14 DAY TRIAL // Once you hack into someone’s bank account, it’s easy to steal their money. However, if you transfer the funds to your own account directly, it’s also easy for the bank and authorities to track you down.
This is where money mules step in. They’re the individuals who willfully or unwittingly help the masterminds of the operation cash in their proceeds.
In many cases, the money mules know what they are doing, but in some situations fraudsters recruit them by offering them legitimate-looking jobs.
The unsuspecting individuals, who think they’ve been hired as a financial manager, receive payments from the victims’ accounts and forward the money to the criminal via MoneyGram or Western Union. For their effort, they get to keep 2-10% of the amount they’ve transferred.
To recruit money mules, cybercriminals have to set up a ghost company which, to appear more legitimate, needs a website. Then, they start sending out job offers in the hope of someone falling for their trap.
Security experts from Trusteer have identified a group that sells everything one needs to recruit money mules.
The recruitment template package includes a website template, a backend administration system, spam email templates, and correspondence templates.
Customers are offered everything they need to make it look as if they’re a legitimate brokerage company that looks for “talented people to join their team of professionals.”
“This package offers a comprehensive solution for cybercriminals, covering every aspect from mule recruitment to cashing out. This offering demonstrates once again that mules are critical players in the fraud eco-system,” Trusteer’s Etay Maor wrote in a blog post.
“Consumers must be made aware of these types of scams and educated about the perils of “work from home” offers that involve money transfers and questionable incoming transactions.”
Here’s how the email templates look like:
