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.

On this edition of the ABA Fraudcast, Chris Taylor of the Australian Banking Association describes his country's multi-component approach that has resulted in a 26% reduction in scam losses, an effort that includes partnerships with telecoms and establishment of its National Anti-Scam Centre.

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!

The American Bankers Association 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.

Assisting bank customers who are the victims of scams after the fact is difficult enough for banks. But what happens when a scam is not only on-going but may even be literally unknown to the victim? Santander UK decided to create a team trained in rescuing customers involved in such increasingly common financial scams.

Paul Benda, ABA's EVP for risk, fraud and cybersecurity, discusses the history of that bank's Break the Spell team with Chris Ainsley and Michelle Pilsworth from Santander UK. The team is specially trained to do just what its name indicates: interrupt scams in real time to defend customers from major financial loss and further harm.

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.

Inaction is not an option. That is the thesis of United We Stand: A National Strategy to Prevent Scams, a new report from the Aspen Institute. Discussing the report's recommendations and insights on this edition of the ABA Fraudcast is Kate Griffin, director of Aspen's National Task Force on Fraud and Scam Prevention.

"The very first call to action is simply that we say that scam prevention needs to be identified as a national priority for us as a country," Griffin tells ABA's Paul Benda.

The ABA Fraudcast will be published every three weeks, at the ABA Banking Journal site 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.​

Big problems require big ideas. How about establishing a White House office of fraud and scam prevention? Or closing loopholes so telecoms stop spoof calls and texts? And ensuring social media companies quickly take down impersonation accounts? On this edition of the ABA Fraudcast, we include Paul Benda's opening statement addressing these challenges and others as delivered recently to the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, as well as his analysis of the urgency of a coordinated response from lawmakers and law enforcement.

Read Paul Benda's full opening statement and check out video here.

Also mentioned: Benda will be speaking at the ABA Financial Crimes Enforcement Conference, Oct. 14-16 in Arlington, Virginia. And ABA is launching updated Banks Never Ask That and Practice Safe Checks consumer awareness campaigns.

On this episode of the ABA Fraudcast, we dive into how the Internet works — and why it's so easy for criminals to create fake bank websites. We'll explore how these sites get taken down and what banks can do to combat this growing threat. Our guest, Craig Schwartz of fTLD Registry Services, breaks down the key differences between traditional .com domains and the more secure .bank domain — a top-level domain created by a consortium led by the American Bankers Association and other partners specifically to reduce fraud. Schwartz explains the rigorous security measures behind .bank, including a comprehensive vetting process that keeps bad actors out and ongoing verification to maintain trust. Want to learn more about the benefits of .bank? Visit aba.com/dotbank.