Moderator: Jenefer Duane May 30, 2019 1:00 pm CT >> Welcome everyone to today's conference call. At this time all lines are on listen only for today's conference until the question-and-answer portion of our call at which time you will be prompted to press star 1 on your touchtone phone. Please ensure that your line is unmuted and please record your name when prompted so that I may introduce you to ask your question. Our conference is being recorded. And if you have any objections you may disconnect at this time. I will now turn the conference over to our host Ms. Jenefer Duane. Ma'am you may proceed. Ms. Duane your line is open. >> Hi everybody. Welcome and thank you for joining us for our webinar Elder Fraud Prevention and Response Network. Before we go any further, I would like to just share this quick disclaimer with you that basically says that this webinar today is presented by a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau representative and it does not constitute legal interpretation, guidance, or advice of the Bureau. Any opinions that are expressed by me here today are mine alone. So with that said we'll move forward. Thank you. So yes, I am Jenefer and again I thank you all for being here. I am joined by two wonderful speakers that you'll hear from who are the coordinators of networks in Montana and Florida. We have (Nancy Wright) from Gainesville , Florida, to talk about her experience starting the network there. And also (Janelle Huff) from Montana who started a network there. But first I just want to go over a little bit of information about us for those of you that aren't familiar. We are the Office for Older Americans at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We were established by the Dodd Frank Act of 2010 -- the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Our work is directed towards older consumers aged 62 plus. And that's our primary audience. However, we are fully aware of our secondary (also primary) audience who we work diligently for, and these are family or financial caregivers who are persons aged 45-50 plus who are looking out for an older person in their family or community. Our goal is to protect older consumers from unfair, abusive, and deceptive practices. And this includes both in the marketplace but also by others, individuals around them, who would cause them financial harm. Just a quick background on elder financial exploitation. There are many definitions of Elder Financial Exploitation. We call it “EFE.” We use a very simple one: The illegal or improper use of an older person's funds, property, or assets. There is a large range of perpetrators from offshore scammers to those who are closest to the older person such as family members and caregivers. And studies do show that the issue what we're seeing is the tip of the iceberg, as a phenomenon. Only a small fraction of incidents are reported to authorities. And one study actually showed that only one in 44 cases of elder financial exploitation are reported to an entity, an authority, a responder that can provide services to the victim. Now, whether that's law enforcement, social services, legal services, or another. And the annual dollar losses vary widely but recent studies have shown from the 2.9 billion range to the $36 billion number. A couple of months ago we released a new study on the filings of suspicious activity reports. Suspicious activity reports are filed by financial institutions to a Bureau within the United States Treasury called the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. They are highly confidential and they are not shared with anyone. As a matter of fact, they cannot be referred to at all in the processing or the investigation of a case are in any other sort of reporting format. When they are filed the only entity that has access to them is a law enforcement, such as a law enforcement investigator or a federal or state regulator, or state and federal law enforcement agencies. But we at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Office for Older Americans, are federal regulator with access so we conducted a study on suspicious activity reports filings on elder financial exploitation over a period of time from April 2013 to December of 2017. And there were 170,000 filings within that time period. And we analyzed a limited number of the structured data fields from all those SARs that were filed during that time period. And in addition, we read the full narratives of the SARs, a representative sample of over a thousand. And we analyzed numerous elements that allowed us to make some findings about patterns, issues, and amounts involved. And this is the first ever that we've had this kind of data from the financial services industry. This slide shows that the SAR filings quadrupled from 2013 to 2017. And this is much greater than the overall growth rate for all SARs. And that means SARs that were filed on other types of suspicious activities that are not elder financial exploitation. But regardless, even with this 170,000 plus SARs, we determined that this likely accounts for only a tiny fraction of all elder financial exploitation cases out there -- perhaps only 2%. So in this slide we are looking at the amounts involved in EFE SAR filings. In 2017 the amount was about 1.7 billion. This includes monetary losses to both older people and to the filing institution itself as well as attempts where there may not have been an actual loss. Sometimes there's an intervention by the financial service organization so there is no loss, but they