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The Rise of Money Launderers on Snapchat and Instagram | Crimewave - YouTube

Channel: VICE

[0]

Everyone wants to be the next celebrity,

[1]

everyone wants to be the next popping Insta model,

[3]

and you just need the money.

[5]

Fifteen racks [£15,000] right there.

[6]

This is all it takes to get them excited.

[8]

-OK. -No, no, no, no, no.

[10]

Too far, blud.

[11]

With fraud and scamming on the rise,

[13]

criminal gangs are always on the lookout

[15]

for people willing to lend them their bank accounts

[18]

to receive and withdraw the unlawful cash.

[21]

The people whose bank accounts are being used by these fraudsters

[24]

are called money mules.

[25]

They said within three, four days,

[27]

there’ll be, like, four grand in your account,

[29]

and you can have half.

[30]

But why would people let criminals use their bank account

[33]

when it could result in paying the price for someone else’s crime?

[36]

More often than not, this presents a red flag for banks,

[39]

which can get you blacklisted and done for money laundering,

[43]

which can land you in jail for up to 14 years.

[46]

I want to investigate this new crime trend

[48]

by speaking to the police,

[50]

the victims, and also the recruiters

[52]

manipulating people online to launder cash.

[56]

[CRIMEWAVE]

[59]

[MONEY MULES]

[63]

I’m with Banks and Shanks,

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two fraudsters who don’t want their crimes traced back to them.

[68]

So instead, they recruit money mules.

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They’re meeting up with one of them,

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who’s just received money from their latest bank fraud

[74]

into his account.

[76]

Got a cut for you.

[78]

It’s yours, bro.

[80]

As payment for letting them use his bank details or deets,

[83]

they’re giving him a cut and returning his square,

[86]

which is roadman for bank card.

[87]

How did you meet Banks and Shanks?

[89]

-Through Snapchat, you know? -Snap.

[90]

Literally through a post.

[92]

Ever since that, I found out there was an easy way to make money.

[95]

Ever since then, we’ve been doing business.

[98]

And are you nervous about the risks involved and all of that?

[101]

It is what it is, innit?

[102]

That’s how the game goes.

[103]

When you need certain things,

[105]

you have to do what you have to do.

[107]

So how much did you just give my man?

[109]

I gave him two and a half bags [£2,500].

[110]

Two and a half bags?

[112]

So what do you think he does with that money next?

[114]

The sky’s the limit.

[115]

He can do anything with it.

[116]

If he wants to go out and spend it all on designer, he can do that.

[119]

If he wants to save it and be smart, it’s up to him.

[122]

Banks, Shanks, and their mule look like bredrens,

[125]

but really they’re fully using him

[127]

and could get my man blacklisted by banks,

[130]

ruin his credit rating, and even worse,

[132]

he could get arrested.

[135]

Do you ever tell the money mules the risks beforehand?

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To some people.

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Some people, sometimes, I don’t care.

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If I don’t care, I’m going to speak to you in a certain way

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so you don’t feel like you have a choice

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and you feel coerced into it.

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-Manipulated. -Nah, don’t say that, fam.

[150]

-Knock that off. -It’s the truth, though.

[152]

Nah, fam, you can’t say that.

[154]

Banks and Shanks almost exclusively recruit their mules

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through social media.

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Most likely need something to entice them,

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so here we’ve got some money.

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What, you’ve got some cash on you now?

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Yeah, bro.

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Oh, snap.

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Raas!

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Ten...

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Wait, how much is that, do you know?

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-Fifteen. -Oh, jeez.

[175]

Fifteen bags [£15,000].

[176]

Then you want to take a video.

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Take a little video.

[181]

Put a little caption, “Who wants to make money

[184]

[in] three to five days?”

[185]

Make them know that it’s quick,

[187]

it’s easy, and it’s risk-free.

[189]

It’s... it’s risk-free? Mate, you know it’s--

[192]

I say it’s risk-free, but it kind of is.

[195]

Police ain’t really doing anything about it, really.

[199]

So where exactly did all this cash come from?

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Doing what I do.

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Doing what I do best.

[206]

Man can’t even get into detail, fam.

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Jesus.

[210]

I’m guessing it’s something illegal.

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Probably.

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-So you made a post. -Hmm.

[217]

-Someone’s replied. -Yeah.

[219]

What's the next steps from that?

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The next steps from that is,

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tell them to send me their date of birth, full name,

[224]

address, phone number,

[226]

picture of your ID.

[228]

And then probably within the next day or two,

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we get someone to go down, get the square,

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drop it off to me, load the account,

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and then put it through crypto,

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or go to the bank, withdraw it,

[240]

give them their percentage,

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all go home happy.

[243]

The reason why we put it through crypto sometimes

[245]

is because if the Feds want to try and track down the money,

[247]

it’s through crypto,

[248]

so it’s what the word is, cryptic.

[252]

So it’s just harder to trace, innit?

