This column is adapted from an episode of the “Dollars & Sense” podcast and has been lightly edited for clarity. Subscribe to “Dollars & Sense” on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.
This week, my guest was Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire), who has spearheaded a congressional investigation of dating app scams.
In September 2025, Hassan, the Joint Economic Committee’s top Democrat, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), who chairs a Senate subcommittee on consumer protection and data privacy, launched a bipartisan investigation into Match Group, owner of Tinder, Hinge and Plenty of Fish). The findings were released last month.
With romance and confidence schemes driving nearly $1 billion in losses in 2025, according to the FBI, victims face a frustrating bureaucracy of federal and local complaint portals. This lack of centralized coordination leaves victims navigating redundant systems just to report that they’ve been scammed.
In June, Hassan and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida) introduced legislation to create the website ReportScams.gov, which would simplify reporting for victims.
Here’s a transcript of my conversation with Hassan about how she and other lawmakers are seeking to tackle this problem.
So you recently co-sponsored a bill. It’s called the ReportScams.gov Act. What would that bill do?
If you have been scammed, you have to navigate a whole maze of federal agencies in figuring out who to report to. And then it’s very difficult to stay in touch with whoever is investigating your claim. So what ReportScams.gov would do would establish a single federal government portal for reporting scams. The victim would get a case number. They would be told which agency has jurisdiction and is investigating their case. They would have a contact so that they could stay up-to-date on what’s happening in their investigation.
It would give the federal agencies a single place where all the scams can be reported and analyzed for patterns, and that will make it easier for law enforcement to disrupt these scams, recover critical funds for victims and shut the scams down.
And so we’ve seen this. Some other countries have tried this approach, and it has allowed them to be much more nimble in their approach to shutting the scams down.
I really love this because I deal with people one-on-one, as you have, and I have to say, “Go to this website” and “Go to this other website. Submit a police report.” If you’re victimized, that’s a lot to have to do. And I think it’s just a brilliant idea. I really do hope it moves forward. But what chance do you think the bill has of passing before the end of the year, and are you getting a lot of support from your colleagues?
We are getting growing support from our colleagues because our constituents in every corner of the country, regardless of whether they are red or blue or politically engaged at all, are getting scammed and losing their life savings. And so I’m very excited and anticipate that we will get growing support from both sides of the aisle.
The timing on when it might get passed is uncertain, because there’s a lot of work to do at the end of this Congress, but we’ll keep working at it, Senator Scott and I, until we can get it over the finish line, because law enforcement is clamoring for this kind of tool as well.
They are seeing the impact on victims. And obviously, as we’ve talked about, our constituents are feeling it as well. In the meantime, you know, there are steps people can take to be alert for scams, and we should be focused on that too.
As fraud schemes continue to evolve and AI makes it easier to con people, the senator shared some general red flags to help minimize your chances of getting scammed. …
So, generally speaking, if you are contacted by an email or a text with a link in it, don’t click on it. If you want to see if it’s a real contact, enter the website yourself rather than click on a link that’s been sent to you.
If you are being urged to act really quickly and you get the sense that the person on the other end of the email or text or phone call is pushing you emotionally to act really quickly — that’s really a sign to step back. Pick up the phone and call somebody else, a family or friend, and say this is happening. Just slow yourself down.
Lastly, if you are being urged to convert cash into crypto as a way of making a payment for somebody on the other end of this communication — that’s often a real signal that this is a scam, because crypto is very hard to trace.
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