Cybercrime, money mules and situational crime prevention: Recruitment, motives and involvement mechanisms

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Abstract

This chapter discusses the literature by providing insight into recruitment processes of money mules and the motives and neutralisation techniques of money mules. It explores the possibilities for situational crime prevention regarding the recruitment of money mules. The chapter describes a brief description of situational crime prevention, the theoretical angle. It analyses the data and methods of 14 Dutch criminal investigations into cybercriminal networks to get insight into the motives and techniques of neutralisation of money mules. The chapter explores the perspective of the recruiters and answers the question of how recruiters find money mules, e.g. by using social contacts and/or specific offender convergence settings. It focuses on the motives and techniques of neutralisation used by money mules and present the main conclusions and opportunities for situational crime prevention. Situational crime prevention cannot only be applied to offline crime, but also to online crime.