Scheme with drop cards: what is it and how not to become an assistant to fraudsters
Fraudsters invent various schemes to launder and legalize funds obtained illegally. In many of them, so-called drops are involved. Promising “easy money”, attackers “bring” such people under a number of articles of the Criminal Code, which threatens not only fines, but also quite real terms of imprisonment.
Who are the drops?
Drops are people who, for a reward, give attackers access to their bank cards and accounts. Such means of payment are used as transit to make transfers of different amounts between other accounts. This is necessary for attackers to mislead victims, “confuse the tracks” and make it difficult for law enforcement officers to investigate crimes.
Funds that pass through the drop account can be obtained by criminal means, in particular — trafficking in drugs, people, weapons, etc. Also, drip accounts are often used to evade taxes and move money stolen from other people's accounts.
“Money mules” can be attracted on a permanent basis (when he himself transfers the received funds where they say, reserving a certain percentage) or “one-time” (when a dropper for a one-time fee transfers bank cards issued to him, including PIN codes and access to web banking).
How do attackers look for drops?
Usually, drops are sought among people who seek easy earnings or are in a difficult financial situation, so they are ready to respond even to dubious offers.
The most common way to search for “money mules” are job offers, which you can most often come across in social networks and instant messengers.
Ignore job offers if:
• the description indicates the need to transfer money between accounts;
• there are no other requirements for the candidate (education, work duties, etc.), • attract large incomes with little effort, do not provide for personal contact with the employer, but only through
online services.
Also, attackers can disguise job offers for vacancies in real and well-known companies. Refuse such a “job” if information about the company could not be found on the Internet, or there is no information about work on its official website.
Remember, the main “trigger” of such vacancies, which should force you to refuse cooperation, is the need to transfer funds, no matter at what stage the “employer” tells you about it.
Being a jerk — what does it threaten?
Although dropouts are promised easy and quick earnings, but this is the lowest link in the criminal scheme, which law enforcement officers expose as one of the first to investigate.
A person involved in such schemes can be prosecuted on a par with other participants in the scheme.
In the event of a crime, all financial transactions of “money mules” can be frozen or confiscated, so instead of earning “easy money” - losing one's own.
Even if law enforcement officers have not yet reached the drop, his account can block the financial monitoring of the bank itself and request data on the sources of origin of funds. Of course, such a “money mule” is unlikely to be able to prove the legality of the origin of the funds, so the account will remain blocked.
In addition, participation in criminal schemes is associated with a risk to personal security. Criminal organizations that use droppings can use threats or violence to control their participants.
What to do if I became a dropper?
If a person at some stage realized that he had time to agree to be a dropper, he should contact the cyber police, leaving a statement on the site. This can be done at any time of the day.
And if you have already managed to work with a “money sludge” for some time, we recommend that you stop cooperating with such an “employer”, contact the cyber police, as well as the bank in which the account was involuntarily used for money laundering.
Remember that being a dropper is a very risky temporary activity. A person can be held criminally liable or suffer from “employers”.
National Police of Ukraine
