monday to resume debate on the nomination of russell -- to be the director of office of management and budget. the senate continues work on the billion defense authorization act. watch live coverage of the house on c-span, live coverage of the senate on c-span2, and watch anytime on c-span.org, or listen on the go the free c-span radio app. ntinues. >> sally greenberg testified before congress earlier this month about scams consumers face during the coronavirus pandemic and she is the executive director of the national consumers league joining us via zoom this morning. is and howt thencl you track consumer scams. >> good morning, the national consumers league's an organization that's been around since 1899. we are the premier group to

fight for consumers and workers in the united states and abroad. interest andcial focus on fraud. and we the url fraud.org get many complaints that come through that about frauds of all kinds. and we share those with law enforcement and with members of the public and we do a weekly and monthly progress report. that gives you a little bit of background about what we do. cl.net.org. you testified before congress this month that the coronavirus opened the door for a tsunami of scams and fraud. do we have a sense of how many people have been targeted since mid-march? yes, fraudsters are good at swooping into situations of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods,

national disasters and this pandemic definitely falls into that category. what we found is that there is a fraud andrange of efforts to scam consumers going on within the organized group of people and there are substantial numbers, by the millions of fraudsters in the united states and many countries around the world who perpetrate fraud on innocent consumers. is aund that this pandemic very fertile landscape for fraudsters. 2020, thebeginning of federal trade commission has received more than 100 20,000 complaints about identity theft, scams and other kinds of fraud linked to covid-19. of these complaints, nearly half indicated a monetary loss of $78

million. in april alone, some of the private sites that are not government sites like google and other places where we go every day to find information, google announced it was tracking, in april alone, more than 18 million malware and phishing scams that are sent to consumers hoping you will sign up or give some private information and they were tracking 18 million of those per day. it gives you a sense of the magnitude of the fraud that's out there. the other open opportunity for fraudsters where the unemployment checks that were to millionser week of americans. 40 million americans have applied for unemployment. that just opens the door for identity theft for fraudsters. that, unders are

the cares act that many millions , the department of labor said it could be as much as $26 billion has been stolen through identity theft. fraudsters are finding an unemployment check that are not theirs and stealing them from consumers and workers and are depending on these checks but they find them gone and the fraudster has been in there first and put in your identity. i'm talking about your social security number, your birthday, your name, your address. fraudsters have that information, sadly, about every single american in the united states so it's very easy to perpetrate fraud in those situations. those are some of the things i the about before congressional committee. there are other issues that have bubbled to the surface during the covid pandemic including the fact that there has been gouging across the country, a huge

amount of gouging. i mean people putting on masks on the internet at a time when we didn't have a lot of masks charging far more than they ever had before, hand sanitizer, disinfectant, personal protective equipment being put up thousands and thousands of dollars more than it was worth. we also have situations of hoarding where people will hoard huge amounts and they gouge consumers because you cannot get it and it's been hoarded by some group or network. those are some of the issues that came up and its endless. of getting a refund, i don't know how many people signed up for a live event like a theater or a concert event and it's hard to get your refund back. it happened to me. i signed up for a tour to go abroad and i am not going to get

anywhere near the money i invested in the tour including my airfare because airlines are not returning money. they want you to get a voucher in many cases. lecture in the a beginning of april and i never got my money back for that. two tickets that were not cheap. unlike every other consumer out there, i want my money back and we are calling attention to this before the house committee. host: sally greenberg, executive director of the national consumers league talking about can -- covid scams and we want to hear your stories if you been impacted. do you have questions about this? you can call in on this and the phone lines are open. as folks are calling in, we talk about fraud but what about

another aspect that you talked about on this program before, bogus cure scams especially right now during coronavirus. rise andhave we seen a at what is the federal government doing to get those bogus cures off the market? i'm glad you mentioned that. the pandemic has been a heyday for fraudsters who like to offer , in the best of times, will lotions, cbd and be cbd -- it could infused drinks to supposedly give our immune system a jumpstart or a cure or address the symptoms of covid. we have even found there were

