Money Mule Scam

What is a money mule?

A money mule is a person who transfers money or reships high value goods that have been fraudulently obtained in one country, usually via the internet, to another country, usually where the perpetrator of the fraud lives.

Money mule, Why?

Fraudsters belonging to country “A” obtain the credit card numbers, bank account numbers, passwords and other financial details of a victim living in another country “B” via internet through techniques such as malware and phishing but find it difficult to make money using these details in their own country “A”. Many businesses will refuse to transfer money or ship goods to certain countries (in this case “A”) where there is a high likelihood that the transaction is fraudulent. The fraudster therefore recruits a money mule in the victim's country “B” that will receive money transfers from victim’s account and merchandise (online purchases) and resend them to the criminal in return for a commission.

How it works?

Fraudsters located in another country (in this example say Nigeria) obtain online banking id and password of one or several victims of same country (say India) using fraud techniques like phishing, malware etc.

Fraudsters ‘recruit’ money mules in India. For this they use email offers, advertisements etc. Job designation will be offered as ‘Finance Manager”, “Agent” etc. These money mules will be innocent persons who will be attracted by good commission merely for transferring funds.

After a successful 'recruitment', the details of money mule's bank
account are obtained and funds are transferred by fraudsters from victims’ accounts to mule's bank account.

The mules are then asked by the fraudsters to transfer these funds
to some overseas bank account and mules are compensated with some 'commission' for this service. Subsequently, the overseas fraudsters close their account and disappear.

Obliviously fraudsters use Money Mule when they find it difficult to transfer such money themselves.

Now the fraudster will be untraceable (in India) and money mule will be answerable for the fraud.