Spammers Exploiting Rising Unemployment to Hire Money Mules

According to a research conducted by PandaLabs, an online security firm, cyber criminals have started a new wave of scams in which they are telling people easy ways of making money from home. Moreover, the victims of these scams are serving as money mules to cyber-crime operations.

The research revealed that with rising unemployment rate, the volume of job-related spam and money mule recruitment scams have gone up tremendously. For instance, the unemployment rate in the US during August-October 2008 surged by over 6%, but the fake recruitment scams climbed a huge 514% during the same period, according to the statistics provided by Honeypot Project, a research group focused on online security.

As per the security researchers at PandaLabs, the most disturbing element is that the world's seven largest money mule networks have succeeded in duping their victims to transfer the stolen money or assets.

Ryan Sherstobitoff, Chief Corporate Evangelist, PandaLabs, said that spam e-mails promising to earn $300 per hour or several thousands dollars catch attention of money mules. The victims think that they are doing service to the community, but they actually harm the community, as reported by DarkReading on November 20, 2008.

According to PandaLabs' data, in October 2008, when the unemployment rate in the US rose to 14-year high, job and money mule spam touched the highest level in the spam space at 0.31%, higher from 0.23% recorded in September 2008.

Security experts said that the money mule scams involve e-mails offering job as commissions or independent contractors to process rebates which seem transactions made at legitimate companies. Those people who applied for the jobs are asked to furnish their bank account information and directed to wire money which is deposited in their accounts though Western Union or drop boxes.

Instead of processing legitimate rebates, the process is designed to transfer stolen money from one country to another through actual bank accounts.

Sherstobitoff further said that these attacks are easy to launch once the e-mail addresses are accessed. The risk of being caught is very little, while payoffs can be tremendous, as reported by CNETNews on November 20, 2008.

Related article: Spammers Continue their Campaigns Successfully

» SPAMfighter News - 12/6/2008