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FBI To Prosecute "Money Mules"
An anonymous reader writes "A top FBI official said today that the agency is planning a law enforcement sweep against so-called 'money mules,' individuals willingly or unwittingly roped into helping organized computer crooks launder money stolen through online banking fraud, writes Krebsonsecurity.com. The author says he has interviewed more than 150 money mules, and find most fit into one of two camps: the not-so-bright, and those who suspect something's not right, but do it anyway. From the story: 'I find most mules fit into the latter group, and you can usually tell because these individuals often will admit to having set up a new account for the job separate from where they keep their meager savings or checking. When pressed as to why they did this, if they're honest most will say they weren't sure about the whole arrangement and wanted to protect their investments just in case their employers turned out to be less-than-honest.'"
You want me to cash this cheque and you will give me 5%? How can I lose?!?
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
They will find a way around a general crackdown on money mules. A lot of the east Europeans running these massive crime operations have MBAs and PhDs, and are untouchable because of political connections. They are certainly not stupid. Still, nice try.
Anyway, why leave a crackdown on money mules so late? The FBI aren't stupid either -- what advantage is there to not busting mules?
...the agency is planning a law enforcement sweep against so-called "money mules," individuals willingly or unwittingly roped into helping...
See usually if your the victim of fraud, you're considered the victim, the FBI thinks it would be better to prosecute them however.
They're going to have to arrest every member of the federal reserve... And what the hell do they think Wall Street is?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So let's make sure we're all clear: The FBI, the federal US law enforcement, is cracking down on financial fraud. Great.
They are going after dumb people who set up a bank account to launder a couple thousand dollars?
But they're not going after institutional traders who now offer co-location services with enhanced market data feeds, fueling high frequency trading? They are not going after the banking cartels who manipulate the whole economy? They are not going after Paypal for (among numerous things) blatantly lying about international exchange rates? or on and on and on from examples of large, institutionalized financial fraud?
It is a crime to purchase or accept property that you know or believe was obtained through theft . The crime is separate from robbery, extortion, or theft. Receiving stolen property is a crime in order to deter people from aiding or rewarding thieves by buying stolen property, and to deter theft in general. Receiving stolen property may be a misdemeanor or felony.
In Order to Be Convicted of this Crime, the Prosecution Must Show
* That the property was in fact stolen
* That you were aware, or should have known, that the property was stolen
http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/receiving-stolen-property.html
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
arrest all the people that worked at Enron. Clearly if you boss is doing something criminal all the employees should go to jail.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"smart people because they don't fall so easily for con artists. "
Intelligence has little to do with getting conned.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Go after the little guy to stop the big-time mobsters. Oh yeah, sure, that'll work. Why didn't we think of that before? Put all the small time drug dealers in jail and it will put the big guys out of business. Put all the small-time incompetent terrorists who light their shoes or underwear on fire and put the big guys out of business. Put all the Abu Ghraib prison guards in jail and stop Pentagon Brass and civilian military leadership from being war criminals. Put Fabulous Fabrice on trial and stop finance industry mobsters from raping the planet.
Yeah. What a good idea. Get some good headlines at least.
CG Pin-Ups?
I find it funny that no-one ever reports the most interesting part of these scams. Most of the time they money they are laundering is stolen by botnets. These same botnets often send spam that includes some amount of recruitment of money mules. Some of these "work from home" scams involve people putting up posters and yard signs to recruit money mules. The entire scam is facilitated and organized by an automatic distributed computer program. It's like a huge ants nest. The workers don't really know what they're doing, but the network maintains their motivation to keep doing it. The strangest part of all is that often these systems are so resilient that they keep going long after the head has been cut off by law enforcement. Somewhere there's probably accounts bursting with money funneled there by unthinking dupes acting as part of an unconscious mechanism.
How we know is more important than what we know.
No, because that is a different type of fraud.
This is the one where your bank sends someone an email saying they need to update their security details or something. They are directed to a fake bank website were they are asked to enter their login details.
The phisher then logs in to the bank using these details, and wires some money to the money mule. The money mule then sends it by Western Union to the phisher.
The phishing victim notices that all his money has disappeared and complains to the bank. The bank then reverses the transfer leaving the money mule's account overdrawn. Or maybe if you are very lucky, the phishing victim doesn't notice, and the transfer doesn't get reversed.
A slightly different version of it uses stolen credit card details. They order high value equipment using the phishing victim's credit card and have it shipped to the mule. The mule then forwards it to the phisher, or probably another mule in a different country.
Exactly. I've interviewed doctors, lawyers and even people with a finance background that were mules. Not saying all of them believed they were doing the right thing, just that it's not dim bulbs involved in this.
Yup, and many magicians will tell you that the more intelligent people are easier to fool.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
>They are going after dumb people who set up a bank account to launder a couple thousand dollars?
>But they're not going after institutional traders who now offer co-location services with
>enhanced market data feeds, fueling high frequency trading? They are not going after the
>banking cartels who manipulate the whole economy? They are not going after Paypal for
>among numerous things) blatantly lying about international exchange rates? or on and on and
>on from examples of large, institutionalized financial fraud?
Well of course! The dumb people don't have money for attorneys and politicians. So the FBI will go after the dumb people and then claim they did something about the problem.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Why wouldn't you just keep the money? The bad guys are half a world a way and have no way to call the cops as if they would to begin with.