[253]

Harder to trace. That’s what it’s all about.

[255]

Pretty much anonymous.

[256]

Not 100 percent,

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but better than going into the bank and asking to withdraw 5K.

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What would you do if you send it to someone’s account

[266]

and then it already gets locked, like, the Feds are already on it,

[269]

and it’s just trapped?

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If it’s trapped, it’s trapped.

[272]

That’s a different story to if the person has taken the money out

[276]

without my permission.

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Take it out without my permission,

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people’s houses are getting, you know?

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So it’s pure violence if they take your money.

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Yeah.

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Well now, you need to take this away from me

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before I get too carried away, bro.

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These are young guys, just teenagers,

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walking around with £15,000 in a book bag like it’s nothing.

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They don’t see the repercussions.

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They don’t see the possible jail time.

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They just want to make money fast.

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In 2020, there were almost 26,000 suspected money mule cases in the UK

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involving 14 to 30-year-olds.

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Sky News has reported that people younger than 25

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are six times more likely to fall victim to criminals on social media

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than over-50s.

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I’m checking the apps to see just how easy it is

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to get coerced into money muling.

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I've just made a fake Snapchat and a fake Instagram account,

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and on my Instagram, I've portrayed myself as being into flashy clothes,

[334]

expensive jewelry,

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liking partying and going out.

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And I’ve typed in in the Explore page, “Quick cash,”

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and I followed every single page that’s come up,

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and I’ve started DMing potential recruiters,

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asking them how do I get involved, basically.

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I’ve done the same for Snapchat.

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I’ve typed in “quick cash,” “make money,”

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and one of them’s even replied to me now,

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saying, “Who’s this?”

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Oh, mate.

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Within minutes, I get a list of information

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the recruiter wants from me.

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This happened all within the space of 10, 15 minutes.

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This guy obviously doesn’t care about

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whether I’m going to get away with this,

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so I could potentially get 14 years.

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I’m just being used.

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But not all money mules are recruited on social media.

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Many get persuaded by friends and family.

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So you’ve been a money mule.

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So do you mind speaking about your experience

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and how they approached you?

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I got approached by a family member.

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They had done it a few times with someone that approached them.

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I sort of got pressured by that family member to do it.

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When I agreed to do it, they said, “Ah, give me your bank details,

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give me your card, give me your pin number.”

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Obviously, nowadays,

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you would never give your bank details to anyone, would you?

[421]

You know what I mean?

[422]

But I did that and they said,

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“Ah, leave it with us.

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Within three, four days, there’ll be £4,000 in your account,

[431]

and you can have half.”

[433]

With that family member I was doing it with,

[435]

they was going to take a little bit.

[437]

That was the sort of deal with it.

[439]

The money went into the account,

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and whoever had my card bought two grand’s worth of gold.

[446]

That’s what it says on the statement, or something like that.

[449]

So obviously that money came out so quick

[452]

that it alerted the bank, do you know what I mean?

[455]

So the bank obviously put a block on it.

[457]

So that person took their half out,

[460]

but the other half that was supposed to be mine

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and the person I was doing it with

[464]

obviously got frozen, you get me?

[467]

So that’s how it went wrong.

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So what was the outcome of that?

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When it happened, they froze my account, first of all.

[474]

I had a letter come through the post,

[476]

and it was a debt letter, innit.

[478]

And they said, “You owe £4,000.”

[481]

And I said to them, “Well, have you called the police?”

[484]

And they said, “No, we haven’t done an investigation.”

[487]

So basically, I said to them,

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“How do you know it wasn’t fraud on my account?”

[492]

After that, they wiped that off,

[494]

and three years later, they sent me a £25 check

[499]

and apologized.

[500]

Oh!

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For closing my bank.

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Because they couldn’t actually prove it was fraud.

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I didn’t make nothing from it. I didn’t profit from it.

[508]

Stupid mistake.

[509]

I know some people who’ve done £50,000,

[511]

and that’s a whole different ball game, innit?

[513]

Four grand, that’s alright,

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but £30,000 or £50,000, £60,000, that’s when things happen, innit?

[519]

So at the time that they approached you when you were younger,

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did you know that you could possibly get up to 14 years

[524]

for money laundering?

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Fucking-- I had no clue.

[527]

14 years?

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Like, I probably would have come out of jail in my late 30s.

[532]

Do you know what I mean? So yeah, I didn’t have a clue.

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Otherwise, you wouldn’t even touch that.

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It’s like murder, do you know what I mean?

[539]

It’s like murder sort of thing, manslaughter shit.

[541]

I think Raphael was extremely lucky.

[543]

He managed to get the 4K that he was asked to launder

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completely wiped from his account,

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and he was even given a £25 check as an apology.

[553]

But in the grand scheme of things,

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I don't believe it was worth it

[557]

because he was still blacklisted from that bank for several years,

[561]

and his credit score was severely affected.

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And it kind of highlights the way that money mules see this crime.

