April 20 2016
A woman from a country town in Tasmania has been charged with laundering money for international crime syndicates in a case involving more than $3 million. It is alleged the 54-year-old woman from Magra, in the Derwent Valley, opened bank accounts in Hobart between February 2014 and February 2015. Detective Sergeant Gen Hickman from Tasmania Police said in that time more than $455,000 was credited, then transferred or withdrawn from her accounts.
“It was quite sophisticated. It started off as a romance scam,” she said. The woman then persuaded family members to help transfer $1.7 million out of Australia, police said. She was finally intercepted attempting to deposit a further $1 million into one of her accounts.
Police have labelled her a “money mule” and said the crime was becoming more common in Australia. “A lot of the time people will get scammed into being money mules, it’s not necessarily something that’s deliberate,” Detective Sergeant Hickman said. “I will give you an example: if you’ve got a little old lady who is getting scammed out of $10,000, she’ll go and deposit that money into the account of a money mule. “The money mule will then withdraw that money and send it a number of different ways to the criminal. “It’s all about hiding the criminal’s identity and hiding the criminal’s location.”