U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Aging, pushed newly confirmed Attorney General Loretta Lynch at a hearing on the Justice Department budget to do more to address phone scams plaguing seniors.
"The federal government has been extraordinarily lax in its approach to actually going after these criminals," Collins says. "What can the Department do to be more aggressive in prosecuting these scams that aggregate in the billions of dollars?"
"Ahm, with respect to the very important matter that you raise about these, many of these are overseas based fraud schemes," Lynch says. "The other troubling factor to me is that many of them target our elderly population."
Lynch says she will review Department cases to make sure the agency is going after scams. She told the panel she has received one of those IRS impostor scam calls and shares the concern that too many seniors are being deceived by the criminal organizations behind those scam calls.
