Q&A
City efforts to disrupt scammers impersonating public officials
1:03:32
·
131 sec
Council Member Crystal Hudson inquires about city efforts to disrupt scammers who impersonate public officials or representatives. Commissioner Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez and NYPD representatives discuss the challenges and approaches to this issue.
- Commissioner Cortés-Vázquez notes the difficulty in preventing impersonation scams entirely.
- The focus is on identifying scams and implementing remedies after the fact.
- Education efforts emphasize that certain agencies (e.g., Social Security) would never contact individuals in certain ways.
- There's a discussion about the complexity of political donation calls, which can be legitimate but also mimicked by scammers.
- NYPD representatives mention that their crime prevention officers inform the public that no city official would request donations over the phone.
- The overarching message in all education efforts is to never give out personal information, regardless of who is asking.
Crystal Hudson
1:03:32
Great.
1:03:32
Thank you.
1:03:33
What efforts does the city engage in to disrupt scammers who impersonate or trick older adults into thinking they're public officials or federal state city representatives.
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
1:03:44
I don't know that anyone has the ability to stop a scam.
1:03:48
What you could do is identify the scam and then put remedies in place.
1:03:54
But anyone can produce, I remember, in my neighborhood, there was these guys walking around with Con Edison hats.
1:04:00
You know?
1:04:01
So you can't you can't stop someone from the crime of perpetrating Yeah.
1:04:09
A false identity.
Crystal Hudson
1:04:10
I guess just a follow-up then would be, you know, for those of us who are elected officials and just coming from a a government perspective, you know, I've seen some of these really great and informative flyers.
1:04:22
I wonder if there's a way to also inform people that they will never be contacted by their elected officials or by any Yeah.
1:04:30
You know, political candidate or representative asking them specifically for money or or something like that?
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
1:04:37
So that one is tricky because lately, that's been the political donation of
Crystal Hudson
1:04:42
Right.
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
1:04:43
So that one is tricky.
1:04:44
What we do say in those areas that we can say with total certainty that your social social security would never contact you in this manner.
1:04:55
Mhmm.
1:04:55
Certain agencies that we know that people use that are vulnerable that older adults are vulnerable to and have common relationships with.
1:05:04
We there, we do put out that information.
1:05:07
But for someone, there's no way that we could prevent someone from, you know, presenting themselves as as an official.
1:05:17
What we do is an officer, please tell me what you may do in that area.
1:05:22
But we know the certain agencies and the things that we do are aware of.
1:05:26
We tell them Social Security doesn't contact you this way.
1:05:30
A bank would not contact attack you in this matter and things of that nature.
Crystal Hudson
1:05:34
Okay.
1:05:35
Maybe you can just add a government official elected representative, something like that, also would not contact you.
1:05:41
Right.
1:05:41
Right.
1:05:42
Did you wanna add something?
Spiro Papavlasopoulos
1:05:43
Just to add to that.
