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Hands Off the Dirty Money
EASY MONEY
A SERIES OF VIEWS FROM JOHN SWAIN, CHAIRMAN OF THE ANOPOL GROUP
For the past few months I have been inundated with the same E-mail offer of a job. All that was required of me was a computer, a bank account and a few hours work each week. Just in case I had problems reading English, the offer was also repeated several times in German. I was guaranteed earnings of at least €3,000 a month.
FIGURES RELEASED recently by the Financial Fraud Action UK Association highlight the spread of a scam which recruits ordinary members of the public, such as me, to money-launder thousands of pounds to criminal gangs abroad. The proceeds fund an international trade in drugs, people trafficking and terrorism. The fake job offers, often made using titles such as
‘Money Transfer Agent’ or ‘Payment Processing Agent’, turn participants into so-called ‘Money Mules’. The recipient of the offer is invited to receive money into their bank account and transfer it to another account, retaining a cut for themselves. In reality, the money received is the result of criminal actions and is then laundered to foreign bank accounts. As a demonstration of the scale of this activity, research
shows that these fake offers are received by around 15% of adults in the UK. Of these, 20% admitted to having considered accepting the offer and 6% went on to volunteer. Enlarging these figures nationally across those with internet access, this could give rise to 380,000 people becoming unwitting money-launderers. This activity is illegal and carries a number of consequences, including freezing of customers’ bank accounts and difficulty in opening new accounts in the future, thereby affecting the ability to obtain a mortgage, insurance, etc. It is also possible to receive a prison sentence of up to ten years. Demonstrating an under-estimation of the seriousness of this offence, only 15% of those who received a job offer, correctly identified the ten-year maximum custodial sentence available to the courts in prosecuting offenders. The lesson to be learnt from the above is that ‘Easy
Money’ can come at a serious price. Tragically, of the students who were approached, 47% seriously considered the offer whilst 19% actually accepted the work. One can only hope that the warnings now being put out by the authorities will deter present and potential future ‘Money Mules’ from further involvement in this sordid business.■
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