A scammer has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for laundering over US $4.5 million obtained by targeting businesses and the elderly with Business Email Compromise (BEC) and romance fraud scams.
Malachi Mullings, a 31-year-old from Sandy Springs, Georgia, was charged with opening 20 bank accounts in the name of a sham company, The Mullings Group LLC, to launder millions of dollars generated through fraudulent activity between 2019 and July 2021.
Some of the money that Mullings processed had been defrauded from "numerous individual victims" who had fallen foul of romance scams. Several of the victims targeted by the classic social-engineering trick were elderly, a group that is particularly prone to being targeted by romance scammers due to their relative vulnerability and the increased likelihood that they will have access to not insubstantial retirement savings.