CFPB FinEx webinar on fraud prevention for older adults NWX-CFPB HQ Moderator: Irene Skricki February 22, 2018 2:00pm CT Coordinator: Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time, all guests will remain in a listen-only mode for the duration of today’s conference. At the end of the presentation, we will hold a question and answer session. And if you’d like to ask a question, you may press star then 1. Today’s conference is now being recorded. If you have any you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the conference over to Irene Skricki. Thank you, Ma’am. You may begin. Irene Skricki: Great. Thank you very much. And welcome everybody to our CFPB Financial Education Exchange webinar, this month’s. We’ve had a break of a couple months without webinars, so I’m very happy to be resuming now with this February webinar and we’re very excited to be doing this on fraud prevention for older adults in partnership with our Office for Older Americans. I am joined by guest speaker Erin Scheithe, who will speak after I do a brief intro. And thank you everybody who hopefully picked up on the change in the dial-in number. If you’re hearing my voice, I guess you know that. I appreciate everyone’s patience on that. So we’ll get started. I just do a few intro slides to begin with to get us all on the same page. First, we have to do our standard disclosure as government employees that this presentation is being made by CFPB representatives on behalf of the bureau, but it does not constitute legal interpretation, guidance, or advice and any opinions stated are the presenters and may or may not represent the CFPB views. So I always get that out of the way. I want to quickly note probably most of you know who we are, but we’re a federal agency. And our mission is to regulate the offering and provision of consumer financial products or services under federal consumer financial laws, and to educate and to empower consumers to make better informed financial decisions. And it’s obviously that second half of the mission that we’re really talking about today -- of educating and empowering consumers and then the financial educators who help those consumers in our webinar today. Just quickly on the consumer facing side of the Bureau, in the consumer education and engagement division, there are six offices. I represent the Office of Financial Education. Our mission is to educate and empower all consumers to make informed financial decisions. But we work closely with the other offices, especially the special population offices, Financial Empowerment, Older Americans, Servicemember Affairs, and Students and Young Consumers. And obviously it is older Americans who we are partnering with today for this call. So very happy to feature some of their resources on the call today. For anyone who is not familiar with FinEx, hopefully if you got an email about this webinar you know what FinEx is. But it’s the Financial Education Exchange. If any of you are not getting a regular monthly -- approximately monthly -- newsletter, called CFPB News and Updates, you should sign up because it will let people know about things such as this webinar and other resources that we have. You can do that either by emailing the address which is at the bottom of the screen CFPB_FinEx F-I-N-E-X @CFPB.gov. You can also go to our website and sign up automatically. I’ll show you that in a minute. This slide I put up just because it shows some of the cool stuff that happens. We have lots of webinars, such as the one we’re doing today. We have in-person convenings. We reach out to financial educators to learn what they’re doing and whether they like our materials. So these are all things that FinEx does and we hope that you will be interested in joining if you are not already part of FinEx. We also have a resources for financial educators page screenshot up there where we of course note the next webinar to come. But we also have all of our different tools and resources for financial educators. And that is where you can sign up automatically. There’s a signup box there if you want to put your email address in to sign up for FinEx if you haven’t already done so. One fewer step than emailing our FinEx inbox. And then the last couple things I’ll mention is that on that page, we have a printable resource inventory -- I have a screenshot here -- that features all of the tools and resources that you can use for free from the Bureau. And I’ll just note for those of you that have seen this before and know about it, we did just update it in the last month to include all the links to Spanish language tools. We had had some but not all in before. So it is now comprehensive in having links to all of the Spanish language tools. So for any of you who are working with folks for whom English is not a first language, it should be easier to find those tools now that we have made that update. And then the very last thing I always say is we also have a financial education discussion group on LinkedIn. You can also get information about this on our website. But this is a place where we post our materials. So I moderate that. I put up new things that come out as they come out and other people can also put up their materials. So you’ll see announcements of webinars or reports or questions from other organizations, including people like you all if you want to join that and participate in that discussion. And again, you can get the link direct to that on that resources for financial educators page. And all the links will be up at the end of this webinar as well in case you didn’t catch any of that. So that’s our little standard intro to make sure that everybody knows what’s happening. And we will now turn over to our presenter. First, I will just note that as the Operator said, we will hold questions that are verbal questions until the