HR7215-119

What This Bill Does

The Stop SCAMS Act gives the FBI Director the lead role in coordinating federal anti-scam measurement and strategy work with the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, the Federal Trade Commission, and other agencies. Within one year, the Director must develop and implement a government-wide strategy to counter scams, adopt a single definition of scam and scam types, and explore harmonized data collection fields such as scam type, dollar loss amount, payment method, and other appropriate fields. Within two years, the Director must produce a government-wide estimate of annual consumers affected by scams, including unreported incidents, and total dollar losses. Separately, the FBI, CFPB, and FTC must each estimate annual scam complaints and dollar losses reported to that agency and establish metrics and plans for measuring anti-scam training offered through in-person events and webinars. Annual scam reports must publicly include those complaint estimates.

Who Benefits and How

Consumers, older adults targeted by fraud, scam victims, financial counselors, consumer advocates, law enforcement analysts, researchers, and policymakers benefit from a common definition, comparable complaint data, annual estimates of losses and affected consumers, and metrics for training effectiveness. The FBI, CFPB, and FTC benefit from a coordinated framework that can reduce duplicative or inconsistent scam reporting.

Who Bears the Burden and How

The FBI Director, FBI complaint analysts, CFPB staff, FTC staff, participating agencies, anti-scam training teams, and data-system administrators must coordinate definitions, collect comparable data, estimate underreported scam incidents, calculate dollar losses, publish annual information, and measure training effectiveness. Agencies may need to revise complaint forms, databases, public reports, and webinar or in-person training evaluation methods.

Key Provisions

• Requires a government-wide strategy to counter scams within one year.
• Requires a single federal definition of scam and scam types.
• Directs agencies to harmonize scam data fields such as scam type, dollar loss amount, and payment method.
• Requires a government-wide estimate within two years of annual consumers affected by scams and total dollar losses.
• Requires FBI, CFPB, and FTC complaint and dollar-loss estimates for scams reported to each agency.
• Requires metrics and plans to measure anti-scam training offered through in-person events and webinars.