still report the attempt as a suspicious activity. So now we'll talk about elder fraud prevention and response networks. First we’ll start with the question: What is a network? For the purposes of our work in the Bureau at network is a sustained, largely voluntary collaboration or effort our partnership that works to detect, prevent, or respond to elder financial exploitation. The difference between networks and some other types of activities that take place around elder financial exploitation is that networks are sustained. They are not a one-time event or a meeting. They our ongoing. They have momentum and continuity. These efforts are largely voluntary in the formation of operations, an important distinction from mandated initiatives. An important distinction in that they are not mandated Multidisciplinary (MDT’s) or similar legislated task forces, et cetera. The networks that we work with are largely voluntary and community based. The magnitude and complexity of this problem requires this collaborative community response. As you all probably know, we have a growing older population of 10,000 people turning 65 every day. We have enormous losses in elder financial exploitation. There are forms of exploitation, a variety of perpetrators, a number of vulnerability factors, cognitive decline, the fact that financial exploitation often occurs alongside of neglect, physical abuse, sexual assault, and other types of elder abuse. Elder financial exploitation has also had an impact on a number of community stakeholders ranging from financial institutions to social service organizations, law enforcement, legal services, and many others in our community. And therefore a collaborative community response is called for and needed. In 2016 we released a study that supported the formation of elder fraud prevention and response network. We worked with the Library of Congress federal research division and did a scan across the country to see what networks were out there. We found quite a few. And we analyzed those networks for similarities and differences and all different sort of makeups in terms of their membership, et cetera. And we ultimately released a report called fighting elder financial exploitation through community network. And here's a little more about our methodology starting with literature review. We did interviews with experts. We did a qualitative study of 23 specific networks had the distinctive characteristics of the types of networks we saw across the country. Our research team did one-on-one interviews, site visits, and an in-depth analysis of existing lists of networks right down to a county level analysis. We found coverage that looks like this (refer to slide.) Where you see the green is where we found networks and where you see no green is where there may not be networks. However, networks are not networked together necessarily. There's no one place you can go to Google elder fraud prevention and response networks and have everybody show up in a list. These networks tend to operate autonomously. The number of them has been growing significantly in the past few years as the need has risen and the stakeholders have become more aware of how to pull them together. There are a lot of good models out there. And we have resources to help networks get started or to build on existing efforts. So there's probably quite a few more networks than are showing on this map. However, this is what we found in our study. And we did find large areas with no active network and that only a quarter of the 3,143 counties in this country have a known elder abuse network. But as I mentioned, we know this has changed since 2016 and two of our speakers on the line can attest to that because they have created new networks. And that's just two of them. Some of the findings in our study were the improved response to cases, the increased reporting of cases, the members of the network skills being enhanced by working together, by communicating with each other, learning each other's abilities, restrictions and challenges, their individual regulations and, just how to work together -- building bridges of collaboration through network affiliation. We found that these networks enhance the skills and capacity for the members to address financial exploitation either individually as an agency or responder, or together as a team. And, of course, by improving coordination and also the use of community resources to aid victims and to support each other. And we looked at networks in Cook County, Illinois and Fairfield County, Ohio, Pickaway County, Ohio, Orange County, California. We found that there were many innovations in how they are working together with other entities in their community and also sharing that information with neighboring affiliates and colleagues. What we found is the most common way that networks work together is through community education, professional training, and case review. And since, we have embarked on our elder fraud prevention and response networks convenings initiative where we facilitate convenings in communities to help seed new networks or revitalize and enhance existing networks. We have found that common priorities for networks are community education, and developing local and regional protocols, legal aid and victim assistance, and legislative activities and initiatives to build structure in a state or in a region. We also have discovered a lot of innovations. People working to protect older people from financial harm have a lot of have great ideas and unique needs. And since one