Whenever I've heard of these kinds of scams (including a related one involving physical goods they send you and you ship overseas) I always wondered why people were so honest and actually went through with it instead of just keeping the money.
It'd be like Bernie Madoff walking up to you with a suitcase of cash, asking you to go deposit it at some bank across town. Yeah, sure, Bernie. I'll call you when I'm done.
Probably easier to con a smart person than a dumb one. Just convince the smart guy that he's conning you, and he's ripe for plucking....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I'm ambivalent about this. Clearly a crime is being committed, and that needs to be pursued, but the mule is often unaware that they are committing one. This is especially bad in a down economy, when desperate people are more likely to sign up.
A good friend of mine was so proud that she had finally found a job, and one she could do at home (bonus) and wouldn't be kicked out of her apartment after all. It was difficult to tell her that she was being hired to be a money mule and was almost certainly laundering money from illegal enterprises.
Often, these people aren't being dishonest or lazy, they're honestly trying to make rent. (Cross-reference to stories about low income jobs being hit hardest in this economy.) None of us here would fall for it, but they're not trying to hire IT professionals; they're trying to hire out-of-work nonprofessionals who don't have the education or life experience to know better.
Nailing a few mules won't really affect anything except arrest records (for those keeping score). There will always be more naive people to be suckered in, and the real criminals continue their operations. It seems like a better strategy would be for law enforcement to take the mule into their confidence and use them to trap the real criminals in return for amnesty. But that would be too much like real work, wouldn't it?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
There are different business models out there. Sure, if Nigeria's on either end of the deal, the check's bogus, and it's a one-shot scam (unless they can sell your name to somebody who's going to tell you they're the Nigerian National Bank's Fraud Inspection Division, trying to catch that Evil Miscreant who ripped you off, because you're now a known sucker.)
But sometimes, the deal comes from a legitimate criminal enterprise who actually do want to launder and move money, whether they're drug dealers or extortionists or whatever, and they'd prefer to find mules they can use multiple times and it's cheaper than other ways to move the money.
And then again, they could be longer-con scammers who are willing to pay you a few bucks on the first few checks so that you'll trust them, and then they'll send you a bigger check that really is bogus.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
> When pressed as to why they did this, if they're honest most will say they
> weren't sure about the whole arrangement and wanted to protect their
> investments just in case their employers turned out to be less-than-honest.
That doesn't mean that they thought the money was stolen: just that they thought their "employers" might be intending to try to swindle them by cleaning out their accounts. They may have suspected that the money was hot but you can't conclude that just because they took precautions.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
In fact, it's the #1 mistake that small businesses and sole proprietors make, and the #1 way small businesses have their corporate veil pierced.
If you have an LLC, you are only protected as long as you maintain your corporate veil. This REQUIRES that you have completely separate bank accounts, tax ID numbers, accounting databases, and everything. Commingling of personal and business assets is the first thing a lawyer will look for when he's trying to get to your personal assets (like your house, savings, 401k, etc) through suing your small business.
Furthermore, if you have business insurance, it will NOT COVER YOU if your corporate veil is successfully pierced. Business insurance only covers legitimate business activities, and commingling your personal and business assets means your business is not strictly business.
So, you would be in the "not-so-bright" category for sure if you did NOT get a separate account.
Getting a separate account does not mean you know you're doing something wrong. It means you know you are doing something RIGHT.
I believe this is largely a "marketing" exercise. One of their main aims would be to reduce the number of people willing to be mules. This means that the "real bad guys" have to work harder to get their money clean.
They want to let those in "the latter group" know that this is definitely illegal, instead of having the thin veil of thinking it *may* be slightly dodgy in some way, but not necessarily illegal, or even if it is, no one has ever got in trouble for it.
If they get a few convictions, or even get some cases to court, the media will do the rest for them. Job done.
That will work a LOT better than any traditional advertising / press release etc.
Ever stop to think
Intelligence is different from (street) Smarts.
If you ever worked with highly intelligent people, you surelly have noticed that some of them are hardly as successful as one would expect from their IQ - even if you have not noticed that about yourself.
Intelligent people are in fact easier to con because:
- They are so (over)confident in their own mental abilities and believe so much that they are thus un-connable that they won't even see the emotional/social manipulation of the conman (in a sense, they have a huge blind spot).
- Their confort zone is often logic, not influencing people, so they cannot even recognize some of the "moves" for what they are.
Intelligence is different from (street) Smarts.
There are multiple facets to intelligence, not all of which are measured through IQ. Moreover, most people actually reason in a Bayesian fashion, deciding how much to believe what someone's saying by evaluating the perceived trustworthiness of the speaker. If the scammer manages to get into a position where he can say things that are believed without actually being reasoned about (or say things that will be categorically not believed, allowing converse statements to be made and so belief to be established in what the scammer wants) then the core of scam is done; all that's really left is moving it into the cash-out phase.
An intelligent and suspicious mark will be very difficult to scam, especially if they are inclined to shut the scammer's statements out. Lots of people aren't good at suspicion it seems.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
The UK just outlawed the sale of 500 Euro notes in an atempt to combat laundering; so now they will have to use a bigger suitcase...brilliant!
... if PayPal is found to be fraudulent I'm going to be presumed to have known?
It's PayPal. How could you not have known?
That is all.