maine. addressing this is difficult but critical. many in our elderly population are there with other support networks. the days of americans surrounded by generations of family members are fading into the past. what do we know about this population, we know that older adults are often targets of exploitation in part because they own assets and pension schemes that are attractive to exam artists. when a fraud occurs even seniors with a limit d limited. we must all come together to weave a new safety net that can

kept us from achieving solutions. we must identify those who are in the best position to determine red flags early on and encourage reporting to other governmental agencies. in maine we discovered one of the most valuable rediscourse among others to develop senior life. senior life was created to increase identification and report reporting it. prior to this, we met with representatives from the banks and credit unions to identify barriers to reporting abuse and financial exploitation. what we learned is the system lacked a feed back laup so often.

training is involved of three components. frontline staff are trained to identify red flags for elder abuse and financial exploitation and manage. participations are and aps is better but the main office of securities has agree and

determine whether to investigate the case or refer it to another federal or state agency. the benefits of this reporting or referral system are far reaching. it leads to improved safety and other customers of the financial institution. proactive measures help promote good willing in the community and has it been active? . the answer is yes joomtand training one month later for credit fern

el and driven to the bank by a supposed handyman to withdraw over $10,000 in cash for repairing the man for her roof. the customer had no idea who the individual was and had not contracted with him. aps was informed and is now caring for the victim who lost over 14 tlrp and we must work together to create a new safety need to use this. thank you for your opportunity to let me testify today. i'd be happy to answer any

questions. thank you ms. shaw. ms. quinn. madam chairman, ranking member and other committee members, thank you for allowing me to speak be this. 'represent asp tlrk r and is created the financial advisory board on exploitation. elder abuse is a huge expensive doedly problem. the people are treated, twice the number the combine, twice.

victims victims and it is expensive costing tax payers, institutions billions of dollars anyway. it often cooccurred with physical and emotional abuse. con con con. we have any serious attention really begun to be paid and

resulted in significant reductions in the incidence rates of both problems. >> ms. quinn. pardon me for interrupting. there are foreminutes left in the vote and as my colleagues know, i've never missed one in more than 18 years so i am going to excuse myself to vote. senator, have you voted? and why don't we tack a take a break but we will resume when i return. thank you.

thank you for your comments. would you like to continue? >> i was but i think i only recently thanks to the elder justice coalition, the elder justice act, leadership at the acl and coordinating counsel and in no small part to this committee has any serious attention be paid to the issue. we hope it will grow as both child reduce hasb it.

and it is aps who directly helps victims. the elder justice act passed in 2010 had its first appropriation for 4 million to support the desperate need for infrastructure but no funding for direct victim servicesment 2/3rds used it to block aps and eliminating it would shut down it in some states. many of the services, home delivered needs would help to keep victims at home. it is it is not only there but do require the client's

financial records which aps must have to substantiate the abuse is occurring. they are permitted to share such records to prevent fraud. a advised record. i believe financial institutions financial financial and i hope this committee and congress will look at thoses sfwrjt.

with this and this not only protect their assets over the long term but will reduce demands on medicaid and other publically funded programs. across this great nation, we thank you for holding this hearing and for the work on behalf of older adults. we hope this will be a sustain's and protect our parents and grand parents, i know senator collins has br induced you but

are dealing with nekt,glect, sexual assault, homicide. a recent case was in washington, kenneth sharp was a rotary an businessman and running for city council. his mother helen was in her 80's and had dimensioned. ken her son was there. in 2008 he began to steel from her. thins by taking the proceeds too. over the next four years kenneth

stole money from his mother to fund his lavish lifestyle. in 2011 helen's daughters figured it out and called the police who investigated. we then filed seven counts of fallony theft. call must of them were robbed of their entire inheritance. with no money left helen was forced to go on medicaid. she died a few months ago. heartbroken. that's how it is with financial skploetation. we all pay the price.

those are forced to rely on headichead medicaid, medic care and other programs. we still don't know the cost of financial exploitation but it's safe to say that the there. in the sharp case we did have

some ina/*something. i'm talking about care givers, accountants, attorneys and those in the civil service indut ri. ingnat we also intoed this. the sharp case that i told you about concluded two weeks ago. sharp pled guilty as charged and was sentenced to a high end sintence of 43 months in prison.

he will be ordered to pay restitution to the money he. whale we were abl to contain some on that. the emotional damage that was dong fong and we need to if out how to respond to this terrible problem. thank you very much skroo thank you very much for your testimony. i am happy that i was able to hear all of two of the witnesses. part of the other two witnesses and of course, i have read your written testimonies.

