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.