end, at which point you can open up - we’ll open up lines and you can ask verbal questions. But you can send questions through the Q&A function in the webinar if you’re within WebEx. And I will keep an eye on those. And if anything is urgent or needs to be answered right away, I will let Erin know and she can answer those or I’ll hold them until the end if I feel like they’re better for the end. So again, use either the Q&A function or you can wait for the voice questions. So with all of that, I am going to turn this over to Erin Scheithe and she will talk to us about fraud prevention for older adults -- a very important topic. And obviously everything she talks about, a lot of it will certainly be relevant for people of any age because fraud can hit people of any age. So Erin, I am turning it over to you. Erin Scheithe: Thank you so much, Irene and thanks to all of you for joining us today. Let’s go to the slide that introduces the Office for Older Americans. We develop initiatives, tools, and resources to help protect older consumers from financial harm, and also to help them make sound financial decisions as they age. You can actually learn quite a bit more about the Office for Older Americans at consumerfinance.gov/olderamericans. But don’t go there now. Don’t leave the webinar. But later on when you have some time, check out the variety of resources that we have available. Next slide. To get in a little bit further about what we do, we lead initiatives to help protect older people from financial harm. And when I say that, it’s something that we’re really thinking about right now in our office. We’re very concerned with respecting all older adults. We want to make sure that they are participants in this process as well. So we’re not just protecting them; we are as Irene mentioned earlier we’re really empowering them to protect themselves and to share this information with their friends and family. We create tools and resources -- some of which we’ll talk about today -- that support sound financial decision making that safeguard later life economic security, which is so important. Many older adults whom we work with are on fixed incomes or have a finite amount of savings or assets, so that’s really important. And like all of the other resources that the CFPB offers, we have resources that you can either take a look at online and download or order in bulk absolutely for free. So it’s a really great service that we provide. And let’s go to the next slide and we’ll just talk a little bit about who is at risk. Financial fraud for older Americans is sometimes called elder financial exploitation. And so you’ll see that sprinkled through some of these slides as well. So who’s at risk? Really anybody -- anyone can be the victim of financial exploitation or fraud. It crosses all social, educational, and economic boundaries and in fact if you have a lot of assets, a lot of money, or if your clients do, you have more to lose. If you are an older adult or if you work with older adults who are at the opposite end of that spectrum, you have very limited resources, that is equally as devastating -- in fact, likely more so. We find when we do research that educated, older adult males are actually more likely to fall for some of these scams and fraud than some of their less educated counterparts or peers. And so it’s kind of an equal opportunity exploitation. Literally anyone can become a victim. So let’s go to the next slide and talk a little bit about why older adults are so often at risk. As I’ve alluded to, many older adults have both regular income in the form of a Social Security payment, maybe a retirement pension, something like that, or they have accumulated assets -- retirement savings or perhaps the asset of their home, which for many people is their most important asset. Older adults are also trusting and polite. Don’t get me started on Millennials. So I think a lot of them are, you know, a little bit more interested in finding out what is it that you need. They might talk to someone who calls a little bit longer than maybe their younger counterparts. They could also be lonely and socially isolated. Many of you know seniors for whom this is not the case. They’re surrounded by friends, family. But for many, including some parts of that population like widows and widowers or LGBT elders, they might be lonely and might not have a lot of interaction with people. So that when someone calls to chat with them, they’re ready and eager to answer that telephone call. And finally, some older adults are at risk because they’re reluctant to report the fraud that a family member, caregiver, or someone else they depend on has let happen to them. And so these exploiters kind of know that this is something that their older counterparts would be reluctant to report them and so that means they might go for them as targets. Next slide we’ll just gloss over pretty quickly. Who could be the abuser? And that’s really anyone -- people both known and unknown to older adults. So family members, friends, and caregivers, financial professionals, as well as strangers -- literally scammers of all types. And in fact I’ll take a moment to mention a scam that targeted the CFPB ourselves. In fact, the assistant director of the Office for Older Americans recently put out a blog which I encourage you to check out on our website consumerfinance.gov where she talks about being impersonated as part of a scam. Older adults were being called, told that they had won a sweepstakes prize of anywhere from a couple of thousand dollars to $50,000 and they were told that they had won this prize and that several other phone calls would follow. One scammer actually pretended to be the assistant director of CFPB’s Office for Older Americans and the scammer encouraged the older adult please, Google me. I’m a real person