size does not fit all when it comes to a network. Networks need to be built according to the local makeup of stakeholders and the local geography and demographics, and the resources that are available. And oftentimes the geography, meaning the distance between cities, towns and villages, causes advocates to innovate to collaborate. The convening initiatives that I mentioned have been held in in Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Montana, Oregon, New Hampshire, and Vermont. And we have a couple more coming up before the end of September. So we're looking forward to that. And every time we go out, we learn about more of the great work that is being done on the ground. People often ask what is a convening. “Convening” means bringing people together. So we convene elder justice advocates to discuss how they can expand and enhance collaboration to prevent and resolve cases of elder financial exploitation. And these are the goals of the convening. It's a half-day event more or less, and they're being expanded to include training in the afternoon by key stakeholders such as the Attorney General’s office and the state Elder Justice Coordinators. The Office for Older Americans facilitates a morning session that involves a working group exercise for a good portion of it. These working groups break out into segments with each other to explore issues and the needs. We diversify the working groups so that there are bankers, financial service and adult protective and law enforcement representatives at each table -- whatever makeup of stakeholder participants are in the room. We put them together in these diverse working groups with the same question to address and then they appoint a spokesperson to read out their responses. The groups interact with each other during the readout process and then rate their priorities individually by voting on the themes that are set up on poster paper around the room. Within a week or two, we create a readout at the end of the convening that we share with the group we've been working with so that they have a record of their work together and can use this to consider as they move forward. They also receive a contact list of everybody who attended and some recommendations or ideas for next steps and the results of all of their voting on priorities. My last slide before I turn it over…. We also produced a report just recently called Convening Communities to Build Elder Fraud Prevention and Response Networks. This is the link to the report. Don’t worry about writing it down. You can simply go to consumerfinance.gov consumerfinance.gov and search at the top under research and reports or just copy and paste the name of the report into the search box. You can also look for our Older Americans page and you'll find lots of resources for yourself which I will come back a little later and talk about our resources. But now it’s time to turn it over to (Nancy Wright) from Gainesville, Florida and the network there so that she can share her experience as a coordinator of a network from the very beginning. >> All right then. Here we go. Okay. So to dispel the rumor that I started this network, I didn't start it. I adopted it after it had already been born. And essentially what happened was that Jenefer, I think – at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau got in touch with a very active senior resident in Gainesville who had formerly been a head administrative law judge in New York City. She help develop the first version of this network. And along with our Department of Elder Affairs in Florida they became actively involved and they nurtured it. And then I came in when there was a grant through the Department of Elder Affairs that allowed me to as part of my role take over facilitating the network. So I kind of got it at a point where it was really pretty stable and then had the happy task of moving it forward. It had morphed. It is not just a network for looking at exploitation issues but also for abuse and neglect. And I think as a result of that it actually has strengthened all parts because it's very difficult, I think to find a case of exploitation with a senior that doesn't have some of the other elements in it. And then it also strengthens it because the more people that you have that are stakeholders and advocates for this population that know about what's going on, the better. So including things like representatives from our safety net hospital, from the long-term case ombudsman program, even home health providers and people that work with assisted living facilities and nursing homes, members of the legal aid community, senior community organization chairpersons. We just had a lot in terms of what sort of stakeholders we're then able to get ahold of. And that has - sorry. The down button is confusing me. So the way that I think we've best been able to get a lot of active people involved is there a decision that was made before I was there, at the first thing they wanted to do was to strengthen the network by having the members present on what their separate organizations could do and the kind of problems that they may be facing. And so we have meetings every other month. And after every meeting rescheduled a presentation by one of the other members. We've had presentations by people from victim services, from (APS), from elder law -- just general elder law issues. There has been this wide range of presentations. And then we open those presentations up free of charge to anybody. We encourage the members to invite other colleagues. That has been