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They see it as low-risk...

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when that’s far from the case.

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The National Crime Agency has set up a special task force

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dedicated to fighting this type of financial crime.

[578]

It’s often international gangs behind these schemes,

[581]

trying to launder their illegal cash.

[583]

So what we’ve got here is a criminal group

[586]

who are carrying out what we call business email compromise.

[588]

They send emails to a company,

[590]

making the company think it’s just a normal supplier,

[593]

saying, “Oh, we’ve changed our bank account this month.”

[595]

So they’re asking this company

[596]

to pay money into a slightly different account.

[598]

The criminals need that account to look absolutely normal,

[601]

so they want a UK account.

[602]

There’s no point having an account in China or Afghanistan—

[605]

that’s going to look dodgy.

[607]

They want it to be a high street bank.

[609]

They want it to look totally normal.

[611]

So to do that, the criminals need to recruit some money mules.

[614]

So firstly, they’ll have a recruiter, a mule herder, a picker,

[618]

whose job will be to go out and find the mules.

[619]

So they might use coercion, they might use force.

[622]

They might threaten young people to do it.

[624]

They might use deception,

[625]

so pretend it’s actually something completely legitimate.

[628]

Or they might just recruit people

[629]

and be completely upfront about what they’re doing,

[631]

and just say, “If you move £500, you get to keep £50.”

[634]

So in this case, you’ve got a recruiter

[637]

who’s forced one person to be involved.

[640]

The money is immediately going into their account.

[642]

And to make it even harder for us to track them down,

[645]

they’re then using two other mules to move the account.

[648]

And then finally, what we’re seeing here

[650]

is the final individual is being asked to transfer all the money

[654]

through a money service business,

[655]

which is a specialist business involved in moving money abroad,

[658]

and the criminals will pick it up.

[660]

So you’ve got a complex transaction web

[663]

that starts with the theft of money

[665]

and ends with some but not all of that money

[668]

going back into the hands of the criminal.

[670]

And they are using a network of mule herders and money mules

[673]

to help them avoid getting caught,

[676]

make the money look clean,

[678]

and get that money out of the country.

[682]

And what are the said consequences of money laundering?

[685]

So if you’re a money mule, you can get arrested,

[688]

you can get prosecuted, you can end up in prison.

[689]

But I think the issue that we’re really worried about

[692]

in terms of consequences

[694]

is if you agree to take part in money laundering,

[696]

and the bank spots it and they seize the money,

[698]

and they freeze the money,

[700]

you might quickly find that you owe a nasty criminal group

[703]

a lot of money,

[704]

and they’re not going to take no for an answer.

[706]

So we are concerned in particular about young people

[710]

who are told that this is an easy way of making money,

[712]

you know, you just go into the bank, move this, no big deal,

[714]

we’ll leave a few quid in your account.

[716]

And all of a sudden, they owe debt to a criminal group,

[720]

and that debt is going to come with interest,

[721]

and they’re not going to be happy if you don’t pay.

[723]

We spend our time hearing victims’ stories,

[726]

where you have people losing their homes

[728]

and losing their livelihoods.

[729]

You’ve got all sorts of cases around people committing suicide

[733]

because they’ve lost their life savings.

[734]

In terms of money muling,

[735]

I think what we want people to understand

[737]

is that they’re just a piece in the chain.

[739]

And they might not see the whole picture,

[741]

but what they’re doing is enabling violence to take place.

[744]

The NCA are focusing their efforts

[746]

on tracking down the gangs and recruiters

[748]

rather than the mules themselves,

[749]

who are often tricked into it.

[751]

But that still leaves young people who fall for these schemes

[754]

exposed to potential violence from criminals,

[756]

not to mention jeopardizing their futures.

[759]

At the moment, it's like mule recruiters can post what they want

[762]

and get away with it.

[763]

It seems like the social media companies themselves

[766]

could be doing a lot more to validate its users

[768]

and regulate its content,

[770]

stopping the recruiters being on the platform in the first place.

[775]

[Instagram told us: “This kind of content is banned on Instagram]

[776]

[and we have removed the accounts in question for violating our policies.]

[777]

[We work closely with the police and invest in people and technology]

[778]

[to keep illegal activity off our app.]

[780]

[We will continue to take strong action wherever possible to remove]

[781]

[and protect our users from this kind of content.“]

[782]

[And Snapchat told us: Our Community Guidelines]

[783]

[prohibit Snapchat being used for any illegal, fraudulent activity]

[784]

[and we remove this type of content and accounts from our platform]

[785]

[when they are reported.]

[786]

[We take proactive steps]

[787]

[to limit the discoverability of search items that could show]

[788]

[accounts participating in any activity that breaks our rules.]

[789]

[The Dedicated Card and Payment Crime Unit]

[790]

[at the City of London Police]

[791]

[is a member of our Trusted Flagger Programme—]

[792]

[a network of partners who have the ability to expedite reports.]

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