and I’m telling you that I have access to sweepstakes prize winnings and I know that you are on that list. So you should send money to the people who are asking you to pay these upfront taxes and fees because you are a legitimate winner. And of course, for those of us who are sitting here horrified by this story right now, CFPB does not have access to lottery or sweepstakes winnings. It’s not under our jurisdiction. And we will never call the people who you’re working with as educators will never call them and tell them that they have won a sweepstakes. So keep that in mind. So it can literally be strangers, including people who would appear to be trustworthy like a government agency official. And let’s go to the next slide. Why don’t older adults report the fraud that has happened to them? And, you know, I’m sure you can come up with these. They’re common sense -- shame and embarrassment as well as loyalty to the person who is providing care to them, maybe fear of retaliation or not being believed by the authorities, certainly there’s that fear of being declared incompetent and being placed into a nursing home facility. They might be dependent on the abuser for that care. Maybe they’re in denial or they blame themselves. Or maybe they just don’t even realize that they’ve been scammed. On the next slide, for you as educators I would just mention that there are a couple of ways that you can spot financial abuse. And before I get into the resources that we have that can really touch on that, I would just mention that since you are likely in direct service to older adults or really to anyone, as we know anyone can be a victim of fraud, look for common signs. If someone seems afraid of a relative or a caregiver, if they say that their money or property is missing, if they suddenly change their behavior in a way that is noticeable to you, definitely call the authorities. And I’ll have a couple of resources at the end of the presentation that can help you do that. Now I want to talk a little bit about the resources that the CFPD have come up with that would help you to educate older adults around fraud and even to do it in a fun way. The first way is with our consumer protection placemat. A couple of years ago, some staff from the CFPB and Meals on Wheels America came up with a great idea to put really basic scam prevention and tips and information onto a placemat. There are about two-and-a-half million older adults who are receiving meal assistance through meal services -- either homebound meal delivery or they’re going into a congregate facility where maybe they’re sitting down at a table with a few of their friends. Either way, there’s this opportunity to include some education. And these placemats were an idea that some creative folks said you know what? Let’s try this out and see if it works. And boy, has it. It actually has really taken off. Our placements are one of our most popular products and really excited to report that more than 1.4 million have been ordered and distributed. We now have eight placemats in English. Three of them are available in Spanish, so for those of you who serve Spanish-speaking populations, we’re about to add two more to that tally. So we’ll have eight in English, five in Spanish, and we release a new placemat about quarterly. So keep an eye on your email so that you can see those when they come out. They are completely free. And so they are ordered by Meals on Wheels affiliate site as well as banks and credit unions and other financial services, providers, Native communities, area agencies on aging, and other non-profits. And to order the placemats, you simply go to consumberfinance.gov/placemats. Let’s go to the next slide. I want to tell you a little bit about something that we’re really focused on at the CFPB, and that’s user testing, which is just talking to the people who we are serving directly and asking them if what we’ve provided to them is on the right track. I think when we come up with resources, sometimes we’re so deep into it, we think we know what would be best and then we either hear from people like you -- the people providing the services -- or we hear from consumers themselves that maybe things were just slightly off or at least could be improved in some way. And that’s something that we’re really focused on at CFPB. And so we found that we had done actually a pretty good job with our placemats. But again, there is always that room for improvement and opportunity to do a little bit more. And what we learned is that there’s time before a meal begins in a congregate site or there’s time if you’re receiving a homebound delivery where older adults might want to pass the time by doing a little something. So we came up with game placemats. These are really simple placemats. Let’s go to the next slide. And you can see the solution is on the back side. So we have a word search with some really helpful information about scams and fraud and how people can really learn how to spot those. We’ll go to the next slide. We’ve also come up with a companion toolkit with tips for meal site coordinators and also people like yourselves -- financial educators who maybe don’t have need for a placemat. This is just a large handout. There’s nothing about these ten-by-fourteen-inch sized handouts that says these have to be placemats. So if you can find a different way to use them, as I’m guessing financial institutions for example have, please feel free to order them. And you’ll receive a copy of the companion toolkit or you can download it from our website. And we talked to financial institution employers, yfaith-based leaders, others who ordered the mats and they said they could use a toolkit. We included a very basic and very brief lesson plan on fraud and how to spot it, how to prevent it, similar to what I’ve shared with you today. We hope