Rep. Jefferson Shreve (R-Indianapolis) attended a discussion with community leaders about combating cyberscams Tuesday morning. Shreve has pursued legislation to crack down on scammers.
Grayson Joslin | Daily Reporter
By Grayson Joslin
(Greenfield) Daily Reporter
For The Republic
In this decade so far, impersonation scams have risen substantially, with scammers impersonating everyone from celebrities to local police officers. As scams increase in Hancock County, community stakeholders are coming together to brainstorm potential solutions to educate residents on scams and how to stay alert.
Tuesday, law enforcement officers, bankers, elected county officials, representatives from the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office and U.S. Rep. Jefferson Shreve met at the Hancock County’s Sheriff’s Office to discuss strategies for combating scammers, especially with the advancement and proliferation of generative artificial intelligence.
“They’re not the traditional-style frauds of just check deception or something like that,” Hancock County Sheriff’s Department detective Gary Achor said. “Oftentimes now, it’s something of a foreign nature.”
Data from the Federal Trade Commission show that Indiana lost over $110 million due to fraud and scams in 2024, an increase of 15% from 2023. These financial scams often target the elderly — Hoosier seniors lost nearly $38 million due to these scams in 2023, according to the FBI.
Achor said since the beginning of the 2020s, fraud has increased by half in the county. In 2025, Hancock County residents lost $2.1 million due to fraud, according to data from the sheriff’s office. Achor, however, believes the actual number to be in the ballpark of $5 million due to many cases of fraud not being officially reported.
Many fraud cases the sheriff’s department investigates are scams involving cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin. These scams usually involve people putting large amounts of money into a Bitcoin machine, which are usually at gas stations and convenience stores.
Achor said in these type of cases, it’s rare to get any money back once it gets into the system, since cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are linked to addresses, not people’s identities.
“I’m guessing most people don’t start their investment portfolio in a gas station,” he said. “No one’s going into a Village Pantry to invest in crypto.”
In the Indiana General Assembly session, Rep. Wendy McNamara (R-Evansville) introduced House Bill 1116, which would limit individuals from purchasing or transferring more than $1,000 in a single 24-hour period, among other provisions of the bill.
Recently, members of the Indiana Secretary of State Securities Division have started offering informational sessions across the state to notify people about common fraud techniques and how to protect themselves from scams. Marie Castetter, securities commissioner at the Secretary of State’s Office, said because of how advanced technology has become, it is easier for people to fall victim to these scams. Castetter also added that reports of potential financial exploitation in her office doubled in 2025.
“Unless they know that this is something that they need to be mindful of, that they need to be aware of, that they know this technology exists, I don’t think they can know that the person that they’re talking to isn’t actually a detective or isn’t actually a law enforcement officer,” she said.
Castetter said beyond crypto, there has also been an influx of scammers impersonating financial advisers.
Shreve serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and he said in his work for that committee, he was truly made aware of the fast-growing nature of financial scams. He said most of these scams originate from networks of scam centers in southern Asia. He added this was the first time he was able to sit and talk to people in the Sixth District about combatting the cyber-scam problem.
“As the tech behind this gets better and better, the ability to scam people young, middle-aged and older is going to become increasingly the case,” he said.
People from the different fields represented all agreed that a collaborative effort between government, law enforcement and industry — including a local task force that would help determine ways to mitigate scam risks — would be the best way to combat the rise in financial scams and protect people.
Shreve concurred with that assessment, saying government resources and law enforcement resources on the federal level need to be harmonized and used effectively to combat the so-called “scamdemic.”
Shreve, a chair of the Stop Scams Caucus, authored the Dismantle Foreign Scam Syndicates Act, H.R. 5490, which would establish a task force to shut down transnational crime organizations running scam operations. The legislation passed the Foreign Affairs Committee in December in a unanimous 48-0 vote, but has not been heard on the House floor yet.
“I can tell you that on this subject, it’s not only bipartisan, it’s nonpartisan,” Shreve said. “My scammed constituents have the same story, the same challenge, as a scammed constituent of a Democrat member from some part of Los Angeles. And because of that, I’ve had broad support from colleagues on some of the things that I have led on as we’ve stood up our focus on this.”
The (Greenfield) Daily Reporter is a sister newspaper to The Republic.
