Money Laundering: Money Mules and Increasing Level of Risk
- As regulatory evolutions are still impacting the SEPA zone, we can ponder over possible impending failures derived from the Payment Institutions. In fact, as the number of transfer possibilities increases, so does the risk of fraud. In this context, the number of recruited money mules is also expanding. These remunerated intermediaries, and victims, enable funds transfers from their bank accounts and might have to make these amounts leave their national banking scheme. To do so, they can use non-banking transfer schemes.
- In the UK, about 1,400 new money mules are recruited each month. There are no official figures in France even if several announcements have been made on different websites and through social networks.
- In addition to the development of new technologies, of mobile payment and other Internet solutions, but also of technological security breaches, hacking, etc., yet another incompressible flaw is to be reminded. The human flaw is so obvious that it is often excluded but many scammers rely on it today.
- The recruitment of money mules is based on two major criteria: sentimental and professional appeals. From a “professional” point of view, fraudulent recruiters offer to remunerate people to send back parcels they receive at home (for instance 15 euros per parcel). These “job offers” are now swarming on the Internet. From a more personal point of view, some people can fall prey to manipulative scammers trying to swindle them of their money and use them (funds transfers, sending cheques in exchange of the “equivalent” amount in cash, etc.). The “seduction” process sometimes requires several years of exchanges (for instance, using dating websites).
- In both cases the mule becomes a party to the fraud process without being aware of it and also becomes a victim as the fake recruiter requires his bank account details and credentials to forge fake contracts of employment or send back ordering of sending fees for example. The “accomplice” then turns into a victim (identity usurpation, issuing of new bank cards, money laundering, etc.).
- This large scale phenomenon is present in several fraud cases. The compromising medium is often a human being, an intermediary, who will, at some point, have access to bank or financial data likely to be sold. To this day, no technical device can anticipate this kind of behavioural change in a human being: only the consequences of his deeds can be measured.