Exclusive: Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Vows to Fight Scams Targeting Older Americans

So much of fraud appears to be transnational. What is the DOJ doing to combat it on an international level?

We are very much a transnational anti-crime organization. We have FBI agents and Justice Department lawyers all around the world, and very good relations with many countries. So we can extradite people. We extradite drug lords. We can certainly extradite fraudsters. Obviously, it’s easier for us to arrest somebody in the United States than in a foreign country. But we’re not going to let that stop us.

Many people are concerned with Medicare fraud; some say that 10 percent of Medicare funds go to waste or fraud. What can be done?

You should look at your explanation of benefits every time you get a statement from Medicare or from any other Medicare-adjacent program. There’s going to be an explanation of why this charge was paid, and you should read it — most people don’t read these things. If it says that you underwent a certain kind of test and you didn’t — now, that may just be a mistake, but it may be fraud. That’s the kind of thing we need people to report.

A big problem is billing for tests that people actually don’t take, or second tests that they don’t need. We’ve just prosecuted a health care entity that was requiring genetic and psychological tests, saying, “You have to do this if you want regular medical care.” There is no such requirement like that. People should be suspicious if somebody is asking them for something that sounds nonsensical like that.

What kind of effort is the DOJ making to investigate or combat it?

This is what our Health Care Fraud Unit does. And we now have the benefit of big data, so we have the ability to do statistical analyses of payments that Medicare is sending out. It helps us identify health care entities and doctors who have anomalous payment histories — where they’re doing way more of a certain kind of test than other doctors are doing or charging far more than other doctors. This helps us and our inspectors general at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services focus in on where we might find fraud. We use that to focus on investigations.

A group of criminals behind a "grandparent scam" (they called older adults and posed as a grandchild or another family member in crisis with an urgent need for money) were recently prosecuted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the first time the federal government has used RICO to fight fraud. Will this be a precedent for how these kinds of crimes will be prosecuted in the future?

These really are organized crime rings, and we are going to respond in a way we historically have responded to organized crime and to organized drug trafficking. RICO is one of the best tools we have — it takes down the whole organization. As a recent grandparent, I’m really interested [in this case].

Is there anything else in particular you’d like to say to AARP members?

I think the main message is, one, report fraud. If it’s something that’s already happened, we can prosecute, and we can support you. So that’s one side of it. And the other side is prevention. We want to prevent this from happening. So before you ever give out your personal information, pause. The fraud perpetrator is going to try to rush you through — “You’ve got to do it right now or something will happen to your grandchild …” — but it doesn’t work that way. The IRS is not calling you on the phone and telling you that if you don’t send money, if you don’t go to Target to buy a gift card, we will foreclose on your house.

I used to get telephone calls, supposedly from some sheriff, who’d say, “If you don’t provide the money right away, we will bring you to court.” And I knew enough to know that that’s not going to happen — there’s no sheriff who’s going to be calling me on the telephone. But not everybody knows that.  

So you get a lot of scam calls and texts, like everyone else?

Plenty of them. I hate to say this, but sometimes the answer is don’t answer the phone from somebody you don’t know. And if you have relatives or children who can help you with a potential scam, pause and ask them for advice before you go about doing something, particularly before you start giving over personal information or handing over your assets.

One last point. AARP is working to combat the shame and blame that fraud victims often experience. Do you have thoughts you’d like to share on that?

Yes. These people are experts, sophisticated criminals. They hit thousands of potential victims, and they just move on from one victim to the next until they find an opening. And nobody should feel shame with being scammed. They are experts at the psychology of the con, and the way to get back at that con is to report it as soon as possible. And the way to prevent it in the first place is to slow it down.