that this new companion resource will really deepen the educational impact of these great placemats. Let’s go to the next slide. I just like to show this off. Our graphic designers do such an incredible job. Our latest placemat was released on February 12th, so just a couple weeks ago. And it was on romance scams. We created a romance scam prevention placemat because we know that like I said, some of the older adults are really suffering from isolation. And so they might fall victim to a scammer who is pretending to be really interested in them. It’s one of the saddest examples of this kind of financial fraud that can happen, but the placemat graphics are cute so definitely give that one a look. Okay. Let’s go to the next slide. We have consumerfinance.gov/placemats. That’s how you can order those. And that’s just one of our projects. On the next slide is a really great program, Money Smart for Older Adults. This is a collaboration between the CFPB and the FDIC -- the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. And if I’m speaking to financial educators, I know that you all know about Money Smart. They have many different age groups and they worked with us on this one that is specifically for older adults. The content does focus a lot on common issues facing seniors, including how to identify scams. It is an instructor-led curriculum with a resource guide that you hand out to participants. And the curriculum itself is available for download from the FDIC website or you can order a print bound copy of the instructor-led curriculum. And you can slice and dice that as much as you’d like. There are a whole lot of different lesson plans and you could probably teach from this curriculum in bite-sized chunks for a year or more to the same group of people. You can pick out just maybe home contractor scams and talk about that one. Or you can talk about IRS scams, especially with tax time coming up. Those are big ones. The resource guides are available from the CFPB. And those are available in bulk at no charge. So you can order 50 or you can order 500 or 1,000 of those resource guides and have them shipped right to you. And then participants can use that resource guide as a manual, if they get a call from the IRS saying that they have an arrest warrant. As my mom did just yesterday when I was talking to her on the phone - she could have looked in this book to see is there a reference to something like that. Yes, there is. So she knew it was a scam and did not respond to that. We updated the content about a year ago. Added quite a few more scams. Added finer points on some of the scams that are becoming a little bit more sophisticated. I think the worst part about financial fraud is how smart the scammers are and how they pivot and update and change their scams so that they are still able to hook as many people as possible. This content is available in English and Spanish as well. Let’s go to the next slide and we can talk a little bit about some of the module topics. There is, as I’ve mentioned, a mention of scams that target homeowners. There’s also a lot of information around identity theft and medical identity theft. So that’s typically around your Medicare or Medicaid ID card. So check that out. That was added. There are also scams that target veteran’s benefits, like the Aid and Attendance benefit if any of you are familiar with that, or a pension lump sum scam. There’s also some instruction on how to plan for unexpected life events, such as maybe diminished capacity or, you know, that is the loss of the ability to really manage finances these older adults have been doing for a long time. Maybe all of a sudden, they’re not as able to do it. And then finally, we added information on how to financially prepare for disasters. Next slide. We also included information around the grandparent scam, phantom debt collection, fake charity scams, mortgage assistant rescue. So again, lots and lots. And as I mentioned, the curriculum is really that standalone, instructor-led module. But in addition to the instructor guide, there’s also a really great PowerPoint as well as that resource guide that I mentioned you can order in bulk. And so I’ve had people ask me how do I get involved? I would love to get involved with something like this, but I just don’t know where to start. Money Smart for Older Adult is where to start. Anybody, even if you have absolutely no experience in financial education -- which would probably be very few of you on this kind of webinar, but just about anybody can lead this because we really do take you step by step. Irene Skricki: Hey, Erin. This is Irene. I accidently… Erin Scheithe: Yes. Irene Skricki: …just clicked twice and jumped over your last slide. Do you want me to go back real quick? Erin Scheithe: Sure, if you… Irene Skricki: I’ll just show it so people can see it. Sorry about that. Erin Scheithe: Yes, absolutely. No problem. So as I mentioned, we included information on a couple of these scams. Just for those of you who don’t know, the grandparent scam is huge right now. Happening so often, it’s basically where an older adult would receive a phone call from someone. Usually it’s someone posing as a grandchild, but it can be someone posing as a friend or any other kind of relative. And there’s usually a lot of background noise and basically, they’re saying I’m either in jail or I’m stuck in a foreign country or I’m experiencing some kind of emergency situation and need help. Please wire money to me this way, or please send Apple iTunes gift cards to me this way or Target gift cards to me this way. And they’re pretty convincing. These can also happen over email. People can pretend to be sending an email from your friend and older adults will get this email: I’m in Europe on a trip and my money was stolen by a pickpocket. Can you wire me