On the 29th of April, The Guardian posted an article called “Police Scotland warns of rise in teens targeted as money mules ”. The Guardian usually uses factual information, but the way their articles are written has a slightly left center bias. Although the Guardian has a slight bias, I do not see a bias in this article. This article looks at a report from the Scottish Police’s Organised Crime and Counter Terrorism Unit (OCCTU). In this article the Guardian talks about the Scottish Police’s reports of “money mules”. These “money mules” are “individuals [that] are tricked” into laundering money for cybercrime gangs. These gangs trick these individuals, who are usually teenagers, into believing that they are working for a legitimate financial organization, who buys and sells technology. Many purchases these “money mules” will make are laptops, phones, and other technological equipment, which they will then send to the organization. The number of “money mules” has increased by 26% between January 2018, and September 2018, and has increased even more so in 2019. The Guardian ends the article with some examples of anti-fraud systems that have been set up on websites such as Pay.UK’s Mule Insights Tactical Solution (MITS), along with Vocalink.
From this article on, I have decided to shift towards the manipulation of innocents for the sake of cybercrime, and I think the manipulation of teenagers into commiting a crime with – in Scotland a 14 year sentence, is pretty low if you ask me. I believe that both Police Scotland, and The Guardian do a pretty good job at describing how these “money mule” scams work, going into detail from the recruitment process, to how teens cannot get out of these scams usually. I believe that a support system needs to be set up for these teenagers like a hotline for example. This is because of the fact that in many cases these teens’ “family [have been threatened] when they have tried to back out”. I believe that although The Guardian does a good job with educating their readers, I hope that in a future article they could cover how you actually deal with a “money mule” if for example a family member is forced into one of these positions, as I think this information would be important to regular readers, as well as myself. As I said before, I have decided to shift the focus of my articles towards the manipulation of innocents, as I have found some interesting articles, and hope I can educate you a little bit more.
Cybercrime Blog 