vaccines thaty are being offered to consumers. in thee not showing up usual google search. what we find is they are on social media so you may find them on facebook. you may find them on other social media sites. youare being told that if pay $29 or five dollars for the shipping of a vaccine and the vaccine is free but shipping 90ts are 495 -- four dollars five cents. some bogus offer and they will send you a vaccine that will prevent you from getting covid. we have seen a real uptick in those since march of this year. the u.s. food and drug administration has sent 80 warning letters to purveyors of fraudulent covid-19 treatments. the federal trade commission has warned more than 250 companies to take off these phony and bogus offers of treatment for

covid-19. as of right now, there is no treatment for covid-19. there is no cure for covid-19. there is no vaccine for covid-19. if you are being offered any of these, they are a sham, don't waste your money, and some of them could be dangerous. they are not vetted carefully and they don't have manufacturing practices that we have come to expect through the fda. that's the gold standard for how we deliver drugs and over-the-counter medicine to americans. there is only one drug that's been approved by the fda through the clinical trial process to treat a rare form of epilepsy in children that has a cbd as its active ingredient. we all have friends who swear by this stuff, it helps my arthritis, and my knee. proven not one ounce of

therapeutic benefit to date. ist could change but there just this huge surge of cbd products on the market and covid comes in and folks say this is a great way to prevent or protect my family from covid. don't believe it because there is no scientific evidence to back that up stop host: plenty of calls for you already, joe out of maine, good morning. caller: yes, good morning, thank you for having me on. my first question is, if you no one of these snake a salesman that's lying about products, is it going to be a result? will you charge them? that's my first question. is there some records legally? host: what is your second question so we can take them together? caller: i want to ask her why she is not calling out donald

trump for corona. -- bought allught the corona in india. are you going to go after him for putting a light on your skin and that will stop corona? i would call that a snaggle salesman -- a snake oil salesman. you are going after cbd people? that's very important and i want to thank you for your time. thank you for those great questions. guest: the first thing is we work with law enforcement officials. so we are really pleased and we have written and have an ongoing dialogue with the federal trade commission and with the food and drug administration. when they find these snake oil salesman selling products, they write letters, warning letters and they say if you don't take down these ads and quit claiming this drug will treat covid, you

could be out of business and we expect to hear from you in 48 hours. if not, you run the risk of having your company dissolved. fda.ll report that to the these are federal agencies that are consumer protection agencies that care about health. . what's important is that members of the public knows agencies are out there where they can report to us as fraud -- at fraud.org. have 250 warning letters one of the main federal protection agencies, 80 warning letters from another one on covid and snake oil. anybody involved in peddling these products should be to the ftc and the fda. i believe the supreme court ruled recently that even the president of the united states is not immune from investigation. i would say who's ever out there

making these claims, no matter what your status is, stop doing it because it's against federal law. anybody making these claims should be investigated. host: i want to show a graphic. this is from the ftc consumer ,entinel network reports looking at reports of fraud and identity theft over time. you can see the spike particularly in fraud reports here on this chart starting in march at the time when coronavirus really started hitting the united states. 134,000 reports overall. the estimated total fraud loss, upwards of $88 million. a little over $260 per individual reported their estimated median fraud loss. can you explain with the consumer sentinel network is and how can the ftc investigate over

134,000 reports of fraud? sentinel weonsumer use because we and other consumer organizations and law enforcement use it as a portal to report instances of fraud and fraudulent claims. it's a good question how they can investigate that many. the fda and sat down with the ftc and there is a lot of people in the room working on these issues. you've got google working on pute issues and amazon has in a huge number of resources into tracking both fraudulent andms and counterfeit drugs bogus claims and taken them down. they have done that with gouging, they have done that with their algorithms.

