Warning about student 'money mules'

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Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2013 8:51 am

Article on the BBC today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21578985

Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2013 12:26 pm

A good explanation of how it works. A lot of people think its just about receiving dud cheques - here its taking the risk for the fraudsters as the victim sends you the money, and you send most of it on to the lad.

When the music stops, its your door that the police turn up at.

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2013 12:48 am

My goodness! It's odd that I've read this because just the other day I heard about a girl who was approached by someone to do something quite similar - they said all she had to do was receive a wire transfer to her bank account and then hand over most of it in cash. It sounded innocent enough, but she was sure something bad was involved.

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2013 1:02 am

I've been at SW a lot recently over this scam which is being pushed hard by organised scammers. Undoubtedly there's African involvement from some of the wordings used, but it's large scale organised fraud and close to 100 websites must have been unearthed recently, and much better quality than the average Lad concoction.

Members here and at SW have been doing a fine job shooting the sites down and I think the site builders have become quite dispirited, but the amount of work they're putting in to the scam is worrying. Apart from the websites they've got some neat methods to get potential victim details and I may do some research checking quite how they do it in detail.

These aren't individual Lads arranging the websites, scam spam runs and phone calls and e-mails, of that I'm certain.

Most of the pyments I've seen have come in to accounts electronically, which is a surprise. Though they have attempted, in some versions to get the mules online log in details, and some have handed them over Shocked

, there must be another method they're managing to perform online payments - and by common sense, logical deduction and balance of probabilities, there's only one method I can think of, but i won't mention it, as I'm sure that those who should know are already aware.

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jun 2011 Posts: 1066

Quote:

Though they have attempted, in some versions to get the mules online log in details, and some have handed them over

You'd be surprised at what people will do when they are desperate for a job. The state of California recently had to pass a law banning employers from asking a job applicant for the password to their Facebook account. Now that deserves a Shocked

.

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2013 10:24 pm

http://www.cifas.org.uk/moneymulescams_feb

Quote:

CIFAS, the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service

Quote:

Online job seekers are being used as unwitting "money mules" and are being asked to misuse their bank accounts by laundering money through them. Misuse of an account was the second most commonly identified fraud in 2012 – with over 45,000 confirmed instances, many of which bear the hallmarks of such “money mule” activity.

Providers are legally required to close accounts that are used to launder money and can be heavily fined by international regulators if they fail to do so........ At worst you [mules] could go to prison for it......

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