Many people have criticised the police for being weak and inactive in cases of bank deposit theft, where they can find out information about the recipient but cannot arrest them.
According to police sources, in cases of internet fraud, police can only take action against those involved, but generally the money withdrawn cannot be traced back. The main reason for this is that once the beneficiary’s money has been transferred to the fraudster’s bank account, the fraudster can withdraw the money in as little as five minutes.
Even if the police do find out the identity of the recipients of the bank accounts, most of them are money mules, i.e. ordinary people who rent out their bank accounts to the fraudsters. The people who rent out bank accounts are generally unaware that they are being used for fraudulent purposes. The police can only deal with these money mules and cannot trace the money back.
Over past five years, National Bank has blocked more than 500,000 bank accounts suspected of being used for fraud and suspicious transactions. Money mule bank account brokers have more than 2,000 bank accounts that are readily available for use by fraudsters.
The agents offer lucrative bonuses to attract young people to rent out their bank accounts, who are duped by the scams to make a quick buck. One agent already has over 2,000 bank accounts, if there were 50 agents it would be difficult to estimate the number of bank accounts they have.
This is why the national banks seem helpless in the face of internet fraud, and often the police find that the bank account owners are just money mules and not the real masterminds behind the fraud syndicate when they solve the fraud cases.
In recent cases of bank deposit theft in the country, many people have accused the police and banks of doing nothing, knowing which bank account the victims’ deposits were transferred to, but being unable to arrest them or return their deposits.
In fact, the fraudsters used to transfer the victim’s money to the bank account of the money mule and then transferred the money from the bank account of the money mule to a bank account abroad. It is difficult for the police to retrieve these funds that have been transferred abroad.
