Someone wants to pay money into my account — is that legal?

Nobody advertises this as crime. It arrives as a job — payment processing, a financial agent role, helping a new online friend whose account is frozen, or a favour for someone in your family's church or community. The money moving through the account is the proceeds of other people's fraud, and the account holder is the part of the chain the police can find.

Safety

Step by step

1. Recognise the recruitment shapes.A remote job that involves receiving and forwarding payments. A social media post offering easy money for the use of an account. A romantic partner you have never met asking you to receive a payment. A friend who says their own account is frozen. All the same thing.
2. Understand what you would be charged with.Not fraud but money laundering, under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. The offence covers acquiring, using or transferring criminal property, and it applies where you suspected as well as where you knew.
3. Understand the consequences that are not criminal.Banks close mule accounts. A marker is recorded with the national fraud prevention service and is visible to other banks and lenders for years, which makes opening an account, getting a mortgage or passing employment vetting genuinely difficult.
4. Refuse plainly, and do not negotiate.You do not need to explain. Anyone who presses after a refusal — particularly with threats or with a story about how much they need it — is confirming what it is.
5. Never give anyone your card, PIN or online banking login.Handing over the means of access is treated the same way as making the payments yourself, and it is a term of every UK bank account that you do not do it.
6. If it has already started, stop and go to your bank yourself.Do not send anything further, do not withdraw what is there, and contact your bank directly and explain. Coming forward before the bank finds it is materially better than being found, and it is what the police and the banks say they want.
7. Report it to Action Fraud too.Or Police Scotland on 101 in Scotland. Keep every message from whoever recruited you — that is the evidence of how it happened.
8. Get advice if you are being threatened.People who are pressured into this are often threatened afterwards. Tell the police. Being coerced is a factor that matters, but only if it is on record.

Tips

• Students and 17-to-24-year-olds are the most heavily targeted group in the UK, usually through social media posts promising a few hundred pounds for the use of an account.
• Romance fraud victims are frequently converted into mules without ever being told what is happening. If someone you have never met in person asks you to receive money, that is the point to stop.
• A legitimate employer never needs your personal bank account to move client money. Businesses have business accounts.

Common mistakes

• Believing a small commission makes it a job — The commission is what makes it laundering rather than a favour. It is the classic structure and the courts see it constantly.
• Assuming a young person cannot be prosecuted — Under-18s are prosecuted, and the fraud database marker applies regardless of age. It follows them into adult banking.

Questions people ask