some money? So really just a lot of different variations on some of these scams. Okay. So let’s go now to the managing someone else’s money guide slide. Irene Skricki: We do have a question came in that was very relevant, so I thought I would pose it to you. Erin Scheithe: Okay. Irene Skricki: From someone saying, I have a client who is a victim of a prize-winning scam. We’ll hope it’s not that CFPB one… Erin Scheithe: Right. Irene Skricki: …you mentioned, but we have complained to the FTC. Should we also complain to the CFPB? Erin Scheithe: Very good question. So the CFPB does accept complaints, as the person who asked this question knows. But we accept complaints on financial products and services, not on scams. So what they have already done is the right course of action -- to contact the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC. So we always encourage and that’s actually on just about every one of our placemats. And I’ll have more information towards the end of the webinar on what else you can do in addition to letting the FTC know that there is a scam out there. Irene Skricki: Great. Thanks. Erin Scheithe: Sure. Okay. Irene Skricki: And actually, sorry. Someone else just chimed in saying that you can also submit a scam report to the Better Business Bureau Scam Tracker function. Erin Scheithe: That is a great one, too. And in fact we encourage you to report it in a couple of different ways. And I’ll like I said I’ll mention them a little bit later. But just to, you know, if anyone is taking notes you can write these down and then we’ll have the contact information. But if someone is in danger, obviously we would encourage you to call your local law enforcement by 911 if it’s immediate danger or just the non-emergency number. And we also encourage you to report it to your state attorney general as well as to Adult Protective Services -- especially if it’s a caregiving or a situation where someone is being taken advantage of by someone who’s supposed to be helping them with everyday tasks. I’ll get you those contact information, those numbers and website in a couple of slides. So the managing someone else’s money guides are a really great way to prevent fraud. And it’s funny, maybe at first glance you wouldn’t think of them that way, but fraud can happen both intentionally in a scam and also unintentionally. If you are serving as an agent under a power of attorney for an older family member and you’re not quite sure how to do it, you can do it wrong and then place that person under, you know, the victim of a fraud. Definitely check out these managing someone else’s money guides if you have clients who are considering signing over some of their financial responsibility to a financial caregiver. These are guides for four common types of financial caregiver. As I mentioned, the power of attorney, the guardians and conservators, trustees, and then the fourth one is social security or VA representatives. So for example, if someone has an incapacity -- if they maybe have dementia or if they’re really otherwise incapacitated, they might have someone else receiving their social security, disability, or retirement benefits for them. And so we really encourage people to protect their assets from frauds and scams. These are available in English and in Spanish as well. So they’re great for financial caregivers. They have a lot of other great tips. And I’m very pleased to report that today, earlier this afternoon we released the final of a six-state specific managing someone else’s money guide that we have been working on for the last several years. So if you are living in one of the six states -- including Arizona, which just launched today -- Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Oregon, and there’s one other and I can’t remember. But definitely check them out on our website consumerfinance.gov managing someone else’s money. You’ll find it that way. Let’s go to the next slide. We have as I’ve alluded to on our website a lot of additional resources that we probably, you know, don’t even have enough time to discuss even if we just focused on just telling you a brief amount about them. We have consumer advisories on reverse mortgage advertising. We have a consumer advisory around lump sum pension payouts and what you need to be careful of if you are interested in those or if your clients are interested in those, as well as resources for practitioners like yourselves. So definitely check out our website and take a look at those. Let’s go to the next slide. One thing that I would like to mention. It’s a little bit off of our topic but it’s something that we’ve done that’s really cool and I think that it’s always worth mentioning, which is the planning for retirement tool. This is an online, really super easy to use tool. You answer a couple of questions -- and we don’t hang onto that information. As soon as you complete the tool, that information is scrubbed off. But you can use this or you can recommend that the people you work with use this tool to find out when would be the best time for an individual to claim their social security retirement benefits. For those of you who are working with older adults, you know that there are a couple of decision points that happen at different ages -- 62, which is that first age of eligibility for retirement benefits from Social Security. Full retirement age, which kind of is a sliding scale on the way up to 67, and then delaying a Social Security retirement benefit claim to 70 is also an option. Especially those of you who work with low resource, older adults, this decision can make or break their later-life financial security. If they are able to hold out as long as possible, they will receive a larger benefit for the rest of their lives. And it’s an interesting decision -- one that a lot of time, a lot of research