Prepared remarks: Colorado Elder Justice Summit – Bridging the Gaps: Coordinating Efforts to Address Elder Abuse (Nov. 6, 2024)

Good afternoon, thank you for the warm welcome. It’s a pleasure to be with you to talk about how we can work together to promote justice for older Coloradans.

I’d like to thank CU Anschutz for providing this space for all you leaders and champions to gather and collaborate. That spirit of togetherness is vital to achieving the goal of improving care for older adults.

In thinking about taking care of older Coloradans, I find wisdom in a great teaching from former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who sadly passed away last year at the age of 96, and whose memory will forever live on as a blessing. She often said, “there are only four kinds of people in the world: those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need a caregiver.”[1] Thank you—all of you—for your work caring for older Coloradans.

I. Supporting Vulnerable Coloradans

Advancing elder justice requires attention on two fronts. First, on the law enforcement side of the equation, we hold accountable those who harm others. But there is another side of elder justice: the prevention side of the equation—that includes helping make sure older adults can live free of exploitation. We have a number of initiatives in Colorado focused on this important work, many of which are led by or involve you.

At the Department of Law, our Office of Financial Empowerment, or OFE, is committed to promoting financial security for Coloradans, including older adults. One of the best ways to protect older Coloradans from exploitation is by empowering them to safeguard their finances. Financial coaching and counseling are essential community resources for our older adults. OFE supports and champions these resources and recently held a convening at our office in Denver so coaches and counselors from across the state could share information, uplift best practices, and expand their networks to help coaches and counselors support their clients.

To help carry out its mission, OFE is working with the Colorado Older Adults Financial Justice Coalition. That coalition, organized by the Knoebel Institute for Healthy Aging at the University of Denver, is a partnership that allows us to work directly with other leaders in this space to fight financial abuse and exploitation of older people.

OFE is also leading up the impactful BankOn initiative. This effort is designed to remove barriers to banking for people who lack traditional banking resources. The “unbanked” population not only often pays higher fees for services like check cashing, but also are far more susceptible to financial abuse and exploitation.

Another key initiative, which has been in place for decades now, is our department’s partnership with AARP. This partnership began under former Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar. Ken tells the story of how, one day, he came home and found his father at his kitchen table writing checks. He asked his father, what are you sending money to? His father said he had received a letter from an organization falsely claiming they wanted to help veterans, and he wanted to help. Ken was alarmed that scams like this one had reached his father and helped him realize that this type of exploitation was happening all over the state. He launched what has now been a 20 year partnership between AARP and the Colorado Attorney General’s Office to protect older Coloradans.

Through AARP’s ElderWatch program, we reach thousands of older adults in Colorado each year. We educate them about how to protect themselves from scams and fraud and improve their own personal financial security. This work includes community events and telephone town hall meetings that I am pleased to participate in several times a year.

Those telephone town hall events have shown me how our education efforts are breaking through to older people. When I started participating in them, I would mainly hear stories of how people were scammed, but now I get a lot of callers who want to tell me, “Phil, I almost got scammed, but then I remembered some of the things I learned from you and AARP, and I knew to hang up the phone or delete the text message I got.” We have another call coming up with AARP on Tuesday, November 19 at 10:30 a.m. and I encourage everyone who can listen in to do so.

One of the messages I share at these events is: there is no shame in being exploited by a scam. Fraudsters and scammers are only getting more sophisticated, which makes identifying them much harder than it used to be. We know that scams and fraud are underreported because people don’t want to share their experience, so the more we remove the stigma and offer trusted and supportive spaces for victims to share their stories, the better chance we have of stopping scams in the first place. In the case of imposter scams, for example, older Coloradans are vulnerable to be preyed on, whether it is a case of a “grandchild scam” or a “dating scam.”

When you learn about scams, please report them to StopFraudColorado.gov, or call 1-800-222-4444. We also have a Spanish language website at NoMasFraudeColorado.gov, and we have Spanish speakers on staff who can help people file a complaint if they choose to report it over the phone.

II. Holding Wrongdoers Accountable

Despite our best efforts to prevent abuse, neglect, and exploitation of older adults, elder justice also means enforcing the law and holding accountable those who harm older people. One of the most important responsibilities I have as Colorado’s Attorney General is to enforce consumer protection laws. Our Consumer Protection Section is made up of dedicated attorneys, investigators, and others who work hard each and every day to protect consumers from scammers and fraudsters—those who seek to take advantage of other people for financial gain. Protecting older adults from scams and fraud, along with other forms of abuse, is something I take very seriously.

One part of Consumer Protection that works most closely on elder justice issues is our Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. Millions of older people rely on Medicaid for their health care, either in conjunction with Medicare or because they are not yet eligible for Medicare. Our team has recovered millions of dollars in funds that were fraudulently claimed, and returned them to the state’s Medicaid program. Consider, for example, a case we brought this year when we joined several other states in suing Regeneron Pharmaceuticals for what we allege is fraudulent drug price reporting for an eye medication they produce. Our investigation found, and our lawsuit alleges, that the company effectively created kickbacks to providers for prescribing the drug, which is used to treat macular degeneration and other ophthalmological conditions.  This deceptive scheme cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

Our Consumer Protection Section is committed to holding bad actors accountable, many of whom deliberately target older people for fraud and scams. To that end, we work hard to find and investigate schemes harming Coloradans. Our department has limited resources, but we do everything we can to track down the fraudsters and recover funds that we can return to consumers or reinvest in the communities that were harmed.

