeover or at the very least, someone who illegally obtained her personal credentials and instigated a couple of small financial transactions that I am sure were designed to see if it was possible to begin transferring money out of her account. The phony test transactions were successful and could have led to larger transactions that would have siphoned money out of her account. However, my retired senior citizen mother noticed. She noticed a suspicious fake email addressed from a friend asking for money, which led her to check her bank statement online. To her credit she immediately notified the bank that she noticed transactions that she did not authorize were on her statement. The bank conducted a brief investigation and returned her money. My mother was lucky and fortunate. Although my mother knows I work in the financial services community, I am pretty sure we have never had a conversation about what to do when fraud occurs. Nonetheless, she did all the right things any financial fraud professional would recommend. She regularly tracked her bank transactions and statements. Once she noticed suspicious activity, she moved quickly to tell her bank. Lastly, she has taken steps to open new accounts. There are a lot of senior citizens who are not as lucky or haven’t been that fortunate when it comes to scams or fraud. Fraudsters focus in on seniors for a wide variety of reasons – they tend to have money saved, they are trusting, and generally are not as knowledgeable about technology. Scams targeting senior citizens are unfortunately all too common and often can be devastating. I don’t want anyone to be a victim of fraud. But in the tech-based world we live in, I know most, if not all of us will be victims at some point. That does not mean we should just let it happen. There are steps we can all take to protect ourselves:
Be Aware of the Different Types of Scams
Red Flags
What to Do if You're Targeted If you suspect a scam, report it to your bank, local law enforcement, and the Federal Trade Commission; find a list of resources on our consumer support page. Regulators are facing a deadline for any new rules that they want to put in place, but that deadline isn’t the election, or even the inauguration of a new president.
Instead, their calendars are set based on the Congressional Review Act, or CRA as it is sometimes known (though not to be confused with the Community Reinvestment Act for banks). CRA dates back to 1996, when it became law as part of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act. It requires federal agencies to submit any major rule to the Government Accounting Office and to both houses of Congress before the rule goes into effect. Major rules are defined in the law as: “The CRA defines a major rule as one that has resulted in or is likely to result in (1) an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more; (2) a major increase in costs or prices for consumers, individual industries, federal, state, or local government agencies, or geographic regions; or (3) significant adverse effects on competition, employment, investment, productivity, or innovation, or on the ability of United States-based enterprises to compete with foreign-based enterprises in domestic and export markets. 5 U.S.C. § 804(2).” Additionally, the CRA gives Congress the ability to disapprove of major rules issued by regulatory agencies. If Congress overturns a rule, then it cannot go into effect and an agency cannot issue another rule that is substantially the same unless a new is law passed that enables or requires the agency to do so. The CRA is fairly restrictive and has only been used to overturn 20 rules since its inception. To do so requires both houses to approve a resolution and either the President to sign it or Congress to override a veto for it to take effect. It is essentially an up or down vote on the rule; Congress does not have the ability to rewrite the rules it receives. There is one additional wrinkle to all of this. Congress must act within 60 days of continuous session from the day it receives the rules. According to a GAO brief on the Act: “Days-of-continuous-session periods count every calendar day, including weekends and holidays, and exclude only days that either chamber (or both) is gone for more than three days pursuant to an adjournment resolution.” If Congress adjourns before the time runs out, then the next Congress has a full 60 days to review major rules starting on the 15th day of the new session in each chamber. Congress is scheduled to be in session until December 19, according to CQ Roll Call. That means, any final rule needs to be sent to Congress by early September because Congress is out in October. So, the rest of this summer has the potential to be a busy one if regulators work to get new regulations out with tight comment and review timelines to beat the Congressional Review Act. The industry will need to be ready to move quickly on proposals. |
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