No-ID-necessary accounts make Australians an easy target for fraudsters

Sydney Morning Herald

18-05-2025

Online Australian banks are allowing new customers to set up accounts without providing any identification documents, opening the door to scammers funnelling millions of dollars into the hands of criminals.
Australia's biggest banks shut down more than 10,000 bank accounts known as 'mule accounts' in the last financial year because of their suspected links to fraud.
In one case, fraudsters were able to open two bank accounts in the name of the same Sydney woman using her stolen Medicare card number, but without ever providing the card itself.
'We need to have stricter requirements on opening bank accounts … that's very obvious,' Consumer Action Law Centre chief executive Stephanie Tonkin said.
'We hear of cases where, for a single scam, there are multiple – up to eight or 10 mule accounts – being used. The scale of this mule [account] problem is extraordinary,' said Tonkin, who argues banks should be scouring their accounts far more closely for red flags pointing to fraud and mule activity.
While cybercrime experts say Australia's major banks have recently improved detection or prevention of mule accounts, bank transfers were still the most common method of payment to scammers in 2024, representing 44.5 per cent, or $141.7 million, of losses reported to Scamwatch.
Mule accounts can be complicated to detect as they often begin as legitimate accounts that are then taken over or bought by criminals, investigators and analysts say.
Jon Brewer, from the federal government's financial crime intelligence unit, AUSTRAC, said he believed this scenario was more common than bank accounts being fraudulently established using stolen identities.