The middle of September is the height of hurricane season, and Louisiana’s vulnerability to a direct impact from a major storm has the LSU disaster fraud call center on the lookout for scammers.
Brandon Fremin, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Louisiana, serves as the executive director of the National Center for Disaster Fraud on LSU’s campus.
“It’s a very effective operation right now,” Fremin said. “The operations on the ground here at the call center are run to perfection.”
The call center was established after the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Fremin said one of the biggest duties of the call center is to detect fraudulent complaints from hurricane victims seeking federal assistance in the wake of a disaster.
“If you’ve got an offender who’s operating in maybe two or three parishes here in Louisiana, and then a couple months later he travels to Houston and he’s operating in Houston, we may never know that unless those initial calls come through the center,” Fremin said.
Fremin said the call center began receiving complaints days before Hurricane Florence made landfall last weekend, wreaking havoc across North Carolina.
If the center receives a complaint, it will review the call for de-confliction and refer it to the appropriate law enforcement agency.
Call center manager Conor Sullivan says he’s hired around 70 student call operators to manage complaints throughout the school week.
“We just make sure we’re manned here and to have enough CCO’s who are ready to take those calls of suspected fraud so making sure everybody’s properly trained,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan, who’s worked at the call center since 2012, said he’s seen a wide range of complaints over the years.
“Depending on the hurricane, it can get pretty busy where unfortunately we get back-to-back calls of suspected fraud and unfortunately there’s a lot of people committing fraud after hurricanes,” Sullivan said.
To date, the center has received more than 85,000 fraudulent complaints.
Fremin said the best way to handle the shear number of hoaxes is to have his students fully trained.
“The most important thing for the center is to have those operators here 24 hours a day, seven days a week prepared to take those calls because as you know, as soon as a disaster strikes, the fraud follows,” Fremin said.
The National Center for Disaster Fraud’s total funding is $5.6 million. To report a fraudulent complaint, contact the call center’s hotline at 866-720-5721.