Thursday, June 03, 2004

Standard rate of commission?

Have you been a victim of the Russian mafia? This is a question
Sydney's "The Daily Telegraph" asked 1 June (pg 13) in a story about
Westpac customers who had been duped into visiting bogus internet
pages and revealing their account, security numbers and passwords.
According to the report, the bank is about to start reimbursing an
unknown number of its customers several million dollars. The scam was
apparently engineered by the Russian mafia. So why are the Russians
targetting Australia? Who are the "mules" - "individuals recruited
with offers of a 10 per cent cut" of the action - who withdrew the
money from the halfway accounts where the victims' funds had been
transferred and forwarded it to Russia. And have any been caught?
And if not, how could anyone know what their cut was? Or is 10% the
standard rate of commission?

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