Standardizing the Money Mule Recruitment Process

Ah, deja vu! How is it possible that the Scope Group money mule recruitment group acting as the employer for the interviewed mule has been "set up in 1990 in New York, the USA by three enthusiasts who have financial education" just like AF-GROUP LLC and its portfolio of brands, whose 30k botnet operations I exposed and took down in May, 2009, next to establishing a direct connection between the botnet and an Ukrainian dating scam agency known as "Confidential Connections"?

Pretty simple - just like the efficiency-centered mentality applied in the template-ization of malware, the ongoing standardization of the money mule recruitment business model is resulting in a bogus brand portfolios using identical web site layouts next to the same copy writing materials offered by a single vendor exclusively working with money mule recruitment organizations only.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=66&tag=money%20mules

Blog:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/09/money_mule_recruitment_101.html

“’Money Mule’ Recruitment Network Exposed”

September 24, 2009, 3:10 pm ET

SNIPPET: “In a blog post earlier this week, Security Fix examined the crucial role of “money mules” — people in the United States who are willingly or unwittingly recruited to help cyber fraudsters steal money from businesses. In this column, we’ll peer a bit deeper into how mules are recruited, and how they often communicate with their employers.”

SNIPPET: “The mule I spoke with said she was hired by a company called the Scope Group Inc., which claimed to be a nearly 20-year-old investment firm operating out of New York. The Scope Group did not return e-mails seeking comment, but there is no listing for a current company by that name in the New York State business register. Also, the company’s Web site is hosted in China, and its domain name — www.scope-group.cn— ends with a Chinese country code. In addition, that domain name was registered on June 25, 2009, just a few weeks before the fraud against Sanford School District was perpetrated.”

Blog:

http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/2009/12/keeping-reshipping-mule-recruiters-on.html

MONDAY, DECEMBER 07, 2009
“Keeping Reshipping Mule Recruiters on a Short Leash”
-Posted by Dancho Danchev

Quote:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2405787/posts

Celebrity-Themed Scareware Campaign Abusing DocStoc
DANCHO DANCHEV - blog ^ | MONDAY, DECEMBER 07, 2009 | Dancho Danchev
Posted on December 11, 2009 3:32:36 PM PST by Cindy

MONDAY, DECEMBER 07, 2009 Celebrity-Themed Scareware Campaign Abusing DocStoc

UPDATE: Docstoc has removed all the participating accounts in this campaign, and is applying additional filtering to undermine its effectiveness.

Last week’s “Celebrity-Themed Scareware Campaign Abusing DocStoc and Scribd” is now exclusively targeting the popular Docstoc document-sharing service. Naturally, this very latest campaign once again offers overwhelming evidence on the inner workings of the cybercrime ecosystem, in this particular case, the connection between the Koobface gang and money mule recruitment campaigns.

(Excerpt) Read more at ddanchev.blogspot.com ...

Blog:

http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/2010/02/keeping-money-mule-recruiters-on-short.html

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 09, 2010
“Keeping Money Mule Recruiters on a Short Leash - Part Two”
Posted by Dancho Danchev

blog:

http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/2010/03/money-mule-recruiters-on-yahoos-web.html

THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2010
“Money Mule Recruiters on Yahoo!’s Web Hosting”
Posted by Dancho Danchev

SNIPPET: “UPDATED: Saturday, March 13, 2010 - Yahoo! Web Hosting abuse just pinged me that “We have investigated the sites and taken the necessary action”.

Just how dumb, or perhaps ingenious is a cybecriminal that would host his money mule recruitment operations using Yahoo!’s Web Hosting services?”

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