The school year arrives in three costumes, and all three are aimed at you.
The call comes on a school night. It is your grandkid’s voice - or close enough to it - and they are in trouble. Tuition is due. The laptop died. The books cost twice what anyone expected. They need money, and they need it now, and please do not call Mom and Dad.
The email says congratulations. You have been selected for a scholarship. You do not remember applying, but maybe the school did it for you, or maybe it is just your lucky year. To release the award, you only need to pay a small processing fee, or confirm your bank details so they can deposit it.
The website says it will handle the FAFSA for you. The FAFSA is the form every student needs for financial aid, and filling it out is confusing, and this site makes it easy. For a fee. They will “process” the application, “verify” the details, and make sure nothing is missed.
Three disguises. One theme. And every year, in the weeks when school starts, they find the people who love a student enough to pay.
Here is how the school-year scams work, what the federal government just said about them, and the one question that stops all three.
What Changed This Year: The Federal Alert
In July 2026, the federal agency that tracks financial crime - FinCEN - issued an alert about fraud rings targeting federal student aid. If you have never heard of FinCEN, that is fine. What matters is what the alert describes.
The first scheme is called “ghost students.” Fraud rings obtain stolen personal information - sometimes yours, sometimes your grandkid’s, sometimes a child who has never applied for anything - and use it to enroll fake students at colleges. The fake student collects financial aid. The aid comes in the form of refund checks. The refund goes to the fraudsters, and the real person whose information was used finds out later, when they are suddenly ineligible for aid, or when a loan they never took shows up in their name.
The second scheme is “straw students.” These are real people who, for a fee, hand over their own information so fraudsters can enroll them, collect the aid, and skim the refunds.
Here is the part that matters for you: the federal government is actively fighting this family of fraud. The alert tells banks to watch for it, and it tells the public what the schemes look like. That is the good news. But it also means the school year is a battlefield - and the people who get hit are not always the students. They are the grandparents who get a phone call and reach for their wallet.
The Illinois attorney general put out a similar warning in August 2026, specifically about back-to-school and financial-aid scams. The pattern is so common that state attorneys general schedule their warnings for this exact week of the year.
Disguise One: The Aid Processor
The FAFSA is free. Not free-with-a-catch, not free-if-you-use-the-right-site. Free. The official form lives at StudentAid.gov, and filling it out costs nothing.
So when someone offers to “process” your grandkid’s FAFSA for a fee, they are selling something the government gives away. What are they actually after?
Sometimes the fee itself is the scam - a hundred dollars here, fifty there, from a thousand worried grandparents. Sometimes they want the student’s Social Security number and the FSA ID, the login that signs the FAFSA. With those two things, someone can apply for aid in the student’s name, or worse, take out loans in the student’s name, and the refund lands in the fraudster’s account. That is the ghost-student scheme from the federal alert, happening at the kitchen table instead of at a college.
The rule is simple: nobody but the student and their parent needs the FSA ID. Not a “counselor,” not a “processor,” not a “financial aid specialist” who called out of nowhere. The real FAFSA is free, and never asks for a fee to be filed.
Disguise Two: The Fake Scholarship
This one uses flattery instead of fear, and it is the most effective disguise in the family. The series has met it before - in the postcard that promises extra VA benefits, the trick was “you are owed money.” The fake scholarship runs the same play: you have been chosen, you are special, the money is waiting, just pay the fee or confirm the details to release it.
Think about what is actually being sold. A real scholarship is a gift. The people giving it away do not charge the winner a fee to receive it. If the award is supposed to come TO you, nobody needs money FROM you first. A “processing fee” on a scholarship is like a “delivery fee” on a gift that was never ordered.
And the unsolicited message is the tell. The Illinois attorney general’s warning says it plainly: be wary of messages telling you that you won a scholarship you do not remember applying for. Real scholarships come from schools, employers, and organizations you actually engaged with. They do not cold-call your grandparent with good news you never entered.
Disguise Three: The Tuition Emergency
The call on the school night. The voice that sounds like your grandkid, or the text that reads like them - short, panicked, urgent. Tuition, books, a laptop, a security deposit. The money needs to move now, by wire or by gift card, and above all, do not call the parents, because they will be angry.
This is the family-emergency disguise, and the series has met its cousins before. The fix is the same one every time: hang up, and call back on the number you already have for that person. Not the number that called you. The one saved in your phone. A real grandkid in real trouble will still be in trouble in ten minutes, and will be relieved you checked. A scam cannot survive the check, because the person on the other end was never your grandkid.
Then call the parent. That is not overstepping - that is the whole point. The family check-in is what this disguise is designed to bypass, and it is the one move the scammer cannot counter.
The One Question
Every disguise in this article breaks against the same wall, and it is the wall the whole series has been building - the one-question test from the first article in the Scam Awareness series:
The FAFSA is free. Scholarships are given, not sold. Real student aid programs send you money - they do not collect on the spot, and they do not need your bank details to “verify” anything. That single question, asked out loud before any money moves, stops all three disguises cold.
Why It Works
School is the one time of year when generosity is expected. Grandparents are primed to help - it is baked into the season, the same way the holidays are. Scammers know this. They also know the FAFSA is free, which is why they sell what is free, impersonate what is official, and rush what should be slow.
And they know the two oldest tools in the book: flattery for the ones who want to be chosen, and fear for the ones who want to protect. The fake scholarship flatters. The tuition emergency frightens. Both skip the family check-in, and both ask for the payment method that cannot be undone - wire, gift card, or payment app.
That is why the family check-in matters more than any single fact in this article. One conversation - “Hey, are you actually in trouble?” - breaks the scheme’s biggest advantage.
What Actually Works
- The family check-in, before any money moves. If an ask comes out of nowhere, one call to the parent settles it. Real emergencies survive a ten-minute check. Scams do not.
- The .gov check. Real student aid lives at StudentAid.gov. Real scholarship money comes from places you have actually heard of. A link in an email is not an address - type it yourself.
- Free is the tell. The FAFSA is free. Applying for aid is free. The Department of Education does not charge to help you. The FTC recently banned a $45.9 million scheme that impersonated the Department of Education and promised student-loan forgiveness for a fee - because the real program never charges for that.
- What to tell the grandkid. One sentence, so it sticks: “If anyone asks you to pay to apply for aid, it is a scam. The real FAFSA is free, and the school’s financial aid office helps for free too.” Kids get this. They are just never told it.
What to Do Now
- Do not click the scholarship email. Forward it to the grandkid and the parent instead. The family check-in is free and instant.
- Hang up on the tuition emergency. Call back on the number you already have for that person, then call the parent.
- Never share the FSA ID or a Social Security number with anyone who offers to “process” an application. The real FAFSA is free and self-serve.
- Report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. Every report feeds the same system the federal agencies used for the July alert - your report is the data that stops the next ring.
- Teach the one question. Say it once, out loud, to the student in your life: “Would the real program ask me to pay to get it?” It takes ten seconds and it lasts all four years.
Real aid programs give you money. They never ask you to pay to prove you qualify. And the school year is the one season where that sentence is worth more than tuition.
This is the tenth article in the Scam Awareness series. More coming - if there is a scam you keep hearing about and want explained, let me know and I will write it up.
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