Banks find almost 1000 mule accounts operating in NZ
Wednesday, 20 March 2024
Banks launched a joint effort to crack down on “mule” accounts in December.
Almost 1000 of the accounts, used by criminals to move money around, have since been identified.
While those efforts appear to be working, New Zealanders are still being scammed out of more than $1 million a month.
A crackdown on scammers’ use of bank accounts to move stolen money has found almost 1000 “mule” accounts operating in New Zealand.
Banks launched a joint effort to identify mule accounts in December and had found almost 1000 by February, New Zealand Banking Association chief executive Roger Beaumont said.
A “money mule” is someone who transfers or moves illegally acquired money on behalf of someone else.
“Mule account owners may be complicit with the criminals by receiving and making payments on their behalf, or unwittingly allowing access to their account for the fraudsters to make those transactions,” Beaumont said.
“Identifying and sharing information on mule accounts helps break an important link in the chain that scammers use to move stolen money.”
Although banks had previously shared some information on money mules, that was now happening faster, he said.
“Banks targeting mule accounts is working.”
However, statistics released by Cert NZ on Monday showed New Zealanders were still being scammed out of more than $1 million a month, despite a fall in both reported scams and losses.
The latest numbers from the government cyber-security agency show Kiwis lost $3.6m to cyber crime in the last quarter of 2023, a 24% decrease on the previous three months. There were 1881 reports of cyber crime over the same period, down 12%.
But the decline didn’t mean scammers were resting, Cert NZ director Rob Pope.
A campaign of phone calls, targeting immigrants from China, sparked an increase in reports in that category. The purpose of the calls wasn’t clear, but their “sheer volume” suggested there would be hundreds of unreported calls which could have tripped people up, Pope said.
“Phishing, whether it's via email, text message or phone call, remains the biggest category of all cyber incidents, and one we see on a daily basis.”
Cert NZ’s statistics showed total financial losses of $18.3m in 2023, roughly in line with the average over the last six years, while the number of reports fell 3% to 7935.
“While the lower numbers for 2023 in total may seem like a good thing, we know that underreporting is still happening,” Pope said.
“There are also individuals suffering from large financial losses to these criminals as well as numerous businesses being targeted with ransomware and email harvesting.”
“Some of the wider, catch-all phishing campaigns we are seeing will undoubtedly result in more targeted attacks in the future.”
Meanwhile, Beaumont said banks had more work in the pipeline to fight cyber crime. That included bringing in a “confirmation of payee” account name checking service, which would allow anyone making an online payment to see the name of the account they were paying.
“This will help people check who they’re making a payment to and may help identify payments to scammers.
“It will also help people avoid making mistaken payments to the wrong account. It’s a useful double-check when making payments.”
Designing, building and implementing the service would be a complex process, but the aim was to begin rolling it out by the end of the year.
Banks were also removing weblinks from text messages, a practice often used by scammers to gain access to people’s bank accounts.
“To help reduce this risk, banks are removing links from texts to customers. Some banks are already there, with others following as soon as they can,” Beaumont said.