until the housing form presumess will show a portion of today's "washington journal" on federal responses to fraud. >> a look of financial fraud and consumer scams piqua joined by the vice president of public policy telecommunications and fraud at the national consumers league. for folks unfamiliar with your organization and what is it? >> guest: it's a national consumer advocacy organization for women around since 1899 which makes us of the oldest consumer protection organization in the u.s. we are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in washington d.c. >> host: joining us today a day before taxes are due, before tax day so let's talk about some of those common tax scams. >> guest: it's one of those top common tax scams consumers will encounter, the impersonation scam. this is where people often claim to be with the irs, the police or some other kind of government

agency will call and say that you owe taxes. if you don't pay them right now he will go to jail or have a negative credit report will be deported. that's what we want to warn consumers about. we also wanted to warn using tax preparers who may not be licensed interstate or who made out to do things like put false refund information on your return so that the tax preparer gets a bigger fee. that's another big one would want to warn customers about. finally we want to make sure consumers are over the data that they are using to file a tax return is very valuable to scammers want to send phishing emails. we are telling consumers to keep that date as safe and secure as possible and also to their employers whose employees are increasing getting targeted by phishing scams, try to get that employee debbie to information? >> guest: on the impersonation scam that you start with, how to detect and defend against it? >> guest: first of all impersonation scams tend to come most often over the phone.

if someone called her over the phone ssb with the irs or the federal trade commission or the fbi and demands money, that is the biggest red flag. that is not how those agencies ntact consumers, particularly not how the irs context consumers. they will contact you by the male first. secondly if they asked for payment, something like a wire transfer or prepaid debit card, that's another big red flag of fraud. number three, just be aware when you want payment right away, that's because you're trying to get you to send money without thinking first pick their time to make you afraid. that's a third big red flag with telling consumers to be aware of this taxis and? >> guest: where telling our view is to give us a call if you have questions or comments or stories about these consumers fraud, scams piqua to hear from you. put up our phone lines regionally. on the impersonation scam with

the irs it was a topic at a hearing earlier this spring. the treasury department inspector general for tax administration was testifying to talk about some of the changing tactics used in that scam this year. there's a bit from that hearin. >> april 2016, there's a shifty itunes card as a method of payment. they also doubled efforts on autodialer program so they're able to make hundreds of thousands of telephone calls in your short order. when the scam to point exactly come with this scam first started it was individuals calling one on one. when you shifted to the autodialer technology they were able to blanket individuals with hundreds of thousands of calls leaving a callback number is about the same time they shifted to the itunes card. what we learned in our investigation was the itunes cards makes it very easy for them to flip the money. they are no longer paying a middleman to convert payments into money orders.

they are now selling the itunes card on a third-party market and then pocketing the money immediately. also it's difficult for law enforcement to trace that transaction. >> host: explaining the itunes aspect here. he was just talking about why they're doing it but how does it work? the caller tells you to pay the irs with an itunes gift card? >> guest: that's exactly what happens. the itunes gift card, the payment method is one of identified last year as emerging form of payment. like a sieve before they normally asked for wire transfers, maybe a prepaid debit card but the itunes card, they will tell you to go to target or to best buy and put money onto an itunes gift card. and then send them the code on the back of that card. that allows the scammer to immediately deduct the funds that were loaded onto that card from the card itself. if access to those funds and

they quickly sell those funds are access to those codes on a thriving black market. what we understand is this is often located in east asia. the robo call or see is talking about a blanket consumers is another huge problem. what happens is you have these call centers often overseas that using cheap internet technology consent literally millions of phone calls to consumers in hopes of scamming just a few. but it makes money for the scammers. >> host: when it comes to the irs impersonation scam, how much money are we talking about have been scammed off regular people in the past couple of years? >> guest: the irs impersonation scam is one that is grown. it's the number two most biggest complaint the federal trade commission heard about in 2016. intrinsic amount of money lost it's hard to say because people don't always report their losses. we do know for fraud losses overall around three-quarters of $1 billion in losses reported to

the ftc last year just from fraud. as we also know with fraud it's historically underreported crime and we think that's just the tip of the iceberg. in reality i think the fraud losses from impersonation scams run into the billions of dollars. >> host: we're talking about with john breyault. we want to hear your stories if you been a target or victim of some of these scams. the phone lines are open. john from fairfax virginia is across the potomac river. good morning. >> caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i just want to tell the guest that most of these calls are coming from india. i really believe that. a lot of people when they hear about the irs, the first thing do is they freak out because somebody answering machine to sounds like an american voice. what you need to do is i always, when i checked the phone number where it's coming from, i realize that was a scam. but the reality is i spoke to

