WASHINGTON – Arizona senior Senator Kyrsten Sinema spoke in a Senate Aging Committee hearing on her bipartisan bills protecting Arizona seniors from scams. Sinema called for more bipartisan solutions to ensure seniors are protected from costly and illegal scams.
“I recently heard from Liz in Mesa, Arizona, who received over a dozen unsolicited phone calls and threatening messages falsely claiming her Social Security number had been compromised in order to scare her into revealing her bank account information.We must continue working on bipartisan solutions to protect seniors like Liz from criminals targeting benefits they earned through hard work,” said Sinema.
While Sinema was in the U.S. House, she worked with the Chairman of the Senate Aging Committee, Republican Senator Susan Collins (Maine), to pass the Senior Safe Act into law, empowering financial institutions to report suspected instances of elder financial abuse and fraud. In the U.S. Senate, Sinema and Senator Collins have continued their work by introducing the Senior Security Act, which would create a task force at the Securities and Exchange Commission to protect seniors from financial crimes, and the Anti-Spoofing Penalties Modernization Act, which would increase penalties for criminals who use robocalls to harass seniors and veterans.
While serving in the U.S. House, Sinema also partnered with Republican Senator Tim Scott (S.C.) to pass the Protecting Children from Identity Theft Act, requiring the Social Security Administration to develop a database to facilitate the verification of consumer information upon request by a certified financial institution to especially protect children who are often targeted for identity theft. She also successfully advocated on behalf of Arizona parents and children to cut red tape at SSA, ensuring victims of identity theft can get new Social Security Numbers and the fresh start they deserve.
