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The Anatomy of Money-Mule Scams
Brian Krebs of the Washington Post's Security Fix blog has up an article on work-at-home money mule scams (backgrounder blog post here). These operations offer victims hundreds or thousands of dollars per week for moving money through their own accounts — a critical piece of the infrastructure for profiting from identity theft and phishing. The article links to the site of a UK fraud fighter named Bob Harrison, who lists hundreds of fradulent money-mule operations.
I don't know if they get caught or if they just smell that something is fishy, but I guess they are smart and they are searching for a given profile: not too smart, not too dumb, just right....
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
I'm just a pawn in a complicated scheme to surreptitiously move money from my employers to my creditors. And there are thousands of others like me.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
That this scam can even work is a product of supplier-side economics. Where people don't have to work to get what they want. That it is all about me me me.
Get rich quick schemes never are quick and they don't get you rich. never have, never will. Grow up and get a real job. Want to make $100k a year, go to college to earn that degree for a position that does make $100k a year.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Last year I had someone send me a Money Gram money order to cash for something I was selling on craigslist. I was kinda suspicious when he asked to cash a check for more than I was selling the item for....
Now I have sold stuff online for years and can usually spot a fake immediatly...This one I had to take to a bank to confirm!
Someone had stolen a roll of blank money gram money orders and entered a valid serial number and everything. The only thing wrong was the micker ink. The numbers at the bottom of that check were standard ink, not magnetic...
I still have that check on my fridge.
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That should of course be:
Easy mistake to make, it's in Word's auto-replace list.
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
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Would Monster.com even still exist if it weren't for scams like these?
My blog
2006 called. They want their news back.
This sort of operation has been going on for at the very least 2 years now. It's hardly "news". But it's stunning that there are still people who fall for that. Let's see... easy money, little to no work involved, shoving money around...
Hello? Does anyone here NOT smell a scam? I still can't decide whether those people are just insanely stupid or whether they know very well what they're doing and just claim to be stupid in case they get busted (and they usually do get busted), as a get-out-of-jail card. After all, stupidity appearantly keeps you safe from prosecution.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've lived in Madrid for four years and have heard this story from several different people including an ex girlfriend.
A tourist looking guy with an American accent will approach people on the street with a sob story about how was robbed or otherwise lost his trekking backpack and included in the loss was his passport and wallet. His mother is sending him a Western Union Money transfer, but he can't collect it without ID. He then asks if he can call the USA with your name and passport number, have the money wired to you (his mom is always "at the Western Union right now!"). You accept and collect the money transfer at zero cost to you - fees are paid on the other end, and then turn the cash over to this guy. I've heard the sum of 275 euros up to over 800. He even offers 50 euros to reluctant people.
My ex-girlfriend fell for it, and then by coincidence bumped into the same guy two years later, so he's being doing this for a while. I didn't know her the first time she fell for it, but the second time she bumped into the guy, we both assumed it was something to do with drugs but now I'm guessing it probably had something to do with Money Mules.
Interesting that they actually use intermediates on the other end at least some of the time.
Also, The Money Mules would be a great name for an 90's cover band.
Absolutly I accept other forms than cash. Craigslist is only really effective because it is all over the US for free...I have only done one local deal and it WAS cash. Requiering cash for non-local deals is a good way to not sell anything.
My Experience
I have found Paypal to be very good so long as you send to a confirmed address and get tracking. I have had several people try and argue it but once I send Paypal the tracking number the dispute goes away in my favor.
Personal checks are riskier but I still haven't had that much of a problem. I always deposit them first and only ship once it has cleared. In over 1,000 check/money order transactions I have only had one bad check. And the check was bad for lack of funds. The person paid me immediatly with a money order plus my bank fee.
Legit money orders are usually so easy to identify that I would ship "at risk" before depositing them. I have run across 4 people trying to pass off fake money orders and never lost anything to them.
The grandparent is note worthy only because it was actually convincing in all but one detail.
I have had well over 20,000 online transactions and by following the rules above I have had about 30 problems and never lost money on any of them.
The moral of the story is:
Online business is safe and effective for everyone involved so long as you don't do anything stupid like ship before confirming payment and always get tracking numbers.
Give him the number to the US embassy. If he has really been robbed and lost his passport they'll help him out.
In addition to money mules, there are also "goods" mules who help transfer fraudulently obtained goods overseas. The typical situation is: ID thief uses stolen card information to buy electronics from a "cardable" website (one which doesn't do a lot of checks on whether the person using the card is the real cardholder). The thief is based overseas, but knows that having goods shipped there might (at best) raise red flags and (at worst) lead the police right to them. So they convince some poor, greedy saps that they are helping out a small overseas company. The goods mules gets paid small sums to receive goods and then reship them.
The particulars might differ based on situation, of course. I've heard of the scammers using images taken from Google Images to convince the mules that they (the scammers) are really a highly attractive woman who just so happened to have fallen in love with them and needs their help with her struggling business. Yes, people fall for this. Partly because the scammers are good at what they do and partly because some people are just greedy idiots. They mentally block out any red flags because of the promise of money.
On one hand, the mules are really sad and pathetic. On the other hand, they get me mad because without them much of the identity theft/eBay fraud/stolen credit card purchases, wouldn't be possible (or at least would be much easier to track).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
What is really appalling to me is how Paypal and eBay are seemingly exempt from the rule of law.
If someone breaks into my house, steals my stuff, and puts it in their house, I am not allowed to just go into the thief's house and steal it back. I am required to give them the due process of law, file criminal charges, provide evidence to the prosecution, and let the jury decide.
If criminal A breaks into the house of victim B, stashes the stuff in victim C's house before moving it to their own house, victim C's landlord can't just decree that victim C has to pay back victim B for the loss.
This is exactly what paypal is doing.
This is a good idea and will help catch most frauds, but many people have access to a MICR check encoder. I worked for a Fortune 100 retailer and they had one in every store, and they were hardly kept under lock and key. Also, if one were an enterprising criminal, one might just buy one.
Obviously, the ultimate (and very elegant) coup de grâce would be to buy it with a fraudulent check.