Cyber Money Mules or Is Money Transfer Job A Scam?

Email might seem like an old school way for cyber-criminals to commit identity theft, but unfortunately it’s still a big attack vector for cyber-criminals.

Have you ever gotten an email message telling you about a once in a lifetime opportunity to make a lot of cash quickly and easily? Or maybe someone has offered to send you a western union money order under shady circumstances? And of course, the one we’re all familiar with, that poor Nigerian prince who just fell into a temporary spot of bad luck.

If you’ve ever received one of these emails you’ve been targeted to be a Cyber Money Mule.

Historically, cyber criminals took control of a victim’s online banking account and transferred money directly into their account in Uzbekistan. But that’s not as easy as it used to be.

In response to these attacks, banks have built fraud-detection-systems that recognize suspicious activity and flag it. For example, if a bank sees John Doe transferring all his retirement money to an account in Uzbekistan, it realizes that something may be amiss and alerts a human to manually check the validity of the transfer. 

So now cyber criminals have started to employ a new tactic known as – The Cyber Money Mule.

A money mule is person who lives in the same area as the victim. With the help of the money mule, the attacker can take the money from a retirement account in Ohio and transfer it to another account in Ohio (the money mule’s account), without setting off any red flags. The money mule will then transfer the money to Uzbekistan, and when a human intervenes to make sure it is a legitimate transfer, the mule will vouch for it.

When the bank finally finds out what happened, the money mule is prosecuted for fraud. The cyber-criminal however, impossible to prosecute because of the distance and lack of jurisdiction, gets away with the majority of the cash and does it all over again.

On the surface, prosecuting the mule seems logical, but there’s a problem. The money mules are often tricked into thinking they are participating in a legal money transfer as part of a legitimate business operation*. Ironically, after the transfer is completed, the money mules often end up as identity theft victims themselves. 

Here are some questions everyone should ask themselves before transferring money for a stranger who contacts them online:

1.  Can you verify the person is who they claim to be? Real businesswomen and men are able to easily verify their identity and affiliations.


2. A legitimate business offer will never come from a free email address like Hotmail or Gmail. If the businesswoman or man is contacting you from a free email account, they are trying to hide something.


3. Ask yourself, how did this person find me? Is this a response from applications or resumes I’ve sent out?

Signs that you are being scammed

1.       The scam emails will often have typos, while legitimate offers are often spelled correctly.

Interestingly, security researchers have gone so far as theorizing that the typos are intentional. The cyber-criminals rightly assume that someone who trusts an email from a stranger that is full of typos will be an easy mark.

2.       Any job offers with these titles should be considered suspect:

• Financial Manager
• Private Financial Receiver
• Financial Agent
• Private Financial Broker

For all of those positions you must use your personal bank account in some way to transfer money, which should set alarm bells ringing. A legitimate employer doesn’t ask employees to use their personal bank accounts for anything, except maybe setting up direct deposits.

3.      The job involves transferring money for a stranger on the internet
 
I mean, come on! Perhaps I have been blessed with the gift of a working brain, but I think these Money Mules had to sense something wasn’t quite right from the beginning. We have a big problem with entitlement in this country and I think in some cases certain individuals would rather accept free money, and worry about the consequences later. 

Working people know that there is no such thing as easy money; but perhaps people receiving government assistance don’t. 

After all, they receive free money from the government from their welfare/disability checks, their food is free at the grocery store with a food card, and their apartment is not secured by paying rent, but by having children and putting your name on a list. 

In that paradigm: why wouldn’t a stranger email you on the internet and offer you free money?

What I hope someone learned today:

1.      If it sounds too good to be true, it is. 

2.      If stranger email you offering you money for nothing, you’re going to go to jail if you cooperate because they are thieves.

3.       Participating in offers that ask you to transfer money to Uzbekistan will make you regret that you ever signed up for that website who sold your email address to cyber-criminals.

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Thanks for reading!