On June 17, 2025, the Senate Judiciary Committee convened a hearing titled “Scammers Exposed: Protecting Older Americans from Transnational Crime Networks.” The session brought deserved attention to the scale and severity of elder financial exploitation with more than $62 billion lost and growing.

But as important as that conversation was, it underscored a difficult truth: public awareness through congressional hearings is no longer enough. Sadly, that’s what most of the hearing amounted to. Speeches, agreement, concern and little movement toward actual governance.

We do not need more messaging campaigns. We need a national strategy. And that starts with centralized leadership, industry-wide coordination, and a formal organizational structure dedicated to detecting, disrupting, and preventing fraud.

A national anti-scam center: A critical next step
The U.S. needs to establish a national anti-scam center — a central hub for cross-sector intelligence sharing, rapid response coordination, and best-practice development. The model already exists.

We should look to:

• Australia’s National Anti-Scam Centre, which brings together banks, telecoms, and platforms in a coordinated enforcement and prevention framework. Within one quarter of its launch, scam losses fell by 43%.
• The UK’s cross-sector approach, where banks like TSB offer fraud reimbursement guarantees and telecoms are compelled to block known scam numbers.
• The U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) — a proven public-private partnership that demonstrates how centralized coordination and real-time data sharing can transform outcomes at scale.

A national anti-scam center would allow the U.S. to treat elder fraud and transnational cybercrime not as a series of disconnected crimes, but as an ongoing national security and consumer protection issue.

Hearing highlights: Recognition, but no authority
The hearing featured compelling testimony from AARP’s Jilenne Gunther, who detailed the inefficiencies in today’s fragmented fraud prevention ecosystem. She laid out clear steps — empowering financial institutions, removing regulatory barriers to intervention, and building bridges between financial services, tech platforms, and telecoms.

Senator Durbin focused on the use of cryptocurrency ATMs in scam schemes, rightly identifying them as a growing vehicle for fraud. But he also voiced frustration: attempts to introduce fraud safeguards into pending crypto legislation are being blocked. Lawmakers are not even allowing amendments, despite consensus on the need for reform.

Senator Whitehouse praised the U.S. Secret Service for its work combating elder fraud, but emphasized we are not doing enough. And he’s right. The current approach is piecemeal and reactive. It lacks the leadership, legal authority, and organizational coordination necessary to keep up with how these fraud networks operate.

What we need now
The tools are available. The strategies are known. What’s required is a serious shift in approach — away from awareness and toward governance and infrastructure.

Here’s what the next phase of national response should include:

• Creation of a National Anti-Scam Center modeled on NCMEC, the UK, and Australia
• Federal “report and hold” authority for financial institutions across all states
• Mandatory, privacy-protected real-time fraud intelligence sharing across sectors
• Reasonable regulation of cryptocurrency ATMs, including licensing, daily limits, and refund provisions
• Shared accountability for platforms, telecoms, and financial institutions that fail to act on known scam activity

The cost of delay
As long as elder fraud is treated as an individual crime — and not a coordinated attack on American households — we will remain vulnerable. Victims will continue to suffer devastating financial and emotional harm. Institutions will lose billions. And law enforcement will remain in a reactive posture.

Awareness is not accountability. “Fraud is bad, beware” is not a policy response.

This moment demands leadership — not just on the Senate floor, but in the creation of infrastructure that can match the scale and sophistication of the threat.

It’s time for the U.S. to stop admiring the problem — and start building the solution.