AML Fun: Be a Home-based Money Mule!

The term “money mule,” which first appeared around 2005, refers to a person who transfers illicit money for someone else—sometimes knowing that the activity is criminal, sometimes unknowingly. 

That new job

Scamicide warns us of money mule scams, although this work at home job may sound innocent enough:

“[Y]our job is to receive goods, often electronics that have been shipped to you, inspect them and then reship them to an address provided to you by your new employer.”

So the employee is being paid to inspect goods. What’s wrong with that?

“The problem is that these goods have been purchased with stolen credit cards and you have just become an accomplice to the crime when you ship them to someone else who will then sell them to turn the merchandise into cash.”

Trouble

And if the employee plays their cards wrong, they can end up on an Anti-Money Laundering blocklist.

Why? Perhaps the money launderers aren’t just after a profit. Perhaps, as the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs notes, that home-based employee may be supporting terrorism: 

“Among those who seek to disguise the illegal proceeds of their crimes are drug traffickers, terrorists, corrupt public officials, and organized criminal groups.”

A student job

And there are consequences for the money mules, knowing or not. A foreign student in the UK applied to a job ad with this job description:

“your job content is: use your mobile banking during daily part-time working hours, according to my requirements: help the company collect and transfer money, transfer to the account designated by the company, the company has every day Many orders.”

The company assured the student that everything was legal, so the student took the job. Things went well, until:

“And today my bank sent me a message saying they’ve frozen my account and will still do so unless i explain what certain transactions are for.”

Because the banks can also get in trouble if they violate AML laws.

Money muling doesn’t pay in the long run.