Fraudulent job offers target students

A study by Financial Fraud Action UK (FFA UK) has revealed the widespread nature of fraudulent job offers which target 11 percent of students and which could put students at the risk of a ten year sentence.

The job offers attempt to recruit students as ‘money mules’, using their bank accounts to money-launder thousands of pounds to criminal gangs abroad.

Very little is known about the consequences of being a ‘money mule’. Only 11 percent of students identified the possibility of a prison sentence of up to ten years. Other consequences include the freezing of students’ bank accounts and difficulty in opening new accounts in the future.

Students are often offered jobs online under the titles of ‘money transfer agent’, ‘payment processing agents’ or ‘administration assistants’ for salaries of hundreds of pounds a week.

Under the financial pressures of student living and increased tuition costs, students are vulnerable in finding themselves lured into becoming ‘money mules’.

FFA UK revealed that 61 percent of students admitted to being more likely to respond to easy-money jobs as a result of increased costs of studying.

Almost half of the students who received such job offers admitted to have considered accepting the work, with 19 percent going on to become ‘money mules’. From statistical sampling, it is estimated that over 47,000 nationwide could become unwitting money-launders.

Dave Carter, an investigator from FFA UK, said: “What might initially seem an attractive method of boosting your income whilst studying is in reality the work of determined international criminals aiming to turn students into an unwitting army of accomplices to fraud.

“These new figures demonstrate the gap between perceptions of the public and the real seriousness and criminality of this conduct.

“Whether through naivety or ‘willful blindness’ to the consequences, students need to reject any approach for their bank account to be used in this way.”

Mr. Carter also told the BBC: “…you are taking almost all the risk on behalf of the criminal. That’s why they ask – the money mules are the ones most likely to be caught.”

Though it is revealed that students from other universities have been affected, Peter Dunn, a spokesperson for the University said that he was “not aware [of the ‘money muling’ situation] being an issue here”.

Similarly, Sarah Treadwell Jones, a spokesperson for FFA UK, said that they did not know of any cases in which Warwick students had been affected.