someone might be hoarding products that should be going to a hospital and maybe they will sell them on the open market. it sounds like a lot. our tax dollars are going to support very robust antifraud programs and federal agencies that are there to protect our health. we've been very pleased by them getting out there and warning companies. one thing i would like to see is companies shut down. it's not just the federal law enforcement. across the country, every state has an attorney general. areattorney general offices very important to consumers. they are there to help us with claims against fraud and to police gouging behavior and hoarding and they have been

doing a good job. we talked to the attorney general in this last two weeks andowa, pennsylvania, d.c. we will talk with the attorney general in kentucky. about what they are doing to police this tsunami of fraud we have seen as a result of covid. we have officials who are set up to try to protect us from all these frauds out there. the fraudsters will get through and will they steal identities and apply for unemployment? yeah, that will happen but without these private and public efforts to uncover them and unmask them and prevent them from doing what they are doing, we would be in worse shape. we can never do enough to prevent the fraudsters from stealing money from consumers. host: you're on with sally greenberg. caller: good morning and thanks

for taking my call. this summer, i was going to travel to a wedding in new trip, tod on another london and to israel. so i trying to save money booked through places called and got protection, get insurance, got priority and once it occurred, i had a note from the doctor that we are over 70 and should not travel because were such, we got the runaround. dropped calls and they never answered and i finally got through on the new jersey call and they finally gave me a voucher. they would not recognize anything else in spite of buying all this insurance. there are a lot of scams by people like cheapo air and one

travel and it's difficult to travel in these times. i understand their predicament but they're not responding ethically. thank you. host: sally greenberg? guest: i agree with everything you just said. wheren the same situation we paid for airfare and i did it through a tour agency and i have friends who called me and asked what i would do. they won't give me my money back. we have found there is a very thin layer of protection from consumers. i'm not getting a full ralph and -- for a full refund. i paid for the same thing, insurance, cancel anytime insurance. the company will give me some refund but they are keeping my insurance, they are keeping my cancel for any reason insurance. i didn't cancel, they canceled. -- you should call your attorney general in

arizona. you should report they are keeping your money and they want to offer you a voucher. the second thing is we have two great senators in washington who andesent massachusetts connecticut, senators markey and blumenthal. there are a handful of other senators who have introduced give me my money back, give me my refund back now. forceot there to consumers to take a voucher. you didn't sign up for that. you are not required to give this company a loan. flights were canceled without your having anything to do with it. my flight was canceled, my trip was canceled, i feel and you and all the other americans out there who paid good money and got insurance should get every single dime back. i am frustrated as well as you are. we are trying to get members of congress the support they need so we can get this bill passed.

i can look up the bill number but in the meantime, you should call your attorney general and say i demand to have every single dime back i paid. this was through no fault of my own. i'm not 100% sure on this but on the insurance piece, i bought insurance in case something happened to me. i didn't buy insurance in case they canceled the trip on me where i had no choice of going. i bought cancel for any reason insurance. i feel like that's on them. i think i should get all my insurance money back. that is an insurance i bought to protect myself if something happened like i broke my leg or a family member needed me to stay in town. we are fighting that battle alongside you and i'm glad you called and glad you have an yourtunity -- do call attorney general's office. i think you should probably

write us and we will send that information into members of congress. i'm not sure we have a -- as good a database as we should have in all the billions of dollars cap by the airlines and live eventers in the space or tourist space and i can't tell you the number of friends who called me and said i can't get them to give me my money back. host: for the viewers who want to write to you, where should they go? go to fraud.org and we have a portal for collecting complaints. host: tom is next out of illinois, good morning. tom.r: this is host: go ahead. caller: i have been using it for i use this saline solution for my nasal cavities and i gargle with it as well. i got a post on my email the other day that there was a claim

that when you did that, the virus does not live in a saline solution and that you actually are protecting yourself by keeping your nose clean because you don't let the virus multiply. whenever i go out in public, i do it before i go and when i come home, i do it after i get done. i don't know whether this is true or not but i haven't gotten sick and i've been in a lot of public situations. is it true or not? know: it's difficult to whether products are living up