has been spent on this. And we created this tool really with the support of the Social Security Administration. They’ve said that it passes the muster with them too. So definitely check that out. And on the next slide, again on our web page we have information not just about fraud, scams, and financial caregiving, but also about managing debt in retirement or after maybe regular income has ceased. So for those of you who are serving clients with a heavy load of debt who are in this age group, check out those resources. They are usually a little bit more specific to that population, so they may be helpful to you. We also have a lot of resources around reverse mortgages, which are a product that are specifically for adults 62 and older who are homeowners. It’s a product that was created in the 70s to take advantage of the housing boom where maybe your parents or someone you know has purchased a home for just $50,000 and then years later it increased so much in value, but they’d have to sell it in order to tap into that equity. A reverse mortgage gives home owners a way to turn their asset of their home into equity. It is a very complicated product. It is definitely not for everyone. There are a lot of risks as well as a lot of benefits to it. Anyone who applies for a reverse mortgage is required to go through counseling with a certified HUD approved housing counselor. But if you have folks who you’re serving who are interested in this or who have mentioned it as something that they might want to find out more about, we certainly have a ton of resources to be able to help them. So I always like to mention those. There are scams associated with reverse mortgages as well. So the more information a homeowner 62 and older can get, really the better. What you can do to help -- if you are working with older adults and you have noticed that they maybe have fallen victim to one of these frauds or scams, I mentioned earlier that you can call Adult Protective Services. You can find your local APS by going to eldercare.gov or by calling 1(800)677-1116. And you can type that into your web search engine as well and you’ll be able to find your local chapter or your local office of Adult Protective Services. As I mentioned earlier, if someone is in danger or a crime has been committed, definitely call your local police at 911 if it’s a very emergent situation and the non-emergency number if no one’s life is at risk. You can report -- and we really encourage you to report -- frauds and scams to your state attorney general. You can visit the National Association of Attorneys Generals website, which is NAAG.org, and you’ll be able to find your state attorney general that way. Next slide. As we’ve discussed, you can submit scams to the Federal Trade Commission at FTC.gov. We work with them regularly. We’re always updating each other on what we have going on. And so they always thank us for encouraging that people really report scams to them. It’s the only way we’ll find out about them. It’s the only way we can create educational resources to prevent them. So please do submit those scams to the FTC at FTC.gov. You can also report mail fraud to the US Postal Inspection Service at USPS.gov. So if you are working with someone who has received something in the mail that seems like a scam or a fraud -- usually those sweepstakes or lottery winning pieces of mail -- definitely report that to the US Postal Inspection Service. And as always, if there’s a financial product or service that is giving a hard time to someone who you work with, consumers can submit a complaint to the CFPB at our website Consumerfinance.gov/complaint or you can give us a call. Our phone number is toll-free (855)411-CFPB which is 2372. Then we have other ways for those for have hearing impairments as well. So go to our website consumerfinance.gov. And I think that’s it. That’s it for me. Irene, I’ll turn it back over to you. Irene Skricki: Yes, great. Thank you. That was fabulous, Erin. Lots of wonderful information there. I’m going to ask the Operator to give instructions on verbal questions, then I’m going to say something about the PowerPoint people have asked for. But let’s have the Operator tell everybody how to ask a voice question in addition to of course the Q&A function on WebEx. Operator? Coordinator: Thank you. At this time if you’d like to ask a question over the phone lines, please press star then 1 and record your first and last name clearly when prompted. Again, it’s star then 1 if you’d like to ask a question over the phone. Thank you. Irene Skricki: Great, thanks. And the Operator will open your line if you do that. So while we’re waiting for any voice questions to come in -- and again, you can also continue to send them to the Q&A function in the WebEx -- a number of people have asked -- and they always ask on these webinars -- if they could get a copy of the presentation afterwards. The answer is yes. But I need you to email the FinEx inbox. The reason is if you email me through this system, through the WebEx system, when we turn it off all that goes away and I don’t have a record of who reached out to me since I can’t really write all that down as I’m trying to manage all this. So if you want the PowerPoint -- and a few of you have already done this, yay -- send an email to in fact, let me go to the next slide in case you’re watching because that’s got the address. You can see it there CFPB_FinEx@CFPB.gov. If you send me that email and just say I’d like the PowerPoint, I will send you a PDF of that PowerPoint today or tomorrow. So that is available. And then also as we’ve noted this was at the beginning the Operator noted that this was being recorded. It takes a couple weeks, but there will then be a recording and also a transcript that you can read obviously posted on the Financial Education website, the