Financial literacy and education may be the single most powerful tool in the fight against ripoff artists, loan sharks, scammers and others looking to prey on the financially desperate, a panel of government and nonprofit officials agreed on Tuesday.

At a forum hosted by Attorney General Steve Bullock to mark Consumer Protection Week, several experts said teaching people how to handle money at a young age would be much more effective than trying to help bail them out once they’re already in trouble with debt.

“By the time they’ve come to your organizations, they’re already in a lot of trouble,” Bullock told representatives of several nonprofit agencies that work with people in financial crisis.

More than a dozen groups were represented, and most have some element of financial education as part of their mission. But the numbers suggest it’s an uphill battle.

Steve Turkiewicz, president of the Montana Bankers Association, said online phishing scams — or duping consumers into providing confidential account information over the Internet — conned Americans out of $3 billion in 2007. By last year, that figure was $5.8 billion, he said.

And phishing isn’t always someone else’s problem. Alan Grover of Mountain West Bank detailed a phishing scam last year that targeted the bank and its customers, with more than 40 phony Web sites set up to collect unwitting acount holders’ information.

The attack was launched on a Friday night, Grover said, and targeted Montanans with text messages, cell phone calls and e-mails urging them to provide account information and other priveleged data.

Grover said the attack lasted two weeks and cost the bank nearly $50,000, between reimbursing customers who were fooled and hiring authorities to shut down the scam.

Tim Robbins of Great Falls-based Rural Dynamics, a nonprofit that works to help citizens toward economic independence, said that in addition to financial education, agencies need to make the public more aware that certain crimes can be reported. And that reporting process should be standardized and made simpler.

“We have several agencies here, each with a different complaint process for similar consumer concerns,” he said.

Rural Dynamics director Tom Jacobson suggested a broad-based media campaign like those against meth use, drunk driving and teen smoking, aimed at changing behavior across society.

“What I would recommend is changing the attitude of the socially normative behavior of our consumers,” he said. “There is no silver bullet, it’s got to be a multifaceted approach that changes consumers’ perceptions.”

Other experts discussed trying to place legal limits on the amount of interest that can be charged by payday or title lenders, regulating the debt consolidation industry and teaching high school students how to handle debt, from student loans to credit cards.

Reporter John Harrington: 447-4080 or john.harrington@helenair.com.