Money mules have already been an inseparable part of the underground ecosystem. And while others try to hide their activities by
outsourcing their hosting needs to botnet masters partitioning their botnets, the experienced ones apply a decent level of OPSEC (operational security) by establishing a trust based model based on recommendations in order to even consider letting you register for their services. Their geographical location not only reflects the average time it would take to take action against their activities and expose yet another extensive network of fraudulent operations, but also, has the potential to increase or decrease the commissions that the mules take based on the risk factor of getting caught.
There are several different types of money mules, those serving themselves, and those offering their services to others, in this particular case, we have a money mules syndicate that's been operating since 2002, and is only serving the high profile customers. What happens when such a money mule syndicate (naturally) starts vertically integrating by offering value-added services like credit card balance checking and date of birth lookups? Profits apparently increase, since the syndicate is actively recruiting and is currently looking for 20 to 30 mules -- their current staff is said to be approximately 100 people -- to cash out anything from bank account logins, Paypal accounts, to stolen credit card data. Here's a translated description of the service :
"Who we are?
- First place at (cyber crime community) top list of trusted service providers for 2008
- We serve the big guys only since 2002
- We never scam, in business since 2002 without a single scam complaint
- We look for you, you don't look for us
- We offer outstanding working conditions and high commissions
Who you should be?
- Dedicated person with experience in the field
- Have been in the business for at least 6 months
- Have been recommended by at least 1 person from (cybercrime community) and from (cybercrime community)
- You take 45% commission of the processed check, minimal amount is $3000
- You pay a membership fee
In the next two months we draw the command of 20-30 people who will most satisfy our requirements. For the selected team will be Paradise conditions:
- Instant payment (a few hours after delivered)
- Large numbers to drop service in the USA and the UK (30)
- Individual drop in the number of large islands
- 3-5 fresh weekly drop
- Round-the-clock support"
In case some of their customers get scammed -- appreciate the irony here as scammers compensate the scammers getting scammed by the scammer's outsourced personnel -- by some of their money mules, the service is offering compensation for the stolen goods/amount of money, clearly speaking for the revenues it is to prone to be generating. OPSEC (Operational Security) has been taking place across high-profile cybercrime communities during the last quarter, mostly in response to their increasing awareness that in the very same way they keep track of the major anti-fraud features implemented across their services of (ab)use, those implementing them could be monitoring them as well.
