Minnesota Attorney General visits Worthington

• Swanson

Brian Korthals/Daily Globe Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson (right) talks with Margaret Erickson during a DFL fundraiser Saturday afternoon at Hy-Vee in Worthington.

Talk about it

WORTHINGTON — Lori Swanson, Minnesota’s Attorney General since 2007 and the first female to fill the position, visited Worthington Saturday afternoon, hearing concerns, questions and complaints from a group of about 25 DFL faithful and other interested parties.

“No matter who you are or what your walk of life, you’ve been affected by the mortgage crisis and the yo-yo stock market,” Swanson said, a nationally recognized champion for consumer protections, during a two-hour gathering at the Hy-Vee Club Room. “We need to learn from the lessons of history, or we’ll repeat the same mistakes.”

In a discussion that focused mainly on the efforts Swanson and her staff in St. Paul make daily on behalf of Minnesotans, Swanson outlined how she has stood up for the middle class and “the little guy” even as contemporary forces seem more inclined to conspire against individuals.

“I’ve seen a lot of people get taken advantage of by big corporations — people who, because of this economy, have already been through a lot,” Swanson said.

For instance, she explained that her office has recently filed a suit against Discover Card for its sometimes less-than-forthright sales tactics that attempt to get cardholders to pay more for services of questionable value to them — security and wallet protection plans, to name two.

“They try to get people to sign up without thinking about whether they really need the service or not,” Swanson said.

The variety of scams that prey upon unsuspecting citizens and their hard-earned dollars is wide-ranging and ever changing, she noted.

“There are ‘crammers’ who can use your cell phone bills to purchase merchandise and products in your name, and consumers lose dollars,” Swanson said. “There’s a fellow in a jail cell in Florida who put over $20 million in charges on people’s cell phones from his cell — because maybe an extra $10-15 per month on one person’s bill is not easily detectable.”

At that moment, attendee Steve Jeppesen raised his hand to offer Swanson a napkin on which he had written the phone number of a company that had called his cell phone offering a free boarding pass to the Bahamas in exchange for personal information.

Swanson accepted the napkin, thanking Jeppesen and reiterating her willingness to hear from Minnesotans about such scams.

“Hearing from the people helps me know how to do my job,” Swanson said, whose staff handles 7,500 cases annually for a variety of clients — other state agencies, the state government, counties needing assistance with criminal prosecution and more.

“People should feel free to call or write the Attorney General’s Office, because that is how we can identify patterns of complaints that allow us to take action,” said Swanson, whose office has also recently joined forces with those of several other states against for-profit colleges whose students — often falsely led to believe their payments and “degree certificates” will provide big salary pay-offs — are responsible for a full 50 percent of all federal student loan defaults, although they comprise only 10 percent of such loans overall.

“Any dime squandered is lost, and $32 billion a year in federal funds is far too much to waste, especially in these times,” Swanson said.

Swanson is also keenly aware of and unhappy about the fact that Minnesota has a much higher rate of unemployed veterans than other states.

“To think that our veterans, with whom we essentially made a compact — ’fight for us and we’ll take care of you when you come home’ — are being taken advantage of in some way is really unconscionable,” she said.

Swanson also encouraged attendees to obtain copies of their credit reports, which are available at no cost.

“One-third of all credit reports have incorrect or bad information on them, which can result in higher car or home insurance costs for consumers if a credit score is lower than it should be,” Swanson said. “You can fix the errors and save yourself money.”

Swanson, dressed in a simple navy suit, also warned against scams involving caller ID “spoofing” and a currently popular scam revolving around cashier’s checks.

“Say you advertise a boat for sale on an Internet site for $6,000, and a seemingly legitimate buyer sends you a cashier’s check for $8,000,” Swanson said. “You call the buyer about the discrepancy and they tell you to go ahead and cash the check and send them the $2,000 difference — then the cashier’s check bounces two weeks later and you’ve lost $2,000.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure when it comes to scams.”

Swanson first joined the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office in 1999 as a Deputy Attorney General; from 2003-06 she was the office’s Solicitor General, and she was re-elected to her second term as Attorney General in 2010.

“It’s an honor to get to go to bat for average people, and to try to level the playing field for those who don’t have their own lobbyists,” said Swanson, who is married and lives in Eagan with her husband and their 14-year-old Golden Retriever, Bailey. “It’s an honor to be your attorney general.”

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