SC Residents Aren’t Safer Despite More Regulations | comment

As a former attorney general for the state of South Carolina, I am concerned that our elected representatives continue to misidentify how best to address this state’s fraud epidemic. As a result, the financial sector is becoming increasingly regulated, but our residents are not becoming safer.

All South Carolina residents are all too familiar with this unfortunate reality.

From 2022 to 2023, the Palmetto State experienced a more than 34% increase in fraud cases, the fourth largest increase in fraud losses in the United States.

According to the SC Department of Consumer Affairs, “the sum of actual consumer losses as a result of identity theft was $1,026,915,” nearly double what was reported in 2022.

To fix this problem, our representatives must stop the fraud. Instead, they try to over-regulate the payment networks used by fraudsters.

For example, some members of Congress are now going after peer-to-peer payment networks used by millions of American consumers and small businesses, such as PayPal, Venmo and Zelle.

Taking two-for-four payment platforms on peer-to-peer makes no sense, since fraud is almost non-existent in all of them.

It’s not like South Carolina’s notorious scam gangs just use these technologies to do their business. They use every tool available, including fake checks, wire fraud, and a variety of other tactics.

Unduly regulating these platforms to the point where they might even go out of business will not stop or even reduce the scam. It will only change the tools scammers use.

Our elected representatives should work to quickly identify the real fraudsters and penalize them more forcefully and vigorously. That means providing more funding and more enforcement tools to law enforcement and consumer protection groups in South Carolina.

it will work In fact, it examines the Department of Consumer Affairs. In September, he presented some of the great work he’s done to help people detect, avoid and recover from scams to members of the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.