extremely popular. And we haven't - most of these presentations don't have some sort of continuing education component, which would make it even better. But it's still been what are the best things that I think we've offered and with a lot of participation. So how do you find members? One of the obvious choices is to use your existing members to invite other colleagues. And certainly that's been a big component of our group. The free trainings, that's been absolutely necessary. Another way that we've been able to get good membership in is to invite outside experts to give presentations and then we invite them to join. And there are not many that turned us down. So by joining, it's a very loosely designed network. We don't have bylaws. We're not set up to say who is a member and who isn't unless you just show up for the meeting. Early on I think we developed some sort of a memorandum I've understanding that was just intended to give the organization a chance to commit. And that, I don't know how well that worked out. I'm not sure it wouldn't in a later date be pretty important -- especially if you're looking for grant funding -- but right now it really hasn't been. We have a Google group that is used instead of a listserv. And when people want to become part of that - essentially your member if you agreed to be part of that listserv. The other thing that we do is we encourage people to kind of spread the word. That happened in kind of a really exciting way. Recently one of our organization members -- an elder law attorney named (Shannon Miller) who is kind of an exploitation expert -- is on a brilliant NPR investigative series called Brains and Losses. Look it up on NPR Marketplace. And her presentation -- it's not a big part of it there -- but she was actively involved in the whole investigation. And I think that's part of what she's talking about are things that came out of our own network. I'm not - I don’t have a lot of background in coordinating a network. I've certainly been part of organizations and on boards and things like that. So I have that experience. But this has been a different sort of thing for me. And I've had to learn that essentially, I've had to learn to let the members share their passions more than anything. Now, as a facilitator you often have to kind of like tone it down or shut it down when it just gets a little bit overboard. But gee, that's a good problem to have because our meetings are typically high energy. And I don't mean argumentative; it's people sharing what they do, sharing their problems and other people trying to help with problem solving. I mean, I'm delighted every time I come out of one of those meetings to see what we have in this area and the type of work that they're doing. So in addition to you know, talking about what they do, the biggest thing that is helpful for us is that people go around the room and they share also the issues that they see and the gaps that they see in service areas. Sometimes other people in the room are able to tell people immediately how to fill that gap. And then other times we work as a group to try to figure out how to fill the gap. The other thing that I think is really important is that not every discussion needs to be turned into an action. That's just not possible. But some things need to be turned into action or you're going to have the most dedicated people walking off the group because nobody wants to sit in on long meetings and it's just a whole lot of talk. So when you see things as a facilitator that look like they could have something pinned onto them to do, do it. And do it right then before it's too late and you forget about it. My role is also to be a gentle reminder. Everyone in this group are busy people. So I want to help them. I try not to write long emails. I try to give quick and easy reminders. I you invites so that people will automatically have things but on their calendars. And I also introduce people. I do as much as I can. It doesn't take a lot of time. But it can eliminate a lot of time for the people that you're working with. It's not about you -- it's about the community and you can't control it. You can only guide it. Sometimes even that's a little tough. So another thing that I've learned is that it's okay to have goals and agendas but you've got to be open to opportunities when they arrive without regard to an agenda. A good example of that is the last meeting that I had. There were 22 people there -- each from different organizations. And the first part of the meeting I just had them go around and introduce themselves and say a little bit about their organization and about anything that's come up that they feel like is important to share. And the meeting lasted beyond the hour and a half that we had set for it. We barely got through the introductions and it was unbelievable the amount of things that we were bringing up. And then also some of the things that ended up with pretty big actions and resolutions, including the development of a seminar in November with the attorney general's office on exploitation inviting law enforcement and state attorney's office and other members of stakeholder groups. And that happened kind of organically. Another thing that happened organically which I'll talk about briefly after this is -- is the last slide -- is the development of an injunction against exploitation of vulnerable adults that kind of originated out of our group and ended up passing the Florida legislature. It was implemented last July. It's the only one like it in the nation. And that