June 15, 2010
If an online offer to make easy money is too good to be true it probably is. So, be careful or go to jail
See the trap
An email from a firm abroad offers to make you a financial conduit. you get ill-gotten money from them and after taking your cut, you transfer the remaining amount to them
This transaction puts you in trouble as the money you get is illegally transferred from another account
The person who asked you to do this will continue to be out of reach, but you will have to face action
Divyesh singh
Late last month, two people were arrested in the city in an online fraud case involving over Rs26.55 lakh. The twist in the tale is that they are probably innocent - unwitting victims of a global scam. You could have been one of them.
The arrested people were 'money mules' - people recruited by cyber criminals to transfer money stolen through phishing.
The scam operates thus: you receive an email from an international company offering you the opportunity of being a financial conduit for them. All you need to do is receive payments for them and transfer them the money - minus a sizeable commission, which can be as much as $6,000, sometimes more.
Lest you wonder why the company is giving you such an easy way to rake in the moolah, the email mentions that the company did a background check and found you trustworthy; the company needs you because of banking restrictions in its host country.
What's hidden from you is that the money you will receive is illgotten, making you liable for prosecution. What the persons behind the company do is use your account to escape the law. They use money transferred from the accounts of others through phishing (fraudulently acquiring someone's username, password, and account and credit card details with the intention of cheating).
To law enforcers. the victim's money is traced to your account, making you the culprit, though you did not have a clue about the scam.
"If the victim files a police complaint, the person caught is the money mule, while the kingpin is not affected at all," says Vijay Mukhi, a technology evangelist.
Email is not the only means to recruit money mules. Not long ago, a recruitment drive was conducted on Facebook. Dmitry Bestuzhev of computer security firm Kaspersky Lab says: "After the campaign, we have been monitoring this activity."
The lab found that the fraudsters keep comping up with ways to recruit money mules. A favourite is the 'romantic money mule' method, where a man is lured by scammers posing as a sexy woman, who makes up reasons why the man should be a conduit for transferring funds to her.
"People should be extremely careful about such mails," says joint commissioner of police (crime) Himanshu Roy. "The police conduct cyber safety weeks to specifically warn against such crimes. One should make it a point to attend these sessions."
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