In 2021, for example, we worked with the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office to reach a $1 million settlement with two companies that targeted consumers with deceptive magazine subscription mailers. Most of the people affected by this scam were older adults who received what looked like renewal notices for magazines that consumers already subscribed to. They soon found out, however, that the money they sent never reached the publishers. Our case relied significantly on complaints submitted by Coloradans, most of whom were over the age of 60.

Consumer complaints are extremely important to the work our office does on consumer protection. In 2023, we received a record-breaking number of complaints from consumers—more than 20,000—with complaints about retail sales, professional services, automobile sales and services, home services and repair, and imposter scams topping the list. The top complaint categories reported by older adults specifically were for scams; retail, trade, sales and service; and home services and repairs. As I noted earlier imposter scams are frequently targeted at older adults and are becoming more common. Again, you can report these scams to StopFraudColorado.gov, or call 1-800-222-4444. Filing complaints and making reports with our office gives us evidence we can use to hold people who are breaking the law accountable, and it helps us identify trends and see issues that might warrant further investigation.

The cases I mentioned above involve civil actions, but we won’t hesitate to press criminal charges against those who harm older adults, just as we did this year. In March, for example, a Jefferson County District Court judge sentenced a man to eight years in state prison after he and his wife were indicted on felony charges stemming from a tree-trimming scam they ran that targeted older homeowners. His wife, who cooperated with our investigation, served one year in jail for her role in the crime. Before they were brought to justice, they defrauded at least 50 individuals, most of them older. This is an important point, because Colorado law carries enhanced penalties for crime targeting at-risk individuals, including people over age 60.

III. Other Critical Enforcement Work

Finally, let me discuss a range of other enforcement priorities. One rising concern involves protecting data and data privacy. Colorado has enacted both a data security and a data privacy law that imposes a series of obligations on companies. When companies refuse to follow those requirements, we are prepared to act. Take, for example, a case involving a skilled nursing facility in Broomfield failed to protect the personal information of hundreds of patients and caregivers. In that case, the nursing facility failed to properly handle the personal data of patients and employees. As a result, the facility was required to pay a fine, but perhaps even more importantly, we required them to tighten their cybersecurity to better protect patients and employees in the future. For another recent example, we recently reached a data breach settlement with Marriott after they failed to protect their guest reservation system. This area continues to be an issue that affects all Coloradans, and older adults’ data can be a prime target for identity theft and other cybercrime.

On another front, with the rising consolidation in our economy, consumers are increasingly facing higher prices on account of mergers or anticompetitive practices, and that can uniquely affect older Coloradans on a fixed income. A case in point is our lawsuit to stop the Kroger-Albertsons merger. Kroger owns King Soopers and City Market stores in Colorado, and Albertsons owns Safeway stores. That case is designed to prevent stores from closing, prices from rising, customer service from declining, and food choices from diminishing, among other concerns. And in addition to challenging the merger, we are also challenging two prior agreements by these two companies not to compete—one agreement to not poach each other’s employees and another agreement to not solicit each other’s pharmacy customers. The trial just wrapped up last month, and we expect a decision from the judge in that case soon.

Another antitrust case that affects older Coloradans is our effort to hold accountable price fixing among prescription drug companies that produce generic drugs. Those generic drugs are literally lifesaving medicine for many older adults, and we are still seeing the process play out for a lawsuit we filed in 2020 based on investigations showing companies engaged in illegal behavior to artificially inflate the prices of many generic drugs. Another price fixing lawsuit involves a company called RealPage, which distributes a software program that enables corporate landlords to illegally conspire to set higher prices.

To protect renters, we are also on the lookout for “junk fees.” Junk fees are hidden, or non-disclosed fees, that take advantage of consumers. One type of junk fee is when a landlord, for example, imposes a previously non-disclosed fee, such as a “move out fee.” In one recent case, involving Four Star Realty, we challenged such fees and are getting back $1 million for consumers.  In that case, we also took action because Four Star used tenants’ security deposits to pay for ordinary wear-and-tear expenses, in violation of Colorado law. Please be on the lookout for junk fees, including ones where a price for a good or service is different than advertised because of previously non-disclosed fees.

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In closing, I would like to invoke a biblical quote I often return to that was introduced to me by one of my mentors, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It reads “justice, justice you shall pursue.” Justice Ginsburg often quoted this passage, and it has guided my work in the legal field and as attorney general.  However, and wherever we do our work, this reminds us that the pursuit of justice itself must be just.

Thank you for all you do to protect, lift up, and empower older Coloradans. I appreciate the opportunity to join you and to partner with such great organizations, including local law enforcement, consumer advocates, and other champions for older Coloradans. In the future, we look forward to serving as a resource and partnering with all of you to raise awareness, pursue justice, and continue to protect older Coloradans. Thank you for your engagement in this important work.

 

[1] https://rosalynncarter.org/