Two years ago, a Wapello County farmer lost his entire life savings, over $1 million, to online scammers operating out of Southeast Asia. The scheme then turned violent when that same group hired mercenaries from New York to go to his farm to try and extract more.
Sheriff Don Phillips and his deputies, working with federal agents, arrested the men who showed up that day. But the scammers who ran the scheme are overseas, and they still have not answered for a single dollar they stole.
The problem: Increasingly sophisticated fraud schemes stole $96 million from Iowans last year, a nearly 85% increase from 2024, and that’s only what was reported.Â
The solution: More than two years ago, an Iowa sheriff’s deputy brought this problem to one of my listening sessions in West Des Moines. He told me local investigators needed modern tools to trace the stolen funds and hold fraudsters accountable.Â
That Iowa idea became the GUARD Act, and this week, it passed the House 414-7 to put the same tools federal investigators use in the hands of local law enforcement — so the officer who writes the report can follow the money.
Delivering the air support: Yesterday, the House Financial Services Committee advanced my TRAPS Act, bipartisan legislation to create a task force that brings law enforcement, banks, regulators, and technology experts to the same table to stop payment scams before they start.
Why it matters: For Iowa retirees living on a fixed income, losing your savings can mean losing your house and your independence. Tracing stolen funds at the local level and coordinating to stop scams at the federal level is how we stop these schemes before they reach an Iowan’s account and recover the money when they don’t.
Bottom Line: This fight started with an Iowa deputy telling me exactly what his investigators were up against. This week, the House and the Financial Services Committee agreed with him, and I won’t stop fighting until we send both of these bills to the President’s desk.