Practical Fraud Prevention

Chapter 21. Prohibited Items

No soup for you!

Seinfeld¹

In the same way that shell payments (Chapter 20) are used to conceal the source of funds, with prohibited items the trick is to conceal the nature of the item sold. The topics covered in Chapters 9 and 22 are very relevant in considering prohibited items as well. Cryptocurrency is often used to purchase prohibited items because of the increased anonymity associated with cryptocurrency, and some of the stages that might get added into money laundering attempts in order to confuse the trail, as discussed with shell payments (Chapter 20), may be used in this context as well. Account takeover (ATO) or account handover, in particular, can play a role in selling prohibited items because when you’re trying to fly under the radar with illicit goods, it’s very helpful to be selling them from a business that already has a good reputation and has really been selling legitimate goods for some time.

In terms of prohibited items, it’s particularly common to see the type of account handover/takeover whereby a deal is reached to allow the criminals to gain access to the backend of the store in order to use it as a front, while at the same time the legitimate business continues as normal. The business owner is often a willing accomplice, or an unwilling but conscious accomplice (as in communities where it is very hard, and probably unwise, to say no to the local crime organization), but from time to time this scenario also pops ...