Don’t become a money mule for criminals, warns SOCA and Get Safe Online
16 November 2009
Internet users and job hunters are being urged to be on their guard against ‘too-good-to-be-true’ money earning opportunities during the economic downturn.
Experts at GetSafeOnline.org, the UK’s national internet security initiative, are seeing increasingly sophisticated tactics being used by fraudsters to recruit unwitting ‘money mules’ in order to launder cash from illegal activity. Lured by the prospect of substantial earnings for relatively little work, many victims instead end up tagged as criminals, with their personal bank accounts suspended and liable to repay the full amount of laundered funds.
SOCA’s Deputy Director of e-Crime, Sharon Lemon, is Chair of the GetSafeOnline steering committee. She explains how the money mule system works:
"The image of online criminals as amateur hackers, breaking into computer systems for kicks, has been out of date for some time. Online crime is now dominated by professional criminals.
“They may be able to compromise UK bank accounts, but they cannot transfer funds out of them. They need legitimate bank accounts, under their control, to receive and forward money from online banking fraud. Money mules are duped into using their personal accounts to do this, under the guise of a legitimate business. For example they may believe they have a genuine job as a ‘financial manager’, ‘money transfer agent’, ‘shipping manager’ or even ‘mystery shopper’ purporting to evaluate customer service at high street banks.
“Criminals need lots of these ‘drop service’ providers to stay in business because transfers of stolen money are quickly detected and the suspect accounts are suspended. When that happens, the individual finds themselves liable to repay all the funds they’ve received – which will be long gone – their bank account frozen, and even facing criminal investigation.”
For information and advice on how to guard against online fraud and other internet crime, see our Protecting yourself pages or visit the Get Safe Online website