Money mule
A person whose bank account is used to receive and move criminal proceeds, whether knowingly, unwittingly, or under coercion.
Mules are the seam between a scam and the laundering that follows it. Money leaves a victim’s account and has to land somewhere that a bank will not immediately freeze, and mule accounts are that somewhere.
Most mules are recruited, not born criminal. The recruitment pitch is usually a job — “payment processing”, “financial agent”, “work from home” — and sometimes a romance. Others are coerced, and a growing number are students and new arrivals whose accounts are rented for a fee. Being a mule is a criminal offence in most jurisdictions regardless of whether the person understood what they were doing, which is why “they said it was legitimate” is not the defence people expect it to be.
Where it shows up
- Job and task scams — Work that costs money instead of paying it — and sometimes makes you a money mule without telling you.
- Romance scams — A relationship built to be spent — where the first request for money is small, urgent, and framed as a crisis.
- Business email compromise — Someone reads a real payment conversation from inside a real mailbox, then joins it with different bank details.
On the laundering side
how mule networks are structured on our sibling site, Clean on Paper.