A bill introduced in the U.S. House on September 17, 2026 would direct federal authorities to develop training for employees at larger retailers to intervene when a customer aged 60 or older buys a gift card worth more than USD 500. [S01]
Representative Abe Hamadeh of Arizona introduced H.R.10495, the CATFISH Act of 2026, as an anti-romance-fraud proposal. The introduced text was referred to the Judiciary, Financial Services and Agriculture committees. The requirements described here are proposals in that text, not an enacted gift-card checkout rule. [S01][S02]
A defined intervention at the counter
The bill would direct the attorney general, through the FBI director, to develop and implement employee-training programmes. Covered retailers are businesses with at least 500 full-time-equivalent employees. For the specified purchase, the intervention comprises oral and written warnings, recommending the Justice Department’s National Elder Fraud Hotline, and reasonable help calling it if requested. [S01]
Historical FTC data helps distinguish how often a payment route appears from how much money it carries. Among the payment-method loss reports analysed for U.S. adults aged 60 and over in 2024, gift cards and reload cards accounted for 16%, compared with 26% for credit cards and 11% for bank transfers or payments. [S03]
Payment methods in older adults’ reported fraud losses, 2024
Selected shares of loss reports in FTC Figure 7; these are not shares of retail purchases.
%
Tap or hover for details. All values are also available in the data table.
Source
Self-reported Consumer Sentinel data for adults aged 60+. Reports without a specified payment method and consumer-written other methods are excluded. Percentages are rounded; selected categories do not form a complete distribution. IC3 reports are excluded.
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| Category | Share of loss reports |
|---|---|
| Credit cards | 26% |
| Gift cards and reload cards | 16% |
| Bank transfer or payment | 11% |
The FTC analysis is historical context, published on December 1, 2025, rather than evidence that the proposed intervention works. Reporting is voluntary and the data is not a representative survey. Gift cards in this dataset include stored-value and reload cards such as MoneyPak. [S03]
Under the bill, the FTC would publish a sample written advisory within 180 days after enactment. The USD 500 threshold belongs to the training intervention: it is not a general sales cap or a direction to refuse every purchase above that amount. [S01]
Financial-institution duties address a different control point
Report frequency does not rank total losses. In the same FTC analysis, older adults reported USD 124 million lost through gift cards and reload cards, versus USD 832 million through bank transfers or payments and USD 454 million through cryptocurrency. These are reported losses, not estimates of all fraud or gift-card market sales. [S03]
Aggregate fraud losses reported by older adults, 2024
Selected payment routes in the same historical FTC analysis.
USD million
Tap or hover for details. All values are also available in the data table.
Source
Rounded source totals for U.S. adults aged 60+; voluntary reports, not total prevalence. The same exclusions apply as in the report-share chart. These figures do not measure the bill’s expected impact or the amount recoverable.
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| Category | Aggregate reported loss |
|---|---|
| Gift cards and reload cards | 124 USD million |
| Bank transfer or payment | 832 USD million |
| Cryptocurrency | 454 USD million |
The proposal would require covered financial institutions to report specified warning signs involving senior customers to the Treasury. Buying large numbers of gift cards or prepaid access cards is one listed event, alongside unusual withdrawals, suspicious account changes and signs that another person is directing a transaction. Required internal controls would include monitoring, staff training, trusted-contact arrangements and referrals. [S01]
A proposed civil penalty of up to USD 50,000 per violation applies to the financial-institution subsection; it is not a checkout fine imposed on every gift-card merchant. That penalty subsection would take effect one year after enactment. Separate provisions call for Treasury standards and guidance, and a study of victim remedies. [S01]
Hamadeh’s office says constituent concerns prompted the legislation. The proposal links a warning before a gift-card purchase with observations at the financial-account level. Neither its thresholds nor the historical FTC figures establish that an expensive purchase is fraudulent, quantify prevention benefits or guarantee reimbursement. [S01][S02][S03]
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Daniel Brooks
Daniel Brooks covers payment networks, financial technology, payment security, gift card fraud and PCI DSS for Gift Card News.