consumerfinance.gov/adult-financial-education. So you can also again watch this recording again or read the transcript if that is useful. So again, recording and transcript will be available in a couple weeks. And you can request the presentation right away be emailing the FinEx inbox either right now or after the webinar. So let me pause and ask Operator, do we have any voice questions for Erin? Coordinator: There are no questions at this time. But as a reminder, please press star then 1 if you’d like to ask a question. Irene Skricki: Great. And I don’t see any emailed questions. Erin, let me just ask you something… Erin Scheithe: Sure. Irene Skricki: …just to make the distinction because I actually when I’m out talking to financial educators, I often will kind of get something that kind of gets at this point which you raised, which is that the CFPB handles complaints around products. So if you get a product that in some way is not working or is, you know, doing something fraudulent. But a scam, since there’s not a product involved, someone says you won the lottery, right? There’s not a bank account. There’s not a mortgage involved. That’s why the FTC handles those complaints. We handle complaints related to products. So that’s kind of the distinction. They’re all complaints. They’re all important complaints. But they go to a different place. But is it true also that if they call us with a scam, we will refer them to FTC? So we can… Erin Scheithe: Yes. Irene Skricki: …always be a first point? I just wanted to clarify that. Erin Scheithe: Yes. And I would say, I mean, it never hurts to submit a complaint to the CFPB first if that’s what you know best. You will - the people who accept those complaints, both over the phone and online, they will absolutely refer you to the FTC. They might refer you to if it’s a product like reverse mortgage or like a pension lump sum payout or if it does seem to be kind of about a product but you’re not sure, don’t hesitate to submit it because we will make sure that in our resolution to you, we give you further information on how you can report it to the right authority. Irene Skricki: Great. Thank you very much. Erin Scheithe: Yes. Irene Skricki: And I actually do have - I’ll check again for voice questions in a minute, but I do have another email question that came in or Q&A question which says, do you see older adults having more trouble when their information might have been stolen in a company’s data breach? Obviously, that’s very timely. Do you have any suggestions for educating older adults about the dangers of data breaches? Great question. What do you think? Erin Scheithe: That’s a great question. I think that this - I don’t know that there is any research out yet, since we’ve just had some recent data breaches. But I don’t know that there’s research to suggest that it’s worse for older adults. I think that may be a piece of data or a way to kind of cut the data that hasn’t been fully explored to the level it should be. Also, it’s usually voluntary, so a lot of people don’t reveal how old they are when talking about their experience with a data breach. I know that for example, complaints to the CFPB we ask for your age, but we don’t always get it. So we know that about 10% or so of our complaints are from older adults. We think it’s actually quite a bit more, but they’re just not saying. So I’m not sure we have that data. I don’t have it, at least. We can certainly look into it. And so the advice would be very much the same as it is for anyone who is online or even those who aren’t, you know? Those who are just going to - they’re just using credit the way that everyone is supposed to in this kind of cycle of credit. The advice is always just to keep your information really safe and secure and to check your annual credit report each year. And actually something that I do is there are three credit reporting agencies. You can get a free copy from each of them. And so, why don’t you do it every four months just to kind of keep an eye on it? So every four months I have a tickler in my personal, you know, calendar that says check your credit report with this credit reporting agency. And then four months later I check with the other one. I always suggest that just because they’re popping up a lot more often than they used to. Annually might not be enough. Certainly credit monitoring companies are targeting older adults. I don’t want to name any brand names, but we’ve all kind of seem those commercials where they might be focusing a bit of their marketing efforts on older adults. And so just like with anyone, I would just really caution anyone from paying for a service that might be free otherwise, or just to really do their due diligence on the credit monitoring or credit locking service that they are working with. Irene Skricki: Great. Thanks, Erin. And I just would note just kind of that while there may be no difference in how older adults may be affected or how frequently they may have their data breached, I assume for some it might be as you pointed out earlier a harder thing for them to manage just for reasons you said earlier around kind of the decline or social isolation that might prevent them from getting the help they need. So it potentially might have a bigger impact if they’re not able to cope with it. But I’m just speculating there. Erin Scheithe: Yes. I think that’s probably a wise speculation. Irene Skricki: Thank you. Let me ask the Operator do we have any voice questions come in? Coordinator: Yes, thank you. We do have a question coming in from (Verna Hunter). Ma’am, your line is open. (Verna Hunter): My question was will we receive a certificate that we were on the webinar today? Irene Skricki: So we have not - we’ve had this question before. We have not gone through the process of - to get continuing education