Passage of a bill aimed at squelching telemarketing fraud seems likely, which is good news for credit card issuers who lose millions of dollars each year to such scams.
The Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act, sponsored by Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., and Rep, Al Swift, D-Wash., was approved by the Senate last week and by the House the previous week.
The bill, which could be signed into law as early as October, would require that the Federal Trade Commission establish rules to prohibit deceptive, fraudulent, and abusive telemarketing practices.
It would allow local prosecutors to cross state lines to track down scam artists, and would permit victims who have lost more than $50,000 to sue the telemarketer.
The National Fraud Information Center, which launched a national consumer education campaign in May with MasterCard International Inc., estimates consumers lose between $10 billion and $40 billion a year to fraudulent telemarketers. Credit cards are frequently used in such transactions.
There are no precise statistics on how much money consumers lose, because many never report their losses.
The jointly sponsored campaign called "Know the Difference. Hang up on Fraud," includes televised public service announcements featuring "L.A. Law" star Corbin Bernsen, who offers a toll-free number for people to report such crimes.
Since the campaign began, the National Fraud Information Center Said it has received more than 8,200 calls in response to the announcements and filed more than 900 complaints and incident reports with the FTC.
