An enterprising crook has taken to online forums to hawk a universal money mule recruitment site kit to would-be cyber-thieves.
Once they've taken over a victim's account, criminals use money mules to retrieve the stolen funds. The mule then sends it on to the crook using difficult-to-trace methods such as Western Union.
Mules are often unaware that they are involved in anything illegal, duped by fake company sites recruiting "financial managers" to transfer money in exchange for a small commission.
Although bogus sites have been used to lure in mules for years, cyber-security outfit Truster has identified a Russian underground forum member offering crooks an easy-to-use package.
The kit includes a back-end administration system, Web site template, spam e-mail templates, mule correspondence templates and more. The entire package is preconfigured for a fake brokerage company that is searching for "talented people to join our team of professionals."
Etay Maor, fraud prevention solutions manager, Trusteer, says: "Consumers must be made aware of these types of scams and educated about the perils of "work from home" offers that involve money transfers and questionable incoming transactions. As a rule of thumb - if there is any doubt, there should be no doubt!"