sort of organically came out of our group. We also discovered there was an opportunity for a big grant called the abuse in later life grant. And members of the network got together and pulled together memorandums of understanding. We had kind of a short turn around on it and we ended up getting it -- this huge three-year grant that went to the aging and disability resource center that is a member of our network. We also had a lot of conversation about APS. And APS is actually represented as part of our group. And initially when I came in to facilitate there was a lot of tension and I think a lot of misunderstanding about what APS' role is and their capabilities. And even some misunderstandings on APS' part about other members of the group. And we ended up having a big workshop with panelists to kind of work through it that I think was really helpful for the health of the network. I'm missing a slide but I will tell you about a little bit more about the injunction against exploitation of vulnerable adults. If you're interested in looking it up, it's Florida statute 825.1035. It's modeled on domestic violence injunction and tied to Florida's rather expansive definitions of exploitation. This injunction allows a petitioner to come in without an attorney and seek a temporary freeze of impacted either their bank accounts or some other asset or even a credit line for 15 days without initial notice to the alleged offender. The need for this was tremendous because anytime you give notice to the person that is doing the exploitation, a lot of times the result is that your bank account to get strained real fast and to the person may beat a hasty retreat. There are also as I said there's issues with exploitation that are also tied a lot to abuse. And a lot of these people that are being exploited are in a situation that involves a lot of control over them as well. This injunction also allows people to seek no contact orders. And that's actually been used during the course that we've been watching this injunction as it rolls out that has been a big feature that has taken people out of a bad series of exploitation and abuse events and just stopped that cycle. We, through the network involvement got together and we put together a handbook on this exploitation injunction. We've been following it across the state and taking in stories. We've been doing trainings. The first training that anybody in the state ever had was at our network meeting. We had judges come and clerks and private attorneys, legal aid attorneys, advocates. And since then, we've become part of the process of giving feedback and providing more information on how we think this injunction would best work. And eventually we may go back to the legislature if we think it needs any tweaks. So that I think is probably the highlight right now of the things that we've been able to do as a network. And it just kind of dropped in our lap. Because we had people that are on the watch for good and exciting ways to fix things -- which is after all I think exactly what a network is for. So now I will hand off to (Janelle Huff) who is the coordinator of a really great Montana network. >> Thank you, (Nancy). As (Nancy) said and Jenefer as well, I am (Janelle Huff) and I am the chair of the Montana Elder Fraud and Exploitation Prevention Network. And I want to talk to you today about how we came to be and our focus, which is a little bit different than other networks that we have noticed. Like Jenefer I also have a disclaimer. I am not only a member of the Montana Elder Fraud and Exploitation Prevention Network but I am also a member of the Montana Financial Education Coalition as well as an employee of the Bank of the Rockies here in Montana. And any of the opinions stated today are mine and mine alone. I'd like to start with the stakeholders that we have. As you can see (on my slide) here, we are very varied. Representatives from each of these organizations all have at least one thing in common, and that is a desire and a passion to fight elder abuse, fraud, and exploitation. As we've all come together from these varied backgrounds, we have found that we are not that different after all. And after several meetings we found that some of our efforts had actually been overlapping. So how exactly did we come to be? First and foremost we came to be with support and encouragement. I am extremely fortunate that my office manager, my coworkers, all the way up to my bank president and the board of directors here at Bank of the Rockies not only support me, they encourage the work that I do. It is from that encouragement that my bank president shared with me the CFBP report citing elder financial exploitation through community networks that was published in 2016. Believe me when I say that I read through it with a fine-toothed comb. After reading it I reached out to my president. Then Montana Bankers Association, The American Bankers Association as well as the Montana Financial Education Coalition to see if they were aware of any such networks here in Montana. They were not. And to me personally that was just not acceptable. I was encouraged by the president of the MFEC to pitch my idea to the full board. To say that I was terrified would be an understatement. I was relatively new to the board had many of the faces I was looking at when I pitched this idea were still very new to me. Fortunately, it was extremely well received anyway it came to be answered subcommittee of the MFEC in September of 2017. So I've mentioned the MFEC several times now. We are a state