Georgia Cyber Fraud Task Force marks 2 Years 

Cyber-enabled crimes cost Georgia residents almost $144 million in 2021, with losses attributed to business email compromise schemes, investment scams, and confidence or romance scams topping the list of frauds.  Nationally, these losses are in the billions.  The Georgia Cyber Fraud Task Force, which investigates and prosecutes these cases, comprises local, state, and federal agencies throughout Georgia, committed to sustained community outreach, as well as training for law enforcement and prosecutors to better respond to cyber-enabled crime.  Cyber-fraudsters perpetrate these scams by utilizing a network of participants who each play an integral part in the success of the scam. One critical actor in these schemes is the “money mule”: the party responsible for opening a U.S. bank account, usually a business account, and accepting proceeds from a variety of frauds and forwarding the funds as directed, often to accounts overseas. The mission of the Georgia Cyber Fraud Task Force (CFTF) is to identify quality leads for investigation of suspected money mules in the Atlanta area and reduce the amount of time and resources necessary to impact those mules through judicial intervention.  Money mules act as a sort of contractor in the economy of cyber-enabled fraud, rather than the perpetrator interacting with a victim. The money flowing into money mule accounts represents proceeds from a variety of fraud types and numerous victims, and the money may flow out to second-tier recipients who remain unaware of one another. The anonymity with which these fraud schemes operate works to the advantage of the perpetrators.  The sheer volume of victims who funnel money into a mule’s account, who may operate more than a dozen bank accounts, poses a daunting obstacle for law enforcement.  Untangling the web of bank accounts associated with a single mule, and the victims who deposited money into those accounts, may require more than a year of law enforcement time and resources.  But focusing investigative efforts on identifying and removing money mules from fraud operations makes it harder for fraudsters to direct victim funds into U.S. bank accounts.  Impacting the ability of fraudsters to move stolen funds reduces the success of these fraud schemes.  Most law enforcement activity is initially victim-centric; a victim contacts their local law enforcement agency to report that they have been defrauded.  But in cyber-enabled fraud schemes the money and the person who received it are rarely in the same location, or the same state, as the victim who reports the crime.  Typically, law enforcement traces the funds to an out-of-state account and then must pass the lead off to law enforcement in that jurisdiction and hope that the investigation continues.  The CFTF is addressing this investigative challenge in two ways: first, by proactively dealing with money mules in our area of responsibility, and second, by taking referrals from law enforcement across the country who have identified funds from their local victims that have landed in bank accounts in our area.  During the past year, the CFTF has continued to refer leads to local and state law enforcement for investigation of money mules.  These leads originate from victim complaints made to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, known as “IC3,” as well as law enforcement leads from around the country through the StopTheMuleGa initiative.  Members of the public should keep in mind that indictments contain only allegations against the individual against whom the indictment is obtained. A defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty, and it will be the government’s burden at trial to prove the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the allegations contained in the indictment.  If you have been the victim of a cyber-enabled fraud scheme such as a business email compromise or a confidence fraud, report the fraud to your bank, your local law enforcement agency, and the Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.IC3.gov.