Money Mules: Fraud from overseas are baiting locals for help
Photo by: Drawings Of Light - Paul
Officials from San Diego County Sherriff’s department busted an online auction fraud early this month. They arrested Kevin Harper of Vista California for allegedly helping a Nigerian fraudster carry out a scam on American soil. He made an acquaintance with the fraudster, a member of the opposite sex, online.
He is suspected to have played a key role in the scam. Apparently, it was his part to make fake checks and to have them delivered to victims of the scam. He was also supposed to receive payments made by them via Western Union money transfer and to wire these to Nigeria after setting aside a fat commission.
Harper is alleged to have been doing this since the last six months. He is said to have siphoned off $600,000 to his Nigerian partner during this period. And also to have helped himself to $50,000 along the way. Unfortunately for him, he ended up being a money mule to the scam.
Role of Money Mules
Fraudsters use money mules for laundering money in scams involving stolen credit cards. This is an easy way for them to bypass anti-fraud mechanisms setup by the banks. The main advantage of such an arrangement to fraudsters is obvious: they go scot-free while the mules get arrested and convicted for the scams!
But fraudsters are looking for some essential qualifications. The candidate must be residing in the country where the scam is to be run. He is also expected to have a running bank account there.
Email ads are the first point of contact for potential recruits. The ads are mass-mailed to all the addresses that fraudsters can get hold of. They are targeted especially on people who register themselves at online job sites.
The candidates are asked to be a broker or to help with processing of payments or to do something as simple as managing the mail for a business. The positions are tantalizingly titled: designations include money transfer agent, country representative, shipping manager, correspondence manager, client manager, and financial managers. They are promised with generous payments for their efforts.
It is the young or the naïve who usually fall prey to their offers. They are misled into believing that they are part of a legal enterprise. Sometimes, people knowingly take up such offers assuming their roles in the scam to be insignificant.
Source: signonsandiego.com
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