TechTip

TECHNOLOGY TIP

Stubborn, OK… Mule NO!

One of the big scams involves what we call money mules. A money mule is a person who is used to transfer money for the criminals. The way the scam typically works is a person receives an email telling them that they can work from home. The work involves transferring money in and out of their account and they get to keep a percentage of the money. In reality the money is being stolen from someone else’s account. When the first victim becomes aware of the theft and notifies the bank then the mule becomes responsible for all of the money, not just the percentage they were told they could keep.

For example, the mule may be told they get to keep 10%. A transfer of $10,000 is made into their account and they transfer $9,000 to another account or via Western Union. When the bank catches up the mule becomes responsible for all $10,000.

Sometimes the “job offers” appear to come from well known companies like Texaco. Other times the bogus offers come from companies that claim to be financial services organizations. One scam I received claimed I would be a secret shopper to report on the customer service of Western Union and another financial institution.

In a rather humorous blog, Brian Krebs, formerly of the Washington post, tells of the top 10 ways to get fired as a money mule http://www.krebsonsecurity.com/2010/01/top-10-ways-to-get-fired-as-a-money-mule/. Of interest, Krebs reports that the money mules get used for one transfer and then the criminals ditch them. This makes sense since the crooks know they just stung the mule as well as the person who initially got ripped off.

Oftentimes the criminals target people looking for jobs at websites like Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com. They know these people are sometimes desperate for a job, so the job they offer has very tempting wages. Probably just as often, the bogus job offers come through untargeted spam runs.

Evidently there are a lot of very gullible people as the FBI reported that money mule scams topped $100 million last year, and that is only in the US.

The biggest sign that a communications is a scam is that it looks too good to be true. The wages I have seen offer range from about $2000 a month for a couple of hours work to about $17,000 per month. Most of the mules don’t have any experience in the financial transaction industry. A very high paying job for a person with no experience is too good to be true.

If you have any general computer security questions, feel free to contact me at askeset@eset.com.

Randy Abrams

Director of Technical Education

ESET LLC