Money Mules Recruitment In Action

Money mules are recruited by a variety of methods including spam e-mails and adverts on genuine recruitment websites. Yesterday I browsed the Internet, searching for some data about financial fraud and phishing when I discovered a page with a surprising job offer from an Apple reseller in Great Britain:

I followed the link and arrived at the offer. No doubt, I reached a money mule recruiting site.

Making some searches on Internet, I rapidly found some information on this counterfeiting operation, as well as another identical suspicious site. Both were perfect imitations of  a legitimate site for retailing stores carrying Apple products.

The WHOIS data for the both sites showed a registrant address in Leicester (undoubtedly false) and an AOL e-mail contact. IP address behind the sites seemed belonging to Turkish provider (TurkTeleKom) and US (Liquidweb).

Interesting information was available on these pages.

The contact & information phone number differed from the regular site. Today, I called this number; it was still live. Nobody picked up the phone, but a friendly answering machine delivered its message.

Most of the fraudsters behind online frauds are not located in our countries (France, Great Britain, etc”¦). As it is difficult to make cross-border transfers, money mules or money transfer agents are required to launder the funds obtained as a result of phishing and Trojan scams. After being recruited, they receive funds into their accounts and they then withdraw the money and send it overseas using a wire transfer service, minus a percentage commission payment.

In its last report, APACS, the UK payments association, indicates they counted 1,087 money mule recruitment incidents in 2006, compared with 473 in 2005.

Perhaps this incident will allow the authorities to catch the guilty. A phone number is not like an anonymous e-mail address. Its owners should be spotted.