credits, usually the accrediting agency of the agency that you’re providing those to has to okay an activity to be a continuing education activity. And we have not in general with FinEx gone to any of those agencies and asked. So that’s something that would be interesting to pursue. I mean, I can say that you are on it, but I don’t know that that would be accepted as a CEU without that organization agreeing ahead of time. So that’s maybe not the perfect answer, but that’s kind of the situation as it is now. (Verna Hunter): Okay. Coordinator: Thank you. Our next question comes from (Morris Armstrong). Sir, your line is open. (Morris Armstrong): Yes, hi. Good afternoon. You had mentioned earlier that the older male, well educated adult is more susceptible to scams. And I was wondering if you had any breakdown on other, you know, by category? Erin Scheithe: Not necessarily more susceptible -- just that we have research to suggest that more scams are reported that they have said that group has become a victim. (Morris Armstrong): Okay. So there just… Erin Scheithe: So… (Morris Armstrong): …aggressive in reporting. Erin Scheithe: Perhaps. (Morris Armstrong): Okay. Erin Scheithe: Perhaps they are more aggressive in reporting. It certainly - and I can look up the source if you send an email to the FinEx box, I can certainly site where I’m getting this information from. But it was I believe an AARP study that was done several years ago. But it’s just to kind of illustrate the point that it literally can happen to anyone. And so we hesitate to single out people who have lower resources or maybe less access to education. It can really happen to anyone. I’d be happy to get that source for you. (Morris Armstrong): I was going to say I’m an enrolled agent and I also have my little own RIA registered investment advisory group. And we do hear stories of people with means, okay -- widows or some of the, you know, people maybe past 60 -- who fall for the dating scams to the tune of $50-75,000. Erin Scheithe: Yes. (Morris Armstrong): And then they’re reluctant to report it to the authorities. But, you know, you have to. In the old days, that would have been a tax deduction. Now it wouldn’t be. But you know, it happens like you said at any age and any resource. I don’t think that necessarily that wealth makes you impervious. Erin Scheithe: You’re exactly right. It can happen to anyone. (Morris Armstrong): Well, thank you. Irene Skricki: Thanks, great. Erin Scheithe: Thanks. Irene Skricki: We’ve had one other question via the Q&A function. I will read it to you, Erin. If we reach out to Adult Protective Services, how can they usually help the older adult who has been taken advantage of? Is there a process in place for that? Erin Scheithe: Many APS offices have processes in place. They’re going to vary probably. Almost as many offices there are that the process that the process will be different. So I can’t say that they will follow the exact same process each time, but they will investigate it to the level that they’re able to. Of course, some of them have more resources than others available to investigate these kinds of things. So that’s another reason why I can’t really say exactly what they would do. It would really depend on that individual APS office. But one thing that the Office for Older Americans at the CFPB is doing is helping to create networks of interested parties in elder financial exploitation. So we’re gathering together local APS offices with area agencies on aging and other law enforcement as well as nonprofit partners. And we’re getting these networks together, helping to get them together or showcasing the networks that are really doing this right so that they can better participate in the resolution of some of these cases. So if you’re interested in our network study or in setting up a network of your own in your local area, definitely go to our website. On our Older Americans page, we have information about that network study. Irene Skricki: Great. And Erin, just somebody -- one of the participants -- looked up the study I think that your fact came from… Erin Scheithe: Yes. Irene Skricki: …which you can probably all see if you look in the chat section. But it’s Reducing Investment Fraud in the US -- Developing a Fraud Curriculum Based on the Science of Social Influence. It sounds very interesting. A (FINRA) AARP study… Erin Scheithe: Yes. Irene Skricki: …used to develop their outstanding investment fraud curriculum. And the link is there. So thank you very much for sharing that… Erin Scheithe: Yes. Thank you. Irene Skricki: Great. Let’s see. We’re right at time. Let me just quickly see are there any final voice questions, Operator? Coordinator: There are no questions at this time. Irene Skricki: Okay, great. It looks like we have answered all the questions that came into the Q&A function and it’s 4:00pm so we’re right on time. So Erin, thank you so much. That was absolutely wonderful and a lot of really valuable information. I’ll just repeat that again, a recording and transcript will be available in a couple weeks. The slides are available if you email CFPB_FinEx@CFPB.gov and request the slides and I will send them to you. And I see a lot of you have already done that, so that’s great. So thank you so much. I hope this is useful. I have looked through the guide for older adults on fraud prevention, the Money Smart guide, and it’s really accessible and readable and interesting and I think it would be a great resource for those of you who wanted to order it for your clients and the people you work with. So thank you so much, Erin. Thank you everyone for joining us. And hopefully we will have you all back on a future FinEx webinar. Thank you very much. Erin Scheithe: Thank you. END` NWX-CFPB HQ Moderator: Irene Skricki 02-22-18/2:00am CT Confirmation # 6894338 Page 1