Catching Money Mules ft. Mark Rober
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters cite it as the companion to Rober's glitter bomb video and as an example of US-based mule networks, including mules using rented Airbnbs to receive cash from scam victims.
Recommended by 3 people across 3 different months, 2021 to 2026.
What it is
Jim Browning collaborates with Mark Rober to investigate money mules, the people who collect scam proceeds in the US, keep a cut and forward the rest to scammers. Using Rober's glitter bomb 3.0 and access to scammers' computers, they track down mules and show how the scam cash pipeline works.
Cited in 1 Wikipedia article, including Jim Browning (YouTuber).
What people said
Recommends Shank · 2021-03 · Hacker News · on “Glitterbomb Trap Catches Phone Scammer (who gets arrested)”
The accompanying video from Jim Browning’s channel is also quite good: [this video] It seems to me that the underlying scams will just keep popping up without enforcement from the India side. The fact that there’s a classic money laundering operation happening in the US is interesting, but also the easiest way to draw the attention of the US authorities.
Recommends ipython · 2021-04 · Hacker News · on “FCC finally starts tackling America's robocall scourge”
This is exactly the point. I happen to have a landline which somehow is associated with a demographic profile of a senior citizen. I’ve had this number for over a decade now. The number of scam calls targeting seniors is staggering. Of the 200-300 spam robocalls I receive every month, about 50-80 are blocked by my cell phone (the landline rings to my cell) and I also subscribe to nomorobo on the landline, which I assume blocks even more. Still, that’s some 200 calls that make it through even with two levels of blocking. The scams are terrifying- serious sounding people on the line saying your social security number will be cancelled and you will be arrested unless you speak immediately to an
Recommends Barbing · 2026-08 · Hacker News · on “Creepy Crawlies”
Imagine proving you have no financial incentive to get on the whitelist. Reminded of the mules renting Airbnbs to use as USA-based delivery locations (tricking grandma into FedExing cash for one scam or another) - [LINK] (probably Jim Browning + Mark Rober specifically [this video] ) But! Using a network of real ID-checked humans to scrape the web, what would that be--half a billion times harder than Firecrawl or whatever they use today? Too bad it's dead in the water today because so many (like me) hate the idea so much. Perhaps a biometric dongle (retinal-scanning orb :-/ ) that the staunchest privacy hawks stamp with their seals of approval because it's somehow nearly impossible to go horribly