Officials and advocates urge single reporting portal and tax relief as scams devastate seniors' savings

Lawmakers and consumer advocates at a Joint Economic Committee hearing highlighted the severe, sometimes life‑altering impacts that scams have on older Americans and described practical steps Congress could take to help victims.

Multiple members told personal stories: a constituent’s widowed mother who lost life savings to a romance and impersonation scam; other cases where victims who later reported the theft were surprised to owe federal taxes on amounts stolen. Kathy Stokes of AARP said her organization’s helpline receives hundreds of calls daily and that nearly half of aggregate reported losses were borne by older adults.

AARP and others urged Congress to: create a single federal reporting portal to reduce confusion and ensure reports are routed to the right agencies; explore a victim restoration mechanism to speed restitution from seized assets; and provide tax relief so victims are not later treated as having taxable income on funds stolen from them (advocates cited restoring the personal casualty and theft loss deduction as one option).

Stakeholders also emphasized public‑education campaigns aimed at families and multi‑generational messaging, improved training and resources for state and local law enforcement who are often the first point of contact for victims, and fast, scaled deployment of technological defenses by telecom, platform and financial companies.

AARP and the National Elder Fraud Coordination Center cited examples where private‑sector intelligence helped combine apparently isolated local investigations into larger organized‑crime cases and urged continued public‑private intelligence sharing.