Aspen Report: A National Strategy to Prevent Scams

Consumer scams are escalating into a national security and economic crisis. In response, the Aspen Institute has issued a landmark report outlining a comprehensive national scam prevention strategy, calling for a whole-of-ecosystem approach across government, industry, and civil society.

The report emphasizes that effective scam prevention requires close coordination between the U.S. government, state authorities, and private sector leaders to share intelligence, strengthen defenses, and disrupt organized fraud networks.

In this article, fraud prevention expert, Ken Palla covers:

• An overview of the Aspen Institute’s new recommendations on national scam prevention and why they matter.
• The U.S. government’s role in leading a coordinated anti-scam strategy.
• State and local responsibilities for scam prevention training and victim support.
• Private sector obligations to detect and report scam activity, including banks, telecoms, and digital platforms.
• The need for a national “duty of care” framework and safe harbor provisions.
• Examples of early industry action, including initiatives by AARP, Visa, and major banks.
• Why a whole-of-ecosystem approach to scam prevention is essential to protect consumers and restore trust.

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The Aspen Institute has released recommendations on fighting consumer scams in the U.S. This initiative will drive the U.S. government and the private sector to take serious action to help fight consumer scams. Consumer scams are a national security threat, and the U.S. needs to aggressively fight this threat.

For my foreign fraud fighter friends, many of these recommendations will be applicable for your country as well. In some cases, these recommendations have already been successfully deployed in several countries.

This report was the result of thousands of hours of work, with over 300 experts from 80 organizations meeting over the past year. The report contains 47 principle-based recommendations and over 100 practical next steps.

Goal of the Recommendations

The goal of these recommendations is to create a “national anti-scam strategy (that) should help strengthen defenses in sectors that scammers target or exploit, including telecommunications, messaging, digital platforms (social media, paid advertising, and retail), and financial services (banking, payments, fintech, crypto).”

The Aspen Institute acknowledges that consumer scams are a U.S. national security threat because of who the scammers are—organized crime, Mexican cartels, Triad gangs—and the amount of money stolen per year. Reported losses exceed $16 billion annually but are likely significantly underreported.

Key Recommendations:

• Congress and the White House should recognize scams as a national security threat.
• Corporate leaders must act decisively to suppress scam activity at every stage of its lifecycle. This includes maintaining robust anti-scam policies and detecting and disrupting scams in process.
• There should be active data information sharing, tracking, and measurement of consumer scams.

Role of the U.S. Government to Lead a National Anti-Scam Strategy

‍The recommendations put heavy emphasis on the U.S. government to “elevate scam prevention as a national priority” and to establish a national strategy to combat consumer scams.

The government is also being asked to help shut down the criminal organizations that perpetrate these scams. This will require cross-border coordination with many countries. Several nations are already participating in coordinated efforts to eliminate scam centers and related criminal organizations.

The U.S. government is further asked to facilitate scam data sharing between the various organizations that should be fighting consumer scams. Currently, there are limitations to sharing data among banks, telcos, digital platforms, and law enforcement. Cross-sector data sharing is a critical component of this anti-scam strategy.

Missing National Consumer Duty of Care

‍The Aspen Institute recognizes, “There is no clear or consistent national ‘duty of care’ to suppress scam activity across sectors targeted by scammers, such as telecommunications, messaging, digital platforms (social media, paid advertising, and retail), and financial services (banking, payments, fintech, crypto).”

According to the Aspen report, this needs to change to “establish clearer duties for companies to prevent scam activity, coupled with an improved set of rights (safe harbors) and authorities that enable them to act decisively.”

The U.S. government can address this through regulation, or companies can add voluntary anti-scam strategies and controls. Certain safe harbor provisions to support this “duty of care” would, however, typically require government regulation or legislation.

Role of States and Local Governments

‍The states are pivotal in the fight against consumer scams. They need trained and “scam-focused” law enforcement to be able to interact with consumers when they report crimes and ask for help in recovering stolen funds.

Too often, local police are not trained in consumer scams. Not every local police department has the resources to be the primary contact.

This is where states need to define overall law enforcement training and offer a triage approach for victims in smaller counties. For example, a state the size of Montana, with just over one million people, might have one center with experts to support consumer victims.

See Table 1 for some of the key recommendations.

Role of the Private Sector

‍Telcos, digital platforms, and banks are where scammers use their facilities—text messages, dating site interactions, bogus investment ads, and money movement—to execute scams.

The Aspen report acknowledges this and recommends that these sectors adopt a formal anti-scam policy and strategy. It also strongly recommends “know your customer” controls to prevent scammers from:

• Sending scam text messages to consumers
• Interacting with unsuspecting members of dating sites
• Selling goods on marketplaces
• Posting scam investment ads
• Creating money mule accounts (the receiving side of a scam transaction)

There are additional controls mentioned for each sector. Some of these are included in Table 1.

When the report discusses states and the private sector, there is a clear emphasis on scam prevention.

Table 1. Key Recommended Actions by Sector

What Action Is Occurring in the Private Sector?

For the Aspen Institute’s recommendations to have real impact, the U.S. government, states, and the private sector must commit to these requirements and demonstrate measurable action.

Axios reported several positive developments this year:

“AARP stood up a new Fraud Watch Network earlier this year, which offers a free helpline for people who have been targeted by scams and connects them with law enforcement as needed.”

“Visa, another member, created its own internal scam detection practice this year that proactively hunts and takes down scams on its own payment networks and beyond.”

Some banks have also established dedicated anti-scam departments focused solely on consumer scams. Others have begun tracking scam incidents to raise executive-level awareness of the problem.

The call to action is clear: the private sector must become fully engaged in fighting consumer scams, beginning at the CEO level.

Closing: Urgent Action is Required

The consumer scam problem is massive in the U.S. and around the world. The Global Anti-Scam Alliance estimates worldwide losses may reach $1 trillion. These scams are driven by transnational organized crime, including large scam compounds in Southeast Asia with 100,000 to 300,000 scammers.

This requires urgent action:

• The U.S. government needs to treat this as a national security issue and establish national leadership to fight consumer scams.
• The government must work to disrupt scam operations.
• Regulation and legislation should require banks, telcos, and digital platforms to have anti-scam policies and strategies in place. Cross-sector data sharing should be enabled, with proper safe harbor protections for reasonable actions taken by these sectors.
• States must increase law enforcement support to address consumer scams and make AAMVA data available across all states. Crypto ATMs should be banned.
• Banks, credit unions, fintechs, telcos, and digital platforms need to establish anti-scam strategies with meaningful controls that can reduce consumer scams.

We need a whole-of-ecosystem approach to fight consumer scams and protect American consumers. The private sector can begin taking action now while federal and state governments determine their roles.

After all, it is private sector customers who are being scammed and losing billions. A lack of serious private sector action could shift the issue from prevention to regulatory liability considerations.

Next Steps

‍For those seeking to go deeper, read the Consumer Scam Controls whitepaper that I developed alongside Outseer. This is a valuable resource to help you benchmark your organization and improve your response to consumer scam prevention.

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