coalition associated with the national jumpstart coalition. What makes us a little different is that we take the approach of financial literacy for all ages. This is the main approach our network takes with prevention of elder fraud and exploitation. We believe that financial literacy is the key to prevention, detection, and ultimately the prosecution (of elder financial exploitation) if it ever would go that far. We also wanted to draw from existing programs and utilize what we already know that works. In other words, we did not want to reinvent the wheel. That is part of the point of our network as well. Rather than overlapping what each agency does, we have worked in tandem with each other to accomplish goals and to educate communities as well as other professionals. Our approach as I have said has been education as our main focus. Education is key. Personally, I like to say financial literacy is not terminal. It does not stop when you graduated high school or college. With how rapidly the world is changing, it's imperative that everyone remain educated about fraud, scams, exploitation, et cetera. It's also important to recognize the warning signs of fraud in order to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and our neighbors. How do we accomplish this? Given some of the challenges that we face demographically, we have come up with some pretty unique solutions. One are the biggest challenges we face is the size of our state and the remoteness of the majority of our communities. Montana is the 4th largest state in the union in terms of area. That area is mostly rural with many miles in between the larger towns in the state. This can make travel difficult at times. Members of the network are not all based in the same town, which is a benefit as well as a challenge. One of the benefits of being spread out is that we all come to the table with different and unique perspectives. Some of us are in rural areas and some of us are based in larger towns. Where we are currently lacking is representation from our far eastern portion of the state. Among challenges that we face with the demographics is the fact that it is extremely difficult to come together in person monthly, especially during the winter months. Scheduling can be trying at times and we all have learned to be very tolerant of each other's abilities or inabilities to attend meetings. We are all very busy and we all have jobs and careers outside the network that we must be cognizant of. So how do we overcome those challenges? First and foremost, communication. We use technology extensively. Email between network members has become essential and phone calls and texts are used quite a bit as well. Members tend to email the entire network with information that they think is important, updates on projects being work done. Recently we had legislation that was important that we we're keeping everybody (in our network) updated on. Or (circulating) questions that they feel another member of the network would be able to help them answer. The creation of a shared calendar has also help with scheduling as well. When an event is added to be shared calendar, an email with that event and all of the information that goes along with that event is automatically generated and blasted out to the network team members. They all help with our efforts. But why cooperative efforts? In my opinion it's important to cooperate with each other to alleviate the ever-growing threat of fraud and abuse. Our approach to this has two main focuses -- professional cross training and community education. You might ask why professional cross training? It's important to understand what each agency's functions, limitations, and jurisdictions are. For example, many people hold the false assumption that adult protective services can function much the same as law enforcement. APS is an investigative agency that often works in tandem with law enforcement. For financial institution employees such as myself, it is important to know what APS agents will ask, what they can ask, and what they cannot ask when conducting an investigation. On a side note here, the banks that I work for recently just completed training specifically to Adult Protective Services that was very well received. And it's just a perfect example of the professional cross training that I'm talking about. Many people in the bank system knew what Adult Protective Services was but they did not understand their limitations and they did not understand what they asked bank employees could and could not do in conjunction with APS. It was very well received and I'm very excited that we got that going. It's also important to understand which agency is a proper agency to involve. For example, if a customer walks into the bank and says something about an insurance scam, I'm not going to call AARP. I'm going to get the office of securities insurance involved. Another reason I personally feel professional cross training is important is that it sends a message between agencies and the professionals within those agencies that cooperation is important and it is encouraged. This collaboration then flows to community education as well. When network members present to communities jointly, communities and the members within them understand that there is more than one outlet or office that they can reach out to. Community education has become a cornerstone of our network. Each network agency has their own unique take and presentation materials that they use. Some of these overlap; some of them don't. As for myself and Bank