“Earn Cash by Lending Us Your Bank Account” — the Social Media Posts Recruiting Students as Money Mules

The pitch is casual and friendly. A post or a DM promises a few hundred in cash for “letting a business use your account” for a couple of weeks, or a one-off payment to hand over your card and PIN or your online banking login. Sometimes it comes from a stranger with a flashy lifestyle; sometimes from someone at your own school or college who was recruited first.

The money that comes through your account is stolen — from fraud victims, other scams, or crime. Running it through accounts that belong to ordinary young people, with no criminal history, is how it is laundered before it disappears overseas or into crypto.

The recruiters target students and young people deliberately: new accounts, little money, little experience of what banks check for, and a sense that it is a harmless side hustle. It is not. When the fraud is traced, the trail ends at the account holder.

The cost comes later and lasts years: closed accounts, frozen balances, fraud markers that block phone contracts, student loans and rental checks, demands to repay what the victims lost, and in many cases criminal charges.