Readout of White House Meeting on Student Debt Relief Scam Prevention

This afternoon, the White House convened top Administration officials to discuss the Biden-Harris Administration’s ongoing efforts to protect borrowers from student debt relief scams.  During this meeting, the participants shared information on current and future efforts to combat student loan scams, and discussed how the Administration can strengthen its collective efforts going forward.

During the meeting, Cabinet agencies and the White House committed to amplifying the Department of Education’s (ED) recently-released “Do’s and Don’ts” across communication channels to help borrowers protect themselves against scammers and make sure borrowers know to report scams to ReportFraud.ftc.gov. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona also discussed new actions ED will be taking this month to provide complaint reports regularly to states to facilitate quick enforcement actions, such as cease and desist letters from state attorneys general. Chair of the Federal Communications Commission Jessica Rosenworcel shared the FCC’s plans to identify originators of student loan scam calls to order phone companies to block those calls. Earlier this summer, FCC issued a similar order to block auto warranty scam calls, reducing the level of these calls by 80%, according to an analysis by YouMail, a robocall blocking and analysis company.   

In addition to the commitments from ED and FCC, leaders from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission discussed their ongoing and expanded work to hold scammers who take advantage of borrowers accountable. This work includes sharing information in real time with thousands of federal, state, and local law enforcement entities and obtaining multimillion dollar judgments against scammers over the last 18 months.

Earlier this week, the White House announced a series of steps the Administration is taking to ramp up efforts to protect borrowers from scams.

Participants in today’s meeting included:

• Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona
• Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Rohit Chopra
• Chair of the Federal Trade Commission Lina Khan
• Chair of the Federal Communications Commission Jessica Rosenworcel
• Assistant to the President and Director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese
• Assistant to the President and White House Counsel Stuart Delery
• Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to the President Anita Dunn
• Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council Susan Rice
• Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director for Management Jason Miller
• Undersecretary of Education James Kvaal
• Chief Operating Officer of Federal Student Aid Richard Cordray

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