SCAMS: Harder Announces Sweeping Anti-Scam Legislation to Crack Down on Organized Cybercrime
Californians lost $2.5 billion to online scams in 2024
Bipartisan bill creates government-wide task force led by FBI to crack down on organized cybercrime
WASHINGTON – Today, Rep. Josh Harder (CA-09) introduced sweeping, bipartisan legislation to comprehensively crack down on organized cybercrime. Led with Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01), the Stop Schemes, Cyber-fraud, Abuse, Manipulation, and Swindles (SCAMS) Act creates a first-ever, government-wide task force led by the FBI to prevent and respond to a wide range of scams.
Modern scams are sophisticated crimes that are only getting worse:
- Across the country, Americans reported more than $16 billion stolen through scams in 2024, and as much as $2.5 billion in California from a wide range of scams.
- These can take the form of robocalls, fake tax collections, phony job ads, card-declined alerts, and cryptocurrency schemes targeting seniors, veterans, and working families.
- Severe scams like identity theft are growing rapidly and increasingly targeting previous victims multiple times.
“Scams are more than just an annoying robocall – this is an organized attack on working families that robs them of their hard-earned savings and financial stability,” said Rep. Harder. “This bill is a crackdown on these criminals that brings every level of government together under one mission to end criminal scams. We’re going to see more arrests, fewer robocalls, and less financial theft, and I look forward to working across the aisle to get this bill signed into law.”
How the Stop SCAMS Act cracks down on organized cybercrime:
- New Task Force – Directs the FBI to organize a coordinated, government-wide task force to prevent and respond to modern scams.
- Better Data – Aligns inter-agency actions, definitions, and data to improve the efficiency of scam-fighting efforts.
- Prevention – Measures the effectiveness of scam prevention efforts and improves public education campaigns.
“The first duty of our government is to protect the American public—that includes protecting them from fraud that preys on trust and uncertainty,” said Rep. Fitzpatrick. “Our Stop SCAMS Act brings long-overdue oversight to a fractured system by aligning the FBI, FTC, and CFPB behind one strategy, one set of definitions, and real accountability. Having led complex, multi-agency investigations as a National Supervisor for the FBI's Public Corruption Unit, I know that fragmented responses invite exploitation, and disciplined coordination is how you protect the public before the damage is done.”
“AARP, which advocates on behalf of 125 million Americans aged 50 and older and their families, is pleased to endorse the bipartisan Stop SCAMS (Schemes, Cyber-fraud, Abuse, Manipulation, and Swindles) Act,” said Jennifer Jones, Vice President, AARP Government Affairs. “This critical legislation is an important step in addressing the growing epidemic of scams that target seniors, veterans, and working families across the country.”
Harder has repeatedly pushed Washington to take organized scams more seriously – in 2024, he sounded the alarm on skyrocketing fraud rates and led a bipartisan letter to congressional leadership calling for new anti-fraud efforts. Harder is also pushing to designate May 9th as National Scam Survivor Day.
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