Major tech platforms make billions of dollars from scammers who advertise on their sites, according to reporting from Reuters, and there's not much incentive for them to change their practices — yet. Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) have introduced the SCAM Act, which would take steps to tackle these scams. ABA strongly supports the SCAM Act, and on this crossover episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast and ABA Fraudcast, Paul Benda discusses:

• How the SCAM Act would introduce new know-your-customer and takedown requirements for tech platforms.
• Why there aren't sufficient existing incentives for platforms to deal with the deluge of scam ads.
• Enforcement mechanisms that give teeth to the SCAM Act's requirements.
• How ABA's advocacy on this issue fits into the association's overall anti-fraud agenda

Criminals are calling bank customers. A lot. And those calls often are successfully cloaked as originating from banks themselves. Increasingly, these calls are originating from vast operation centers, often overseas, where the objective is to fool bank customers to hand over personal data and information.

There are some steps banks, their customers, federal agencies and even Congress can take to address this growing problem. Joining ABA's Paul Benda to discuss these issues on this edition of the ABA Fraudcast are Mike Rudolph, chief technology officer at YouMail, and Jonathan Thessin, VP and senior counsel at ABA, whose portfolio focuses on the telecom ecosystem, FCC, including the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and all efforts to assist banks and bank customers confronted with this threat.

Highlights:

• 2:00 — Technology as part of a protective ecosystem used by many banks, to short-circuit threats to customers.
• 13:00 — Defining the "robocall mitigation obligation."
• 16:00 — The challenge of vetting a telecom company.
• 18:00 — The difference between an imposter call and spoofed call.
• 28:00 — How the telecom ecosystem works.
• 29:00 —  Protecting lawful bank calls, while addressing the problem of calls from bad-actors impersonating banks. And what is the extent of ABA's advocacy on these issues?
• 31:00 — Urging the FCC to take an important final step.
• 32:53 — What can Congress do.
• 36:25 — Shout out to Fraudcast episode 1, where bank CEO Dan Robb describes a mass call spoofing campaign with thousands of calls targeting customers of his bank.
• 42:00 — Thessin on how do bad guys place hundreds of thousands of phone calls very cheaply.
• 47:00 — Looking into steps banks can take, such as branding tools for caller ID displays.

Also referenced is STIR/SHAKEN, the acronym for the framework allowing verification that a call is in fact from the number displayed on caller ID. Learn more from the FCC site.

The ABA Fraudcast will be published every three weeks, here and wherever you listen to and subscribe to your favorite podcasts, such as Apple and Spotify. Please follow!

ABA offers resources to help banks prevent, identify, measure and report fraud, and to serve and protect consumers and their financial data.​ ABA's scam prevention campaigns #BanksNeverAskThat and #PracticeSafeChecks are newly updated as well. The ABA Foundation's Protecting Older Americans page includes useful resources to assist the fight against elder financial exploitation and other increasing threats.

The episode is also available here.

ABA Fraudcast host is Paul Benda, EVP, risk, fraud and cybersecurity at ABA.

A focus on elder fraud kicks off Season 2 of the ABA Fraudcast, as Paul Benda interviews Lois Greisman, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission's division of marketing practices. They discuss Protecting Older Consumers, 2024-2025, A Report of the Federal Trade Commission, issued in December, that reveals a big increase in the number of older adults reporting losses of more than $100,000 to scams.

The ABA Fraudcast will be published every three weeks, here and wherever you listen to and subscribe to your favorite podcasts, such as Apple and Spotify. Please subscribe!

ABA offers resources to help banks prevent, identify, measure and report fraud, and to serve and protect consumers and their financial data.​ ABA's scam prevention campaigns #BanksNeverAskThat and #PracticeSafeChecks are newly updated as well.

ABA Fraudcast host is Paul Benda, EVP, risk, fraud and cybersecurity at American Bankers Association.