Mule Account Detection Rates: 2024 Statistics, Trends, and Analysis

Methodology

These figures draw from six primary and Tier-1 sources.

BioCatch published its "Global Money Mule Networks" white paper in January 2025, covering mule accounts flagged by 257 financial institutions in 21 countries during 2024. That dataset covers institutions deploying BioCatch's behavioral and device intelligence platform, which skews toward larger, technology-forward banks. Their own caveat: these accounts likely represent a fraction of the global total spread across the world's 44,000 financial institutions.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority published a multi-firm review in January 2025 examining how 25 payment services firms and account providers used the National Fraud Database (NFD) between January 2022 and September 2023. It is the closest thing to a regulatory benchmark for detection-to-reporting conversion in the UK market.

Cifas Fraudscape 2025 covers all mule activity cases filed to the NFD by member firms in 2024. UK Finance's Annual Fraud Report 2025 provides the UK Banking Consortium's mule network payment detection figures for that year. LexisNexis Risk Solutions contributed both the Metro Bank case study covering 2024 deployments and the November 2024 Global State of Fraud and Identity Report. Europol EMMA 9 figures cover the October-to-November 2023 operational cycle, the most recently completed phase available at the time of writing.

One consistent caveat applies throughout: detection statistics measure accounts banks identified, not the total population of active mule accounts. Methodological differences across jurisdictions make direct cross-country comparison difficult.

Full data table

Sources: BioCatch (2025); FCA multi-firm review (January 2025); Cifas Fraudscape 2025; UK Finance Annual Fraud Report 2025; LexisNexis Risk Solutions (2024); Europol EMMA 9 (2023)

Key findings

• The global detection count reached ~2 million in 2024, but those are only the accounts banks reported.

BioCatch documented nearly 2 million money laundering accounts from 257 financial institutions in 21 countries during 2024. North America accounted for a 94% year-on-year increase in reported accounts. BioCatch's own analysis notes these figures cover a small share of the world's 44,000 financial institutions. The total population of active mule accounts globally is substantially larger.

• UK firms detected mules and kept the intelligence siloed.

The FCA's January 2025 multi-firm review found that across 25 UK firms, 194,084 mule accounts were offboarded between January 2022 and September 2023. Only 37% were reported to the National Fraud Database, with reporting rates ranging from 6% to 66% across firms. In almost one-third of cases, the FCA disagreed with firms' decisions not to report. That's a systemic failure of collective intelligence, not a marginal compliance gap.

• Machine learning deployments produced documented detection uplifts.

Metro Bank achieved a 71% uplift in mule payment detection in 2024 using LexisNexis Risk Solutions' ML model, uncovering £2.5 million in fraudulent payments within six months. One in eight accounts flagged was confirmed as a mule. LexisNexis's November 2024 Global State of Fraud report found that combining email risk signals with device and IP intelligence boosted high-risk event detection by 17 times at a US bank, and 23 times at a major US card issuer.

• Europol's EMMA 9 operation confirms organized network structures.

The 2023 EMMA 9 cycle identified 10,759 money mule accounts and 474 recruiters, resulting in 1,013 arrests. US law enforcement took action against more than 3,000 money mules during 2024. Europol links 90% of European money mules to cybercrime proceeds. Mule recruitment is a core function of organized crime operations, not a peripheral activity.

Year-over-year trends

The picture varies sharply by region.

In North America, BioCatch reported a 94% year-on-year increase in reported money laundering accounts in 2024 versus 2023. That's the largest single-year jump in their dataset and reflects both real growth in mule recruitment and improved detection at institutions with behavioral intelligence tools deployed.

The UK picture is more mixed. Cifas recorded 34,000+ mule activity filings to the NFD in 2024, an 8% decline from 2023. That headline decline is misleading. The first half of 2024 actually showed a 11% increase in mule cases year-on-year, per UK Finance data covering 19,000+ cases in January through June alone. The full-year decline likely reflects better prevention at account opening rather than fewer mule accounts in circulation.

Network structure matters for interpreting the UK figures. The UK Banking Consortium found that the average mule network involves 15 accounts moving around £7,700 between accounts at more than three different banks. That cross-institution structure is exactly what makes single-firm detection rates an unreliable proxy for total exposure.

Europol's EMMA data shows year-on-year variability tied to operational scope rather than underlying trends. EMMA 9 in 2023 identified 10,759 mules, compared to 8,755 in the 2022 cycle. Both figures represent coordinated action windows, not continuous annual monitoring.

The directional read: detection volumes are growing in North America, the UK headline is stable with growth concentrated in the first half of the year, and pan-European results remain dependent on the scale of coordinated law enforcement effort in any given cycle.

What this means for compliance teams

The FCA's 37% NFD reporting rate is the most actionable number on this page. For every mule account a firm detects and offboards, there's a 63% chance the intelligence never reaches a shared database where another institution could use it. That gap is where mule networks operate across multiple banks without interruption. Until the industry reporting rate moves well above 50%, individual-firm detection performance understates the real systemic exposure.

For transaction monitoring teams, the Metