In November 2024, the BBC ran a story about Darren (not his real name), a 26-year-old from Manchester who was saving to pay for a photographer for a portfolio to help him pursue a modelling career.
Darren had never heard of money mules until he became one. He saw a friend's social media post saying, "Do you want to make quick money today?", with pictures of cars, hands holding £50 notes, holidays. "It was all glitz and glamour and I needed the money," he said.
After exchanging messages with his friend, Darren shared his bank details and £4,000 ($5,000) was put into his account the same day. "I wasn’t used to my bank balance being a four-digit number," he says. Darren said it seemed too good to be true. He would eventually find out that it was.
The bank identified the fraudulent activity. The cash machine swallowed his card and the bank closed his account. According to the BBC, he was put on a blacklist, couldn't have a bank account for up to six years, couldn't get a credit card, a loan or a mortgage.
Behind Darren's story is an epidemic of money mule activity.
In 2024, the UK Banking Consortium - a fraud intelligence-sharing collaboration between the UK’s leading banks - detected a total of £130 million in payments being moved through mule networks. The average network involved 15 mules moving around £7,700 between accounts in more than three banks.
Since the end of 2024, a new ruling from the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) transformed Authorised Push Payment – also known as ‘APP scam’ – reimbursement standards, splitting liability 50:50 between the victim’s bank and the financial institution receiving the funds.
The move has forced a rethink about prevention for all financial institutions and payment providers. It’s no longer enough to focus on money going out. Now, money coming in carries equal liability risk. Millions of daily incoming transactions must be vetted for potential fraud. Failure to do so could hit major banks' bottom line, hard.
Stop the mules, stop the scams
At the epicenter of APP fraud is an army of money mules, employed to launder scammers’ ill-gotten gains. Every scam needs a destination bank account. Money mules are the means by which victim’s money can be collected and then sent onwards through the banking system, legitimising it through each transfer and transaction until the original stolen funds are unrecognisable and untraceable. These mule accounts are largely undistinguishable from genuine customers.
Hidden amongst the banks’ countless millions of current accounts, they lie in wait, ready to enact the instructions from their ‘mule herder’. When the day comes, the funds arrive in the account and are quickly passed on through another bank transfer – sometimes to one recipient, other times to many. And just like that, it’s gone.
So, for major UK banks like Metro Bank, the stakes are high. If they can’t spot and weed out the mules from the millions of genuine transactions being processed daily, they can’t tackle the fraud at its source and protect themselves from incoming APP fraud transfers.
This is why Metro Bank teamed up with LexisNexis Risk Solutions.
"One of the biggest challenges is that not all mule accounts look suspicious at first glance. Some start as normal customer accounts and only later become compromised or complicit in fraudulent activity."
Strength in numbers
LexisNexis Risk Solutions is a global data and analytics provider with a strong track record in helping banks to tackle scams. Using data and fraud insights sourced from its global contributory database of transactional insights, the LexisNexis Digital Identity Network, LexisNexis Risk Solutions is a trusted partner to all of the top ten UK banks, providing advanced analytical techniques and custom models to help them detect and prevent fraud.
An expert team of data scientists worked closely with Metro Bank’s fraud teams, deriving first-hand insight from their investigations that would ultimately help them to configure a solution to deliver optimum performance in spotting mule accounts hidden in their bank.
The smoking guns
Fortunately for the LexisNexis Risk Solutions data science team, there was a rich body of evidence to work with. By closely analysing the patterns of account behaviour seen in known mule accounts, the team was able to build a clear picture of how they operate. They noticed several tell-tale behaviours that set the accounts apart from normal bank customers – digital ‘smoking guns’ that pointed strongly towards mule activity.
Crucially what they found was not one, but three distinct sets of behaviours relating to how the mule had been recruited in the first place. These ranged from individuals that set up accounts for the sole purpose of being a mule, to those that were hitherto normal bank customers. This also made some far easier to spot than others.
From this critical insight, the team at LexisNexis Risk Solutions could draw upon advanced modelling techniques and industry intelligence, using machine learning to deliver a solution that was not only capable of detecting mule activity effectively in near real-time, but do so in a scalable way that could cope with millions of daily transactions and adapt to suit Metro Bank’s evolving requirements.
The Solution: Smarter Fraud Detection with Machine Learning
Metro Bank worked with LexisNexis Risk Solutions to combat this rising threat with a nuanced and highly targeted approach. Together they built a fraud detection using near real-time data analysis to help identify and combat the social media fraudsters.
By leveraging the power of the LexisNexis Digital Identity Network alongside beneficiary account intelligence and advanced machine learning, Metro Bank was able to gain a far clearer picture of potential suspicious activity. Training mule models on specific behaviours allowed Metro Bank to detect accounts with far greater effectiveness than before, allowing the bank to shut down accounts before they could do serious damage.
"By leveraging advanced data analytics, we’ve been able to stop fraudulent transactions in near real-time, which has helped Metro Bank significantly reduce financial losses while protecting their customers."
The Results: A Game-Changer for Fraud Prevention
In just six months, the model flagged over £2.5m in fraudulent payments - a 105% improvement over previous fraud detection methods. These flagged transactions accounted for more than one in five confirmed fraud cases Metro Bank identified during that period.
By stopping these scams early and uncovering the mule accounts, Metro Bank saved millions in potential reimbursement costs under the new PSR rules.
“This is a game-changer for fraud prevention. We’ve not only improved our ability to detect and stop scams, but we’re also ensuring our customers are better protected from financial crime.”
The Bigger Picture
The reality is, no bank is immune to the growing threat of money mules. Without the right monitoring systems in place, financial institutions risk not only significant financial losses but also serious regulatory consequences.
Watch Rob Woods, fraud expert at LexisNexis Risk Solutions explaining the impact of the PSR regulations on the UK banking industry – and beyond.
Watch Rob Woods, fraud expert at LexisNexis Risk Solutions explaining the impact of the PSR regulations on the UK banking industry – and beyond.
Metro Bank’s collaboration with LexisNexis Risk Solutions is proof that tackling fraud head-on, using the latest in machine learning and behavioral biometrics, can make a real difference. By acting early and leveraging advanced fraud detection, banks can protect their customers, safeguard their operations, and stay ahead of ever-evolving financial crime tactics.
Criminals may ask you to receive money into your bank account and transfer it into another account, keeping some of the cash for yourself. If you let this happen, you’re a money mule. You’re involved in money laundering, which is a crime.
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