Children are being lured in to online scam operations in such alarming numbers that schools are holding urgent assemblies to warn pupils as young as nine about the dangers.
In July, the UK’s anti-fraud agency Cifas and banking trade body UK Finance advised primary and secondary schools to hold assemblies on being a ‘money mule’.
This is where children are told that if they allow money to be paid into their bank account and they cash it out or send it on to another account, they can keep a cut for themselves.
However, crooks are simply using this ploy to launder money — making the child unwittingly complicit in a crime.
Children are told by criminals that if they allow money to be paid into their bank account and they cash it our or send it on to another account, they can keep a cut for themselves
In the past two months 307 schools across the UK have signed up to classes for children aged nine to 14, as well as their teachers, about the risks of being targeted by criminal gangs using social media.
Security minister Tom Tugendhat today tells Money Mail that social media platforms are making it easier than ever for criminals to target children.
Tugendhat, who backs our Stop the Social Media Scammers campaign to force tech companies to better protect users, says providers must do more to identify and block mule recruitment.
He says: ‘Social media makes advertising cheap and easy, turning apps such as Instagram and Snapchat into a rich hunting ground for criminals to identify and recruit money mules.
‘It’s time social media giants stepped up to better protect their users.’
Fraud campaigners want to teach children about the dangers of becoming a money mule before many of them will be targeted. Crooks typically go after teenagers and university students.
Half of students are being approached by criminal organisations as universities welcome students for the new academic year, a report by crime prevention group We Fight Fraud found.
Nine in ten young people are confident they would be able to recognise a suspicious message and identify a fraudulent recruitment, according to the study.
But a worrying 66 per cent of university students approached via social media to ‘earn up to £1,000 a day’ responded by sharing their details and engaging with the sender, according to We Fight Fraud’s research.
Pupils as young as ten are approached on social media platforms by scammers who attempt to use their bank accounts to launder illegal money.
This can have devastating consequences for their future, ruining their chances of going to university or getting a job — and, in the most serious cases, can lead to a 14-year prison sentence.
Criminals use money mules to launder the profits of their crimes and ‘rinse’ the money by passing it through a legitimate bank account.
This money can originate from fraud or scams, drug dealing or people trafficking.
The number of 14 to 18-year-olds misusing their bank accounts has soared by 73 per cent in the past two years, warns Cifas.
Ria Nelson, an assistant head teacher at St Frideswide Primary School in Oxford, warns there is a real risk children can be contacted and be recruited as money mules.
‘As teachers, we learn a lot about safeguarding students, but financial fraud is something we see little information on,’ she says.
‘Children are vulnerable and often don’t understand the consequences of getting involved in activity like this.
Security minister Tom Tugendhat said that tech companies need to do more to prevent children from being recruited as money mules
‘These criminals are truly selfish. They are trying to take advantage of children and trick them into becoming money mules. The consequences of that can be detrimental to the child’s future, impacting their life at home and future education and professional work, and that’s truly awful.’
University students are also a prime target, as they tend to have clean credit records and be on the lookout for easy ways to make extra money.
Criminals typically make promises of ‘easy cash’ and ‘cash-flipping opportunities’ when recruiting.
Nicola Harding, of We Fight Fraud and a criminology professor at Lancaster University, ran a secret study to see how susceptible students really are.
In a survey, 95 per cent of students at the university said they would not accept an approach from a social media contact. Eight in ten said they would report approaches from criminals in person or online to Crimestoppers.
But in a mock recruitment, a shocking number signed up to the offer and failed to alert anyone.
Dr. Harding and her team invited students to take part in an ‘online focus group’ about fraud, to which 30 students signed up.
What they didn’t know was that student researchers Roni and Joel had added all the participants on social media platforms Instagram and Snapchat.
After a cooling-off period to avoid suspicion, the researchers sent an initial message to each participant asking them to fill in a survey.
It read: ‘Hii! Can you do me a massive favour pls. I got a new job and was hoping you could fill out this survey, I get paid every time someone fills it out and I really need the money tbh [to be honest]. You’ll be really helping me out :).’
Dr Harding says: ‘We did this because fraudsters may recruit young people to find other mules, but also they may create fake duplicate accounts and add friends of the real account holder.’
Within 24 hours, 20 out of the 30 students had filled in the survey and engaged with the scammer.
They shared enough important information for fraudsters to use it against them, for example to commit identity fraud and open bank accounts in their name.
This included their name, their email address and details about who they bank with and what types of accounts they hold.
The level of information they so readily handed over suggests they would be open to becoming a money mule with further social engineering, says Tony Sales, of We Fight Fraud, who ran the study with Dr. Harding.
The Mail’s Stop the Social Media Scammers wants tech giants to introduce tougher ID verification measures to stop fraudsters setting up social media accounts.
The most common way a money mule is contacted is on Instagram, according to Lloyds Bank.
Fraudsters then move the conversation to messaging app WhatsApp — also owned by tech giant Meta.
Liz Ziegler, fraud prevention director at the bank, says: ‘Typically, the mule will be instructed to move funds from the bank account to foreign exchange platforms (who ask few questions), from which the recruiters collect the cash.’
If you are worried a child you know might be involved in money muling, contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
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