Opinion: It’s time to fight back against online scammers

A reporter once asked famous thief Willie Sutton why he robbed banks.

“Because that’s where the money is,” Sutton supposedly said.

But today, the money is on our phones and our computers – and the thieves have followed.

Nowadays banks are more secure, so contemporary criminals have started stealing directly from us, from the instant cash transfers millions of us make every day. Worse, the victims hand over the money willingly, after being tricked and lied to by the scammer. 

In 2024, New Yorkers reported nearly 280,000 cases of fraud and scams to the Federal Trade Commission. Payment scams now rip away over $12.5 billion a year from Americans, according to the FTC, and that figure just rose 25% in the last year alone.

Our seniors are especially singled out as prey by these disgusting criminals, who will sometimes pretend to be grandchildren or other family members in an emergency, asking for money to be sent right away. They’ll even use artificial intelligence to fake a loved one’s voice. And the results are heartbreaking, as victims pay out tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, their entire life savings.

Yet it is not just seniors who are targeted. Have you gotten text messages claiming to fine you for unpaid tolls or warning that your driver’s license will be suspended?  

In July, New York state issued a warning about scammers pretending to be from the Department of Motor Vehicles. The fake texts sent to New Yorkers warn of supposed outstanding traffic fines and the possibility of losing a license or even going to prison. These “DMV scams” followed a series of “toll road scams” earlier this year, where drivers were falsely accused of having unpaid toll balances.

Faking messages from government agencies, from banks, from social media platforms, from lawyers, from your own relatives: there is no depth to which these criminals will not sink.

When I prosecuted consumer fraud at the New York Attorney General’s Office a decade ago, digital payment scams were only just beginning to become a problem. Now they are emerging as a national crisis.

America’s lawmakers are beginning to take notice. A bipartisan group of senators led by Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia are aiming to pass the TRAPS Act – the Task Force for Recognizing and Averting Payments Scams Act.  

This would create a task force bringing together the “Avengers” of the fraud prosecution world: the Treasury and Justice departments, the FTC, the Federal Communications Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, along with representatives from the consumer finance industry. This task force will investigate the grifters and recommend new legislation and regulations, plus stronger coordination of federal, state and local law enforcement. It is a recognition that the problem is not just about banks or other financial institutions; it also involves our telecommunications and technology providers.  

Encouragingly, this is not just a proposal from one side of the aisle or from a particular interest or advocacy group. The legislation has bipartisan sponsorship from a broad range of senators, including Republican Sens. Mike Crapo of Idaho and Jerry Moran of Kansas, as well as Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia. It is also supported by groups representing victims (like the AARP) and groups representing business (like the American Bankers Association). This is an extraordinary coalition coming together to stop an extraordinarily pernicious problem and making it a national priority, to keep Americans safe (especially our seniors), and to restore trust in our nation’s marketplaces. 

Really, the only people who could oppose this legislation are the criminals themselves.

Of course, a task force alone is not going to solve the problem. It is the beginning of the solution, not the end. But if we do not recognize that payment scams transcend a single agency, a single governmental authority, a single business or even a single industry, we will utterly fail to solve such a complex problem. The TRAPS Act turns that recognition into legislation, and it represents an enormously important first step in the fight against these predators.

It is vital that other members of Congress support this measure – and just as importantly, it is vital that all of us raise our voices and demand its passage.