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The Employment Money Laundering Scam is, effectively a variant of the Employment Scam that suckers people into becoming a mule for a money laundering organization. Typically funds paid in one currency are converted through the mule's bank account into funds in another currency.
In most cases major currencies (US Dollars, Euros, GB Pounds etc are the target). The scamsters say that they have been paid in US Dollars, but because they are foreign nationals and residents of another country (typically West Africa, South African and Malaysia) they have problems converting the money to local currency. Sometimes they pretend to be from a legitimate company and say they need help converting from one currency to another.
More often than not the 'mule' is presented with cheques in their local currency. These are paid in and the currency (minus a 10% 'fee') is transferred to the person who offered the 'job' (often by Western Union money transfer). About 6 to 10 days later the 'mule' finds out that the cheque was forged or obtained fraudulently and that no funds are coming into their account.
Sometimes the money is genuine, ie there really are funds to be paid into the account, but the funds were obtained fraudulently. As a result the person acting as a mule becomes an accomplice in the crime that yielded the funds in the first place.
That's how the fraud works and the job of the 'money mule' is to act as a financial 'middle man' accepting payment in one form, and forwarding it (minus a fee) to another party, usually off-shore and with the transfer done via Western Union.
Scammers employ money mules to launder money on their behalf. In this case, as discussed above, the mule is responsible for converting a fraudulent transaction of some kind into quick, anonymous, cash. Scammers send out a lot of job ads for money mule positions and never refuse an applicant because they are disposable. Money mules either get ripped off directly (as when they are persuaded to bank a forged cheque or money order which is later dishonoured by the bank), or take the blame for defrauding someone else (as with most payments involving direct bank transfer, PayPal, or other means of electronic funds transfer). The job of the money mule is to convert dirty money, obtained fraudulently into clean cash that's transferred to the original perpetrators of the crime.
The money trail ends with the mule's bank account and the mule is liable and is the most likely person to take the fall once the fraud is uncovered. If you are tempted by any of these scams then JUST DON'T. You will be the one uncovered and caught.
Just remember that almost all the fraudsters responsible for perpetrating these scams are located overseas and, as many countries do not allow cross-border transfers from online bank accounts a middleman the 'money mule' is needed to launder funds obtained fraudulently. Increasingly these funds are also being generated by the clean-out of peoples' bank accounts due to phishing and Trojan scams.
In this case the money is real and is wired to a mule's bank account or is transferred using methods such as PayPal. The mule then must withdraw the funds and send it overseas using a wire transfer service. The key to spotting any scam such as this is the 10% fee that the mule can keep for themselves.
These days, money mules are recruited by a variety of methods. These include spam emails, emails generated from harvesting of peoples' notices on job advertisement boards, adverts on genuine recruitment websites, adverts in newspapers, adverts in on-line classifieds and instant messaging.
Typical positions on offer often come under titles like: "UK/US representative" "financial manager", "payment processor", "transaction specialist", "shipping manager", "sales manager" or just plain "representative" or even "partner". Often the pitch says that you can earn some easy money for just for a few hours' work each week. The only stipulation being that you have access to the internet.
Below are two example emails, one a bad copy of the other, both looking for money mules:
The actual email follows below:
Scam email starts:
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From:
Good Day. |
Scam email ends
The joke is that this is a copy of an eMail, badly changed to target the UK that was doing the rounds in Australasia before Christmas 2008. The original email is given below:
Scam email starts:
|
From:
Hello, |
Scam email ends
As you can see, the first email given above is just a bad copy of the second. Complete with errors where one has been copied directly to the other. Perhaps not surprisingly both emails originated at the IP address 216.94.15.236 which is located in Canada! So neither email originated in their home territories!
This, of curse, is a money laundering scam! Essentially this fits in with one of the classic criteria for a scam in that it's too good to be true and it's both a job offer and spam.
Below are some of the classic ways you can spot various employment scams:
Scams and fraud work off either greed or need. But when looking at any offer of the type above, just remember the old adage 'if something looks too good to be true, then it probably is'.
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As an essentially anonymous medium email is an ideal method of contacting a large number of people. It's also become the communications medium of choice for many individuals. Because of this its becoming a more and more attractive medium for fraudsters and scamsters. However, a few simple steps can protect you from the vast majority of email scams and these are listed in this article.
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