The grandparent scam hasn’t gone away. But now more young people are being duped by fraudsters, expert says.

From his office in Rosemont, Ray Olsen oversees fraud prevention and detection for Wintrust Financial Corp.’s network of 15 community banks, where much of his staff’s attention traditionally has been devoted to combating financial exploitation of older customers.

But these days, amid the proliferation of the internet, cell phones and other technology, it’s younger customers who are being scammed more often.

“It's just amazing the scams that they fall for. They’re the ones that are falling for the ‘click on the hyperlink’ in the text,” said Olsen, Wintrust’s senior vice president and director of enterprise fraud management. “You think this would be the savvy generation. They're not, at all.”

Olsen said the vast majority of fraud cases that come across his desk involve customers ages 18-30. His own son, now 31, clicked on a link he received from a scammer and later lost $500.

No matter the age, most of the fraud that Olsen sees involves so-called “account takeovers” in which people freely give away information like online usernames and passwords. Fraudsters begin asking questions via text message, and the customer thinks it's the bank when it’s really not.

“When you get a text message asking for your username and your password — we will never ask you that,” said Olsen, a former cop who has been doing banking fraud investigations for 18 years. “And I tell customers this all the time, ‘Here's a hint, I already know it. I already know your account number. I know your username. I know who you are.’”

If a bank fraud department calls a customer, it will be to ask whether the person made a particular purchase, Olsen said. He added, when a customer calls their bank, they should expect to be asked personal questions as part of the security verification process.

Officials advise setting up automated alerts for deposits and withdrawals.

“If you see a text message coming from the bank and you didn't do anything, call right away and put a stop on it,” said Carolina Velazquez, senior vice president and head of retail banking for Arlington Heights-based Village Bank & Trust, one of 15 charter banks under the Wintrust umbrella.

Olsen said the biggest scam his department deals with is business email compromise, in which a company’s employee reveals sensitive financial information to someone purporting to be a high-level executive. Wintrust’s fraud team has software that can detect anomalies in wire transfers, and sometimes they’re able to put a stop to questionable transactions.

But a lot of times the money already has gone out.

Steve Bernas, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau of Chicago & Northern Illinois, noted that a law firm recently had to pay a $1 million ransom to get its files back after an employee clicked on a bad link in a phishing attack. It also happened to a South suburban police department in recent years.

“It can bring the organization down to their knees just from one click,” said Bernas, who also advises people not to reply to texts or calls from unknown or unfamiliar phone numbers.

Another common scam involves fake checks, in which someone sends a fraudulent check in the mail or email, then asks to have money sent back or wired elsewhere. Sometimes scammers tell their marks they’ve made an overpayment for something being sold online, and they request gift cards in return.

“If somebody asks you to deposit money and send money out quickly, that’s the tip-off to the ripoff,” Bernas said. “The only thing you should do in 30 minutes is buy a pizza. Everything else you should do some research on.”

The most common bank-related scam the BBB tracked in 2023 was for advance-fee loans, where illegitimate companies promise a loan but want a “processing” fee first.

Wintrust has a special elder fraud team that scrutinizes some transactions more than others, and is on the lookout for things like increases in spending, if a new power of attorney is added to an account, or if the customer is wiring cash overseas.

Velazquez also speaks to seniors about fraud and scams at the small bank branch at the Luther Village retirement community in Arlington Heights.

But the corporation also has expanded its outreach to schools and businesses. Olsen hosted five commercial banking seminars last year at the Rosemont office.

There are a relatively small number of customers affected by scams, but those that are “get hit in a hard way,” Olsen said.