‘Money Mule’ Gangs Turn to Bitcoin ATMs

Fraudsters who hack corporate bank accounts typically launder stolen funds by making deposits from the hacked company into accounts owned by ‘money mules,’ willing or unwitting dupes recruited through work-at-home job scams. The mules usually are then asked to withdraw the funds in cash and wire the money to the scammers. Increasingly, however, the mules are being instructed to remit the stolen money via Bitcoin ATMs.
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I recently heard from a reader in Canada who said she’d recently accepted a job as a customer service officer for a company called LunarBay. This company claims to be a software development firm, and told this reader they needed to hire people to help process payments for LunarBay’s clients.
LunarBay’s Web site – Lunarbay[dot]biz – claims the company has been in business for several years, and even references a legitimate business by the same name in the United Kingdom. But the domain name was registered only in late August 2016, and appears to have lifted all of its content from a legitimate Australian digital marketing firm called Bonfire.

This post was published at Krebs on Security on September 29, 2016.