of the Rockies, we use original programs that we have developed along with existing programs. These programs include the CFPB programs and materials, FDIC programs and materials, and the American Bankers Association programs and materials such as Safe Banking for Seniors along with their Fin Ed link - because of these cooperative efforts and public awareness, in our short history -- as I said we only came to be as of September of 2017 -- we have had some great successes. In April of 2018, our network was able to host the CFPB's Office for Older Americans in Bozeman and they facilitated a convening for us. As a side note here, the weather was horrid that day and we were worried that we would not have good attendance. But to our shock and delight I had more than 30 elder justice stake holders brave the weather and the horrid roads to attend. We consider this a great success. Our network has expanded from a handful are individuals to now 15 individuals who all bring unique perspectives to our critical work and we are constantly growing. There have been numerous accounts from our members where fraud has been mitigated. One case in particular that stands out is that an elderly woman had mailed money order after falling for a scam. She reached out to someone in the Montana Bankers Association that she knew who in turn reached out to me. Through working together with the Department of Justice who then reached out to the Postal Inspector, the network was able to intercept the mail and her money was returned to her. In another example through professional cross training my office manager here was able to stop an elderly couple from mailing $8,000 in cash in response to a grandparent scam. I could go on and on and on about the mitigated fraud and the successes that our network has been experiencing. I would really like to bring up the spirit of volunteerism here. While many of us are professionals, the work we do within the network is particularly done in the spirit of volunteerism. We have limited resources, aside from our own agency resources. At the moment we are operating on volunteer time granted by our employers as well. We work cooperatively with each other the schedule events and trainings. What binds us all together is dedication. We are all dedicated to our most vulnerable members of our communities. We are all dedicated to slowing the spread of elder abuse and fraud and ultimately hopefully ending it. And we're all dedicated to getting individuals the help that they need. Dedication to working together do accomplish our goals is also key. With that I'd like to hand it back to Ms. Duane with the CFPB. >> Thank you, (Janelle). Thank you (Nancy) also. I wanted to mention one other thing about (Janelle) is that because of her work dedicating herself to elder financial exploitation prevention and response and network development, et cetera, she was honored by the American Bankers Association for her work to protect older people. So congratulations again for that, (Janelle). Okay. So I will go very quickly here, talk about a few of our resources. The first one, this is a resource for networks -- new networks and even established networks. This was created at the time that we did the study in 2016. We are working on some updated materials at this point, but this is still I think very valuable to those who are thinking about starting a network or who are looking for ideas or information from other networks. So you can see the list of what's in it. And that is available online. I'll give you the link to download it towards the end. Here are some of our initiatives. We have a report and recommendations of fighting elder financial exploitation through the community networks which I showed you earlier. There's the Report and Recommendations for Community Networks and then there's the Summary Report and Recommendations. And, here is our Recommendations and Report for Financial Institutions on Preventing and Responding to Elder Financial Exploitation. Some of you may say, well, I don't work for a financial institution. Well, if you are working with them as an APS responder or supervisor or you are in law enforcement, it might be a good idea to have a look through this because you will learn what the Bureau is saying to financial institutions about what they can do to be good corporate citizens on this issue, what we advise them of, and what recommendations we make around training staff, using fraud detection technology, et cetera. I have to say that this is not regulatory in nature. It is purely recommendations. There's no foundation in (federal) regulatory law for it but it does provide some advice on training on warning signs, fraud detection systems, talking about predictive analytics to review account holder patterns, encouraging consumers to plan for incapacity -- which we should all be doing for ourselves and encouraging others to do the same. It talks about opt-in limits on cash withdrawals and geographic transactions and looks for specific account activity, age-friendly banking type products and services, view only access for authorized third parties. So there's a lot of good information in here that is I think is very important to APS and law enforcement to build your vocabulary around how financial institutions are being encouraged by the Bureau to engage around this issue. And we have our study on Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs). This is the link to the report again. Again you don't have to worry about writing these URLs down. You can just go to our consumerfinance.gov