b i want to thank the others who have joined us. senator scott and senator casey since i last acknowledged everyone. i want to start with you because in in what we call and who alerted you to the fact that your own mother might be a vikt inl of abuse. could you tell us a blil that and also are other regulations that might make them hez indicate

even if they have evidence of exploitation exploitation. i grew up in a small town in northern maine. like many mourn. >> want to thankdo this. my mother became a legal secretary when she graduated high school for a small law firm in our small town and remained there for 60 years. my father died at the age of 57. he was sort of the socialite in our family. my mother's big social circles.

she had lookinged at the bank accounts and realized there was a strange withdrawal coming out of the bank account. my sister is on there with my mother and so she called kathy and said we should look into this. my mom was afraid it all. fortunately, learning my mother was early stage dementia. we might have identified it

early on early on developing senior safe. it's clear to me that people at banks and credit unions are doing this in the state of maine. they have that feedback loop. there's also immunity for reporting to adult protective services which i think is very important. i would agree with ms. sfljz but

i tell be what with a sfwrnlz settling his estate but he sflrnld snrnld but had r having

is zbrrnld quite frankly iand he had been through different circumstances. philip, follow the sfrnlt all of this stuff and the financial services so helped. >> thank you senator mcaskle.

how quickly did law enforcement get involved in your grandmother grandmother's case, i filed for a petition of guardianship in july of 2006 and law enforcement got involved in october of 2006 after this -- at that point alleged forthgery was brought forth by the district attorney. >> and let me turn, you know, i don't know how you manage to get the police in king county and metro political seattle and how you got the king's -- the i don't know who started this -- has done a great thing. i think it's important for us to understand the barriers around it's not big enough. and this is the constant refrain

that families here from this, there's no blood on the street there's in pressure from detectives to close the cases because this is not a statistic that's generally tracked. so there's very little to get the law enforcement community engaged other than a prosecutor who feels pressure from this so what would be the thing that we could do to light a fire under local law enforcement and state das? >> senator i think that's an excellent question because i think that basically many of these cases stop when that message is heard in the community that prosecutors are not going to prosecute the case.

aps didn't bother referring to everyen everything done and saying we take on this issue this but there's training across the spectrum of the criminal justice system so it gets law enforcement, prosecutors, child protective services and victim advocates together at the time to train on how to respond to these cases. the community that's have gotten this grant have really begun to take on this issue in a very dramatically different way. so that's one potential solution to expand that program. that's one that obw responds. i think more prosecutors would

take this on, going back to the point point. i think prosecutors knew how to deal with them. there's capacity issues which are so common in these cases. we don't know how to handle the analysis of the financial areas and encouraging multidisciplinary teams as well. >> in your world. let's assume the police department gets a report or the d.a. as office gets one directly, who are the capacity evaluateors that you call on.

are they there but there are some that aps interests. >> well the prosecutors are going to be in town in the next week, two weeks. many of whom have been contacted by them to come to their office and visit. this is a great time to bring up with them how many elder abuse cases they have filed in the last year? and i intend to do that. >> wonderful. >> thank you senate. senator warren. >> thank you very much dad i very much look forward to your

plea pleas but i am concerned with protecting the money in their 401(k)s so i would like to focus on for a minute on the financial advisors who take advantage of people who rely on them. in a recent study, harvard researchers sent actors disguised as customers to banks and brokerages to get advice on their retirement portfolios and they found that advisors consistently stirred customers to the highest feed products. a 2013 goa study found the same thing. in other words, the bankers and advisors gave themselves a great deal while they gave their

customers a lousy deal. even a one% one of these things that i want to ask is what can we do to make sure that our seniors don't end up investing in their retirement savings and funds that benefit the brokers more than they benefit the customers? >> thank you senator. certainly i have supported the idea ofs in a s in as in a nasa to adopt a feudish yary standard. i would also say that disclosure is key as well. disclosures of the fees and information. an informed vaetinvestor is one who

will be more proterktcted so we're looking fordsward to making sure that all of that is made perfectly clear to investors before they invest and to make sure that any product retirement product or otherwise that any investors put in, is suitable for that investor. but we do want advisors who should be -- we hope that they are working in the best interest of the investor. i would be naïve to say that every advisor is operating in the best interest of their client. >> well, i appreciate you're raising that ms. shaw because i think it's a very important point. the director of research at morning star which is the leading invest research company made this remark about high fees, quote, if there's anything in the fee of mutual funds that you can take to the bank it's that the expense ratios help you make a better decision. in every single time period and data point tested low cost

