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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.
Anyway, why leave a crackdown on money mules so late? The FBI aren't stupid either -- what advantage is there to not busting mules?
As the article says, there are two camps. And while the latter camp is dirty and know it, the former camp are retirees who answer "Make money in your spare time" ads or unemployed people desperate for work who think it's legitimate. And any crackdown will wind up dragging these people in, many who are going to be very sympathetic.
You needn't find a way around the crackdown. You just have to put a few more layers of confusion around it and you'll find enough people stupid and gullible to fall for it.
People are stupid. It's how we want them to be. If they wouldn't be stupid, they wouldn't be good consumers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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?
People are prosecuted for receiving stolen goods all the time. How is this much different?
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
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.
Being a victim of fraud means that someone stole your identity and then took money out of your account. Money was taken from YOU. Money laundering, even if it is unknown to the person doing the laundering, is an accessory to a crime. You are helping them "clean" the money they have already stolen.
WTB [sig], PST!!!
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
Only when there was reasonable expectation that the goods were stolen. If you acted in good faith you don't get prosecuted, you just lose your stuff.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
If you acted in good faith you don't get prosecuted, you just lose your stuff.
As the original article says, the majority of mules know they are doing something slightly shady. They just don't know exactly what. I think it's reasonable to prosecute and let the court decide the degree of culpability.
>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.
Or they're using another company's wire account. The money is legit, they just didn't have the right to send it. When the actual company sues you for the money, you're extra screwed with legal fees.
That almost happened at my company, a salesguy was all excited because some sucker wanted to pay double to get the merch shipped to Australia, if only we'd pay his shipping agent, and it "couldn't bounce because it was a wire transfer, not a check".
Fortunately, the guy used the same address repeatedly and the first result on Google was somebody complaining about it.
Unless you intended to make a very subtle distinction between a lack of knowledge of money laundering specifically versus a general lack of knowledge of a criminal act, I vehemently disagree. There is no such thing as a "strict liability" accessory crime in the United States.
Accessory statutes descending from English legal tradition, such as those in the U.S., require at least some form of knowledge of a criminal act (just not necessarily the criminal act committed by the principal). Do you know why? Because if being an accessory to say, money laundering, was a strict liability offense, then in the following:
A. Money launderer obtains proceeds of criminal endeavor
B. Money launderer buys plasma TV at Best Buy
C. Money launderer sells plasma TV on eBay to an arms-length buyer at market price.
all of Best Buy, eBay, and buyer are accessories to a felony. Full stop. This is patently ridiculous -- nobody could buy anything from an ordinary third party, or arguably broker a third party sale, for fear of becoming an accessory to a criminal act. Anything not purchased from the OEM would be suspect to varying degrees, and if your due diligence was both reasonable and wrong then you'd still an accessory.
The distinction the FBI is drawing is between those few who cannot be charged because they just didn't suspect ("are simply not the sharpest crayons in the box and really did get bamboozled"), and those who can be charged because they had some form of knowledge and intent (as evidenced by things like separating their own funds from the funds they were handling). Mere sympathy does not excuse those in the first group from criminal liability -- the lack of of a sufficient mens rea excludes them from criminal liability.
> 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.
> As the original article says, the majority of mules know they are doing
> something slightly shady.
Perhaps, but the stated "evidence" merely indicates that they know they are doing something slightly risky, as in "Maybe this is legit, or maybe these guys have some scheme to rip me off. I'll open a separate account just to be safe."
It is not a crime to be prudent.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.