Fraud Trends: Money Mules

Rivka Gewirtz Little: We’re seeing a prevalence of synthetic identity fraud in deposit accounts. I think that’s something that we’ve ignored for a long time. And we’re seeing now that those synthetic identities are really representing mule accounts, and those mule accounts are central to receiving and moving illicit funds.

Mike Cook: Synthetic identity fraud is the new money mule and they’re being used for moving fraudulent payments. So how can they push P2P fraud? How can they do more money laundering, nefarious activities like drug or human trafficking. So that’s probably the biggest trend that I’m paying attention to.

Rivka Gewirtz Little: I’m really interested in seeing how financial institutions and fintechs will work both individually, but hopefully with each other to understand that they have a responsibility to look for synthetic identity fraud in their portfolios as a whole, to both at the point of onboarding to stop these fraudsters from getting into the financial system, but also in their existing roles so that they’re not allowing mules to live among them and essentially fuel this synthetic identity fraud crime.