You see ads on instagram offering to buy or borrow your bank account for £50... and when they're used for muling guess who it is that gets their account banned and then a CIFAS marker ensuring they can't bank anywhere else? The desperate kid who needed the money, not the actual criminals behind it.
Yet another reason for regulating advertising. Why are these platforms not held liable as accomplices? I can't think of any legitimate reason for an ad to buy/rent someone's bank account.
At least in my experience these aren’t official ads. It’s random sketchy people posting about “business opportunities” with stacks of cash or whatever.
Acting as a mule for money laundering is a crime. They are criminals. They might be young, but the majority of them know they are doing something wrong.
I'm not suggesting they aren't criminals. But there is a spectrum of criminality and I am suggesting they are considerably less so than the leaders of the fraud ring.
These ads are deliberately designed to prey on the desperate, unfortunate or the technically illiterate.
Some of them probably know exactly what they're doing and I have no sympathy, but some of them probably fall into the same category as people falling for Authorised Push Payment fraud.
