Scam Hits Kentucky County, Leaves "Mules" Overdrawn

Our June 9 post described an international scam that used "money mules" to route stolen funds outside the country. This week a Kentucky county discovered that $415,000 of its funds had been stolen using unauthorized wire transfers to money mules who had originally responded to a bogus Careerbuilder email recruiting work-at-home document editors for a phony delivery company based in the Ukraine. At least two dozen of the "editors" were later offered "promotions" to act as "local agents" of the delivery company, to help the company route funds to its overseas "clients."

The funds that needed rerouting, of course, were being moved out of the Bullitt County, Kentucky, payroll account in a series of fraudulent wires of $10,000 or less. The wire transfers went into the bank accounts of the "local agents," who were instructed to keep a 5% commission and wire the remaining money to accounts overseas. A number of the banks that received the wires from the Bullitt County account reversed the credits to the mules' accounts and returned the stolen money. Of course, that left many of the mules significantly overdrawn, and possibly facing fraud and money laundering charges.

In this case, the mules/victims succumbed to an emailed job offer that appeared to come from a legitimate job search website. Had they done a search on the delivery service's name, they would have seen nothing but page after page of complaints about being scammed by the company.

The money mules also ignored the primary anti-scammer rule: "If it seems too good to be true, it is." What legitimate company would pay you $500 to run $10,000 of its money through your personal bank account?