some people and they guess can correct me if i'm wrong, irs, they don't call people. a sent a letter if you need something from you. the reality is this is most of the target is the older people and people who are not educated. and i know some of my friends pay a thousand dollars. this is a serious problem. i hear about that a couple months ago, someone is arrested in india is doing this kind of action. isn't that the case, that there is still that's getting people doing this kind of scam? >> guest: yes. india is a center for impersonation scams of all kinds. there's a number of reasons for that. number one is because it's an english speaking countries they have a large pool of people who can speak the length of their intended victims and use. there's also access to cheap voip calling tech jobs which allows them to blast out calls

to americans in the u.s. millions of them at a time. but it's also important to understand and i think your caller talked about this, that the irs does not contact consumers through the phone to tell you that you owe money. that is a big red flag. if someone calls you and says they're from the irs and asked for money, hang up, call the irs and let them know what happened. in terms of victims, i think this runs the gamut from people with high education loans to low education levels. they keeping the scammers are very good at is creating a sense of urgency. what they will do is say if you don't pay right now we will deport you, we will put a negative mark on your credit rating. we're sending the cops right now, and stay on the phone with me until you go to the store and get me the itunes gift card or that wire transfer. they are good at manipulating emotions of consumers. they can affect anyone really. >> host: today my be they when you're getting those urgent calls from some of these fraudsters?

>> guest: absolutely. the day before tax to because it's a deadline that not only you and i know is coming up, the fraudsters know it and they know many americans are anxious about that. what they will do is we expect they are busy contacting consumers in the days and weeks leading up to tax days and the days after that for people may have missed the deadline to try and make money basically off of consumers fear of the government and what might happen if they don't pay their taxes on time. >> host: rock falls illinois good morning. >> caller: good morning. i have been having a lot of these calls also to my phone, and my daughter is, too. she ordered me something at christmas time over her computer, over the internet. since then i don't know if they have traced it or how they done it, but i've been receiving at least 68 calls a week.

i contacted my senior center in sterling. they gave me the national do not call list, and i reported it to them, what the calls keep continuing. if that's not a number that's not my fault that i don't recognize, that has like five, six, one or something area code i just don't even answer it. i just don't even answer it because i know it's a scam. >> host: thank you for the call. what can she do? >> guest: peggy, you are not alone. many people receive start receiving these impersonation calls from scammers because their phone numbers which is very valuable information to the scam artists get on a list and the scammers i, trade and fight over those lists all the time. they do because they can use those lists to call folks like you and millions of other americans with exactly this type

of impersonation scam. you mentioned the fact that your caller id shows number and you don't answer. that's a good tactic. but know that the scammers are very adept at making practically any number the that will show un your caller id through a technique called caller id spoofing. don't enter those calls. also when did you talk to the do not call list, that's a great step as well. it's a list run by the federal trade commission that has millions of numbers on it. legitimate marketers are supposed to be attention to that and not call the numbers on that list. however, the scammers are criminals. they don't pay attention to the do not call list even though they're committing a federal crime every time to call some who was on that list. they don't care. >> host: the let's scam artist keith, how does one get on that list? >> guest: the way you can get on that list, there's a lot of ways actually. anything from putting your phone number into the wrong website. it could be filling out a form at one of those, the slip to try

to win the car at the mall. there's lots of ways those of us can get in scammers hands. that's what we think the consumers should really start to think about the phone numbers the same way they would like a solstice could number or some other valuable piece of information. they wouldn't disclose to just anyone. be careful when you provide it. it's an asked you for a phone number as an identification method, ask if they're some of the way. because that is a valuable piece of information that scams can make use of. >> host: linda, good morning. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i read yesterday an article about how wells fargo was fined about $148 million for some of the frauds and scams that other employees were creating, moving, creating new accounts, moving peoples mining to another account. and i was wondering, what are these people never prosecuted? if you went and robbed a bank you would be prosecuted, but now they just call it inappropriate

movement of money. >> guest: that's a great question. certainly i think in these executives who were in charge of the wells fargo scam allowed it to happen on their watch, even encouraged it to happen, i should think they would be found or should be found criminally negligent at the very least. but that said, this is a law-enforcement matter. there's a lot of evidence that has to be gathered. as he saw from the financial crisis people who were responsible for billions or even trillions of dollars in losses never went to jail. it's hard to see who's going to go to jail and you won't but i agree it's frustrating when you see these happen and executives get off scott free. >> host: what is the national consumers league think the best policies are they can be advanced in this congress to cut down on fraud and consumer scams? >> guest: one thing this congress should do is take a look at data security standards. so as we're talking about how the information like a cell phone number getting in hands of scammers, that's information i

think all businesses and all organizations who keep consumers information to be required to keep secure. we have tried to pass legislation like this for well over a decade. unfortunately congress hasn't taken the steps. at this type of tax day when we see consumers information getting this use by scammers lcds impersonation scams growing in number, when we see huge breaches like we saw at yahoo! with more than 1 billion records compromised, i think there's an impetus. now is a time for congress to step back and take a look at the need for data security legislation that protects all consumers' data. >> host: lancaster california is next. -- >> part of the urban team and working on these issues, she's going to present work in research that she's done with colleagues at ucla and kick up our next panel conversation. tracy.