and you will find reports on there. We are also going to be sharing this PowerPoint with everyone. Afterwards it will be emailed out along with some other resources for you. So stand by for that. You'll get the whole thing and hopefully the other slide that was missing from Nancy’s presentation. (Our apologies!) Here are a couple more slides on the Joint Memorandum. We issued a memorandum on financial institutions' and law enforcement efforts to combat elder financial exploitation. This memoranda was produced by us with FinCEN -- the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. It talks about SARs -- Suspicious Activity Reports -- which I showed you some data from the study earlier. But the message and the main thrust of this memorandum is collaboration. It's about collaboration between financial institutions and law enforcement, law enforcement and financial institutions, but also information for Adult Protective Services on suspicious activity reports -- which they are not able to access but emphasizes how collaboration is key. So this memorandum is a very important message around collaboration and investigations and also around community initiatives such as networks. We also have a document called Interagency Guidance on privacy laws and reporting financial abuse of older adults. This was released in September 2013 and directly addresses the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Federal Privacy Act. It makes strong recommendations whether you're a financial institution or not. If you haven't seen it, look it over because it will give you information on how GLBA plays in terms of reporting elder financial exploitation or sharing information about suspected elder financial exploitation. And then quickly we have Money Smart for Older Adults which is the program we developed with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation -- the FDIC. They have a whole family of money smart programs that we work closely with them to build out the Money Smart for Older Adults program. This program was just honored in April with the Gloria Cavanagh Award for Excellence in Training and Education for Older Adults from American Society on Aging. We are very grateful for this acknowledgement. And as I mentioned the curriculum as developed by FDIC and CFPB to raise awareness of preventing elder financial exploitation and to encourage advanced planning. And here is a list of the topics. (Refer to PPt. slide) You can find the whole program by going to consumerfinance.gov/moneysmart. And it has three components. If you wish to train trainers or you wish to train seniors, there is an instructor guide. The resource guide and the instructor guide are in 14-point font. And the resource guide can be ordered as a standalone by itself. You do not need to teach it as a course. You can just share these at events you go to with seniors or locations where there are seniors. They can be used for anything. And there is also a PowerPoint presentation that can be downloaded from the FDIC. We have our managing someone else's money guides which are for financial caregivers to help them know how to handle finances for a family member or a friend. Four different types of guides. One's for Agents under POA, Guardians and Conservators, Court appointed Trustees, and Social Security and Veterans Administration Representative Payees. In addition to, and including, tips on protecting assets from fraud, I should mention that many of our materials -- not all but many -- are also available in Spanish. And I do want to say that even though Managing Someone Else’s Money is designed for financial caregivers, it is also relevant the share with older people -- older account holders, older consumers -- who are considering or need to consider appointing a power of attorney or fiduciary because they should know what's involved in managing these responsibilities. They should know the duties that are required for these roles so that they can carefully consider who they appoint. And last, stay in touch with us! Visit us at consumerfinance.gov/olderamericans. If you're looking for Money Smart for Older Adults, it's consumerfinance.gov/moneysmart. We have a mailing list. We don't send out a lot. We won't barrage your inbox but we do send out blogs and product releases announcements and other items of interest every few weeks. You can order our publications in bulk by going to our web site. And you can contact us directly at olderamericans@cfpb.gov. If you have any questions, feel free to send us an email. Lastly, I want to do was share an announcement with you that's exciting. The Office of Victims of Crime (OVC) at the Department of Justice has just issued an announcement for funding. The grant is called: Building State Technology Capacity and Elder Abuse Hotlines. Take this down the OMB number -- the office of management budget number -- is 11210329. It’s on the DOJ or OVC's webpage. There are five awards of up to $440,000 each for projects focused primarily on establishing or enhancing elder abuse or other crime victim services. So if you are looking to put together some hotline resources, you may have an opportunity to apply for some funding there. Anyway, with that I do want to thank you very much. Please do you send your questions or comments into us at olderamericans@cfpb.gov. And with that I will say thank you all very much for attending and have a great afternoon. >> That does conclude today's conference call. We thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect and have a great rest of your day.