SACRAMENTO — Banking, cryptocurrency and telecom witnesses told the Little Hoover Commission on Friday that private industry has developed technical tools to detect and trace scam activity but that those tools are most effective when paired with clearer legal authority and faster cross‑sector information sharing.

Darius Kingsley, managing director and head of consumer banking practices at JPMorgan Chase, said the firm has expanded its fraud detection and prevention teams and uses 24/7 monitoring and advanced analytics to stop suspicious transactions. He said banks file currency transaction reports (CTR) and suspicious activity reports (SAR) to FinCEN and that federal law enforcement sometimes acts on those reports, but most filings do not generate immediate feedback to the bank.

Kelsey Dean, director of global intelligence at Coinbase, described cryptocurrency tracing as a different technical trade‑off: blockchain records are immutable and transparent, enabling fast tracing in many cases but often requiring rapid coordination with law enforcement to seize assets before they move. Dean said Coinbase’s normal subpoena response time is “under 48 hours” and that the company provides training and intelligence to law enforcement for asset recovery. She added that “greater public guidance from the state of California on the use of this legal tool [hold‑harmless agreements] … would significantly strengthen the ability of Coinbase and other financial institutions to recover lost funds.”

Josh Berkew, executive director of the Industry Traceback Group, outlined progress against mass robocalls and emphasized the industry’s traceback capability that can identify intermediary carriers and infrastructure used to route scam calls. He urged California to consider legal protections or safe harbors to encourage faster information exchange among carriers, tech platforms and law enforcement, and to continue funding enforcement actions that seize criminal proceeds.

The California Bankers Association, in public comment, reiterated that banks are required to respect consumers’ access to funds and warned that rules applying only to state‑chartered banks would be ineffective because nationally chartered banks hold the majority of deposits. Scott Parrillo, a San Diego deputy district attorney, urged urgency and said local task forces like San Diego’s handle only a small fraction of the reported cases despite demonstrable successes.

What this could mean: Witnesses recommended state actions that include a single online reporting portal, designated law‑enforcement contacts for faster takedowns, access to motor‑vehicle verification data to reduce fraudulent account openings, improvements to state privacy rules to permit targeted sharing with law enforcement, and pilot expansion of the San Diego task‑force model.

Ending: Industry spokespeople said they can scale detection and tracing work but that California lawmakers should provide clearer state legal tools and a framework for safe, limited cross‑sector data sharing to prevent more victims from losing funds.