The Money Mule Solution: What Every Scam Has in Common
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Global scam losses reached nearly $450 billion in 2025, with AI and deepfakes lowering the barrier for criminals to run convincing fraud operations at scale. Unlike card fraud, authorized push payment (APP) fraud doesn't require a breach — it requires deceiving victims into sending money themselves. The key insight is that while scam tactics constantly evolve, every scam shares one stable element: a mule account where stolen funds land. CYBERA's intelligence approach uses agentic personas to engage directly with active scammers, extracting confirmed mule account details before funds are transferred — providing verified, evidence-backed intelligence rather than probabilistic scoring. Their H2 2025 report found 28% of identified mule accounts remained active 30+ days after first detection, with 51% of European mule accounts sitting at neobanks. Recorded Future integrates this mule intelligence into its Payment Fraud Intelligence product, enabling financial institutions to screen outbound payments against known mule accounts before harm occurs. Regulatory pressure (UK PSR mandates, emerging US/Canada/Australia frameworks) is accelerating the need for proactive, intelligence-led fraud prevention.
Table of contents
The most traceable element of any scam isn't the tactic. It's the mule account.The data confirms how persistent this blind spot is.Catching mule accounts requires a different kind of signal.This is what intelligence-led fraud prevention looks like for scams.Sort: