Pa. lawmakers and banking industry push updates to Older Adult Protective Services Act to curb financial exploitation

Chair leaders of the House Aging and Older Adult Services Committee and the House Commerce Committee convened a joint hearing to examine proposed updates to the Older Adult Protective Services Act and to hear testimony from state officials, AARP and banking representatives on financial exploitation of older Pennsylvanians.

The hearing centered on proposals to modernize the 1987 law to add explicit protections and tools for identifying and pausing suspected financial exploitation, expand mandatory reporting and improve training and information-sharing among banks, area agencies on aging, and law enforcement.

Secretary Jason Kavolich, Department of Aging secretary, told the committees the current statute is nearly 40 years old and “does not explicitly address financial exploitation,” and urged a comprehensive update to protect “more than 3,400,000 older Pennsylvanians” from scams, fraud, neglect and abuse. Kavolich said 32% of the 53,837 reports the department received were allegations of financial exploitation and that reports to protective services have risen sharply in recent years.

Theresa Osborne, State Advocacy Director for AARP Pennsylvania, urged a multidisciplinary response that includes industry, law enforcement and policymakers. Citing federal data during her testimony, Osborne said publicly reported fraud losses in 2024 totaled $12.5 billion and that agency estimates of underreporting put the full loss figure much higher. Osborne urged lawmakers to allow financial institutions to temporarily hold suspicious transactions, report suspected exploitation to agencies and law enforcement, and participate in elder-justice task forces to improve coordination.

Representatives of community banks and a credit union described frontline detection and the limits they face. Ed Martel, chief operating officer of Jonestown Bank and Trust Company, described bank efforts to educate staff and stop many attempts before they escalate, and urged a legal safe harbor that would let financial institutions pause suspected transactions and share information with law enforcement and area agencies on aging without fear of penalties. “Our ask in the proposed legislation is a safe harbor for holding or refusing suspected transactions,” Martel said.

Lauren Greenway, certified financial crimes investigator and assistant manager for fraud at Belco Community Credit Union, gave a detailed example in which staff flagged a newly deposited settlement check for roughly $197,000 and tried to intervene after seeing subsequent withdrawals and gift-card purchases. Greenway described repeated outreach to the member and a referral to the area agency on aging; the member later admitted sending money to an acquaintance and lost about $60,000. She said credit unions need authority to hold funds, coordinate with agencies and ask probing questions without exposing staff to discrimination claims.

Rick Simakoski, security and fraud officer for Penn Community Bank and a former FBI agent, described the scale and sophistication of organized fraud schemes and said that prevention depends on swift action at the time of the attempt. “It is time in Pennsylvania,” he said, to give financial institutions the ability to act “resolutely at the time of the event” to slow transactions, contact family or law enforcement and prevent losses that are often irrecoverable.

Kavolich outlined departmental proposals discussed in the hearing, including: modernizing statutory sections to address financial exploitation explicitly; expanding the list of mandatory reporters to include staff and administrators of assisted-living, long-term care and related facilities and employees of area agencies on aging; broadening background-check provisions for employees with direct contact with older adults; and creating a waiver process to avoid unconstitutional lifetime employment bans related to certain criminal offenses.

Committee members asked about existing tools and reporting platforms. Representative Marla Brown asked whether a pilot reporting platform—referred to in testimony as a “helpful” pilot funded with ARPA dollars—remains available to financial institutions. Kavolich said the department piloted the platform in counties with the highest numbers of financial-exploitation reports but that the banking industry “did not embrace” the platform and that ARPA funding ended; the department is open to revisiting the tool if use increases.

Lawmakers and witnesses also discussed prevention strategies beyond legislation. AARP urged public education campaigns and encouraged older account holders to add a trusted contact to financial accounts, a tool that notifies a designated person of suspicious activity without giving transaction authority. Bank witnesses described staff training, transaction limits, analytics and third-party fraud-detection platforms they already use and said those measures catch many attempts but cannot stop all schemes, particularly those using artificial intelligence to imitate voices or create convincing impostor communications.

No formal votes or committee actions were recorded during the hearing. Multiple witnesses and committee members noted that related legislation had advanced from the House in the prior session and remained in the state Senate.

The discussion left several practical items for follow-up, including reconsidering the pilot reporting platform’s adoption by financial institutions, drafting safe-harbor language for temporary holds on suspicious transactions, and coordinating training and multidisciplinary task forces to improve real-time responses to suspected exploitation.

Lawmakers closed the hearing saying they would continue work on statutory updates and thanked witnesses for testimony and examples from frontline institutions.