Attorney General Tim Griffin preps for consumer fraud conference

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin is preparing for an upcoming two-day summit in Little Rock that will focus on consumer fraud and protection. In light of a growing number of scams being perpetrated on Arkansans, Griffin wants to raise awareness of the fraud preying on them and ways to prevent it.

He is also involved in a number of lawsuits against various social media companies. In his interview with Talk Business & Politics Editor-in-Chief Roby Brock, Griffin updates on those cases and discusses changes he hopes to bring forward in the next legislative session surrounding foreign-owned land in Arkansas.

Roby Brock: On Sept. 28 and 29, you are hosting a conference in Little Rock centered on consumer fraud and protection. What is the catalyst for all of this? 

Attorney General Tim Griffin: We do a big two-day summit every year. The first year, we did human trafficking. The second year, we did cybersecurity. Last year, we did social media, and this year is consumer fraud. Some of the stuff that’s going on with the scams that people get where you hadn’t paid your toll even though you hadn’t been on a toll road, right? There’s a lot of that. We’re also seeing benefit fraud — Medicare, Medicaid fraud, Medicaid fraud in particular. 

So this will be a two-day, massive summit down at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock. We normally have about 1,500 people register for these. We will have experts from all over the country. We’re going to talk about robocalls, which drive us crazy. We’ll talk about the challenges with tracking those people down and some of the successes we’ve had and why we still got challenges there. 

The tech scams are really ubiquitous. You either didn’t pay your toll, you didn’t make jury duty. You’ve got a warrant out for your arrest. You haven’t paid the DMV. There’s all kinds of fraud going on with this. 

Brock: I had a family member get the jury duty scam call. They tried to get them to come to a location and pay money. It was a very scary situation. 

Griffin: In any of those instances, I’ll just say to the public here today, they’re not going to contact you via text. They’re not going to ask for a payment via text. If it says DMV, call the actual DMV and say, “Hey, did you text me asking for money?” If it says sheriff, call the actual sheriff. But those are scams. And a lot of people, particularly elderly people — I’ve got an 85-year-old mother who answers every phone call no matter who calls, whether she knows them or not. That can be problematic because they prey on people like that who want to chit-chat. It’s an ongoing problem and it’s going to be a great summit. 

Brock: Give me an update on some of the social media cases that you’ve been involved with. You’ve sued several companies in recent years. 

Griffin: We have. They’re all under the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. This is an act that every state has a version of. And this is the AG’s consumer protection tool. Early on, I was the first to sue Meta for misleading the public — parents in particular — about the addictive nature of their algorithms as it relates to children, to minors. 

I also have an active suit against TikTok for our data going to China and also the deceptive algorithm, the idea that you’re protected if your kid’s on it and follows the rules. Not true. I have sued, as you know, recently, Snapchat and Roblox. And the general theme of all of these is that these companies targeted young people with the most addictive product that they could all while denying to parents that it was addictive. We have evidence that they had ways of making it safer and because they thought it would hurt their bottom line, they did not do that. 

Brock: Whatever happens in lower court is going to get appealed and probably eventually work its way all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court I would think because of the deep pockets of some of the companies that you’re suing. Is there any chance that you work towards a settlement with these folks?

Griffin: There have been some settlements already. The settlements will certainly involve money because the Deceptive Trade Practice Act is about penalizing the companies so they never want to do it again. But it’s also about what we call injunctive relief, which means a list of things that these companies must do as part of the settlement. If they don’t follow through, we’ll sue them again. Right now, we don’t have plans to settle with any of them. We’re heading to trial. We know we’ve got a great case. And I will tell you, they have challenged us and tried to get these suits dismissed at every turn. And we have won every single motion to dismiss. 

Temu, which is not a social media site, but it is a China-based site that grabs people’s data. People think it’s like an Amazon selling site, but it’s mostly a data collection site. We’ve got a suit against them. We just won motions this week on that one. We’re headed down the road to trial on that one. So we’re batting 1,000 on these and we’re going to keep leaning in. A lot of states realize this is a problem. Blue states and red states, this is an area we agree on because it’s our kids. 

Brock: You mentioned China. I want to pivot. You were in the paper with some of your emails a couple of weeks ago on China. Arkansas has a law that prohibits foreign land ownership. Do you think that law needs to be changed? Does it need to be revised in a way to not allow someone to be inaccurately accused like they were with what came out in the paper?

Griffin: Look, I think that if I were to change that law or any other law, I’ve got some ways to make it tougher. I think the law as it is, it’s not too tough. I mean, we’re the investigative body. We look at it. We tell you what the truth is and we’ve done that. We’ll continue to do that. 

Brock: Should it wait until the investigation is done before it becomes public? This was a problem with one of the investigations?

Griffin: I think the process as it currently exists works. It has worked and it does work. Look, you’re not perfect. I’m not perfect. But the process we’ve got works. And I think that what we’ve got to stay focused on waking up to China.

For those of us in the national security space, and I’ve been in for 30 years, we’ve known for a long, long time. There were congressional reports in the late ‘90s that say, “Hey, China’s not your friend. They are strategically targeting us.” I’ve talked about this a little bit before. Gray zone warfare, we’ve talked about it. The fentanyl that they send over, that’s coming from China. The cyberattacks are coming from China. The acquisition of farmland is China. The theft of rice technology so they can grow more back home is China. The illicit sexual massage parlors we’ve busted here. Every single one is tied to mainland China. Every single one Chinese currency in rural Arkansas, wire transfers to mainland China from Walmart. These are all categories of what the Chinese are doing short of traditional warfare.

Brock: Will you bring proposals in the next legislative session? 

Griffin: Yes, and you know what? It’s not going to be weakening it. I think we ought to be more aggressive. The Chinese are a problem. The Chinese are not your friend. We should have never given them most favored nation status in the 1990s. Both the Democrats and the Republicans agreed on that. That was a mistake. They are our strategic adversary and enemy and they are out. People need to just know that’s a problem.