The European Union police agency Europol, Eurojust and the European Banking Federation (EBF), and law enforcers from 26 countries, have run their third coordinated global action against money muling; the European Money Mule Action ‘EMMA3’. During an ‘action week’ from November 20 to 24, some 159 people were arrested across Europe, 409 were interviewed by law enforcement and 766 money mules were identified. The authorities say that EMMA3 has evolved from previous editions towards targeting not only the money mules, but also their organisers. This resulted in 59 recruiters/organisers being identified.
Money mules are recruited by criminal organisations as money laundering intermediaries to receive and transfer illegally obtained funds between bank accounts and/or countries. This illicit money muling helps fund other forms of organised crime, such as drug dealing, human trafficking and online fraud.
With the support of 257 banks and private-sector partners, 1719 money mule transactions were reported, with total losses amounting to almost 31 million euros. Among those money mule transactions, more than 90pc were linked to cyber-related crimes, such as phishing, online auction fraud, Business Email Compromise (BEC) and CEO fraud. For the first time, romance scams and holiday fraud (booking fraud) were reported by law enforcement. Also, an increasing role of cryptocurrency (Bitcoin) transactions was identified in the money laundering schemes used by the criminals.
The third EMMA week is the continuation of a project under the umbrella of the EMPACT Cybercrime Payment Fraud Operational Action Plan, designed to combat online and payment card fraud, and led by the Netherlands. Building on the first and second operations, EMMA3 saw the participation of law enforcement from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Moldova, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the United States Secret Service (USSS). Europol and Eurojust organised various operational and coordination meetings in The Hague.