funds beat high cost funds. now, high fee products may result in less money for our seniors but of course they do mean more money for banks and other investment advisors. according to a study by a.a.r.p. most don't even know it amost of these salespeople don't have to offer advise that's in the customers best interest. so ms. shaw are you worried that because investment advisors don't have to advise in the customers interest that this may give unfair advantages to bad actors who push products that benefit themselves over good actor who's are doing everything they can to help their clients reach a secure retirement and protect that retirement? >> it's certainly a concern and it is part of the strong investor and consumer protection that has been a part of my

agency since the days of senator cohen's running our department in maine. it's an area that we look at in maine and that we're looking at through nasa through many different lens include, you may be aware that nasa did a field study not too long ago. we're looking with the industry to include fee disclosure. they are worningat the table to improve disclosure and the ways in which consumers and customers can hopefully make better comparisons before they make decisions. there's a long way to go and it takes only a few minutes to see that there are indeed, bad actors oweactors out there. >> i want to thank you very much for your work. i want to thank all of you for being here today. you know, we need to do more to protect our seniors but also particularly to make sure that financial advisors don't steer

their clients in to retirement products that maximize the advisor's profits while they drain away the client's savings. that's particularly important for our seniors who just don't have the ability tohis and thank you all. thank you chairman. >> thank you. senator tillas. thank you madam chair and laysieslaysdies and gentlemen of the panel thank you for being here. i'm sorry for being late. it's not for a lack of interest in this. ms. shaw i had a question for you. prior to coming here i was speaker of the house in north carolina and i'm interested in the senior safe program and i would appreciate maine's leadership in that. can you tell me a little bit about any challenges that you all had in the process of implea. ing that program and the benefits? >> i think that the first challenge that we experienced was really getting to the point where the banks and credit un

yors unions and the other part is we say this is a no wrong door approach. in other wowords a report can be made to any of the partners. if a report is made and they determine they do not have jurisdiction, a bank or credit need not be concerned that this is the end of the story. aps has committed that they will then make that referral to our office and either referral it to another agency. if the community we would say that the key components are to make sure that there are two key points of entry in the state government not just adult protective services and that there's very strong partnership it has to be a public/private

partnership partnership. multidisciplinary is the only way to go. >> thank you for that. is there any focus on expanding the scope, using this as a platform for kind of using big data in other areas to financially expend out to providers or just other areas that would be outside the net that banks and credit unions may be able to provide like a phase ii or phase ii of seeni of senior safe. >> we have taken the concept of senior safe and modified it for law enforcement. they will soon have a radar card the size of a summons book that they will carry with them about red flags,ed and we have just been approached by direct care workers and other things.

in march we will be providing it with their local things there. we reshappreciate your leadership. i had another question for whoever would be appropriate on the panel. it has to do with medicare scams and something as simple -- maybe not so simple as the social security numbers still being printed on the cards. i know that there had been bills inpro inpro introduced cms is very expensive. give me something in the order of spending money where something like that fits. where would you like to see us allocate resources to. anyone on the panel that would

have an opinion on it -- >> i don't know that i can speak specifically to that issue but i will tell you that one of the largest barriers that main programs. we have lots of programs and getting that to prosecution and important points that we need to address. >> did you want to add to that. >> doing that clearly opens the doors for scams of all kinds. aps deals mostly with family abuse and exploitation. we don't care with medicare

fraud. >> i think there's a variety of this and does it rise to the top priority or somewhere and one of the things that we ought to be trying to learn how to fund. >> thank you so much. congratulations on your chairmanship. i'm glad you focused on this topic for i guess the first hearing. we're very grateful for that. he want to thank the panel. i know many of us were in and out with votes and other activity but we're grateful you're here. i didn't hear all of the testimony. i heard close to half, probably. we're grateful that you're here, you're bringing not only your

skpeer experience and not only that but personal experience of that and that of your families. that's booming for us and i focus for a moment ms. shaw on seenor safe. a couple of questions are the elements of it or the component parts of it meaning the agencies that comprise it. i'm looking at page three of your testimony. if my count is right, you have i guess about six or seven different entities that are part of it. i guess the first question that there's an obvious multidisciplinary approach that

my question is how difficult was it to pull all of the entities together and is there something about senior safe that's more particularly suited to or more appropriate for the state of maine or do you think it could be a model for other states around the country?