A part-time job for the summer is a great way for students and others seeking to top up their income, but while there are plenty of legitimate options, some could lead to serious consequences.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Office of Customer Education and Outreach has issued a warning about scammers who target summer job seekers and coerce them into accepting and making payments from their own bank accounts, digital wallets, or spot-market crypto trading accounts.
Criminal gangs often rely on those who do not realise they are doing anything wrong, believing their actions are helping a friend or love interest, or that it’s just part of their job duties.
“Young people looking for summer jobs may be just looking for part-time income and could be attracted to offers that require being online a few hours a day,” said OCEO Director Melanie Devoe. “Unfortunately, they could become unwitting accomplices to money laundering or what the criminals call ‘money mules,’ and that association could land them in jail.”
The CFTC is part of an international coalition to disrupt money laundering networks. In 2024, the annual Money Mule Initiative has taken action against more than 3000 money mules with criminal charges against 24 people, according to U.S. Department of Justice figures.
Crypto assets are frequently involved in the ‘work’ that money mules are tasked with. They could be told to convert cash to a blockchain using bitcoin kiosks, for example, or by accepting large payments into their crypto wallet and then distributing the assets to multiple smaller wallets, a practice known as smurfing.
Relationship or financial grooming frauds are also common with a 2024 paper by University of Texas researchers John Griffin and Kevin Mei, “How Do Crypto Flows Finance Slavery? The Economics of Pig Butchering,” revealing that an estimated $75 billion has moved through digital wallets in these scams.
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