Canberrans are being urged to look out for signs that their partners only love them for their bank account, after a national anti-money laundering crackdown has identified victims of romance scams.
Issuing the warning, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said 15 Australians, who thought they had found love, had been identified as money mules under the national campaign.
AFP Commander of Cybercrime Operations, Chris Goldsmid said a money mule was someone who transferred illicit money on behalf of someone else, usually members of criminal syndicates.
Commander Goldsmid said that some criminals were preying on the lonely or using the online environment to trick Australians to unwittingly commit money laundering offences.
He said that unlike typical romance scams, which involved victims losing money, people who agreed to transfer money on behalf of others could receive a profit themselves.
“Criminals will invest a significant amount of time – sometimes years – building what seems to be a legitimate relationship with their victim,” Commander Goldsmid said.
“They will express their love for the victim and in some cases, promise marriage but will often have a complicated story about why they cannot meet in person,” he said.
“Once they’ve gained their victim’s trust, the criminal will ask them to set up a new bank account, or will transfer money into their existing account with a request to forward the funds offshore to people claimed to be their friends, family or businesses.”
Commander Goldsmid said the criminal would generally give the victim extra money as a gift and to help strengthen their trust.
He said people should question why someone needed to use their bank account to transfer money offshore, rather than doing it themselves.
“Criminals want to use someone else’s legitimate Australian bank accounts to obfuscate the flow of money and hide their illegal tracks,” he said.
“Money mules need to understand that the funds they’re moving are proceeds from serious criminal activities, such as drug sales, the black market firearms trade or cyber scams, and this money will be going to violent, transnational crime syndicates.”
Commander Goldsmid warned that criminals didn’t discriminate when choosing their victims, saying anyone could be a target and criminals would use a range of extravagant excuses to pull on their victim’s heart strings.
He said anyone who believed they had been lured into being a money mule should report it to a Report Cyber website and notify their banks immediately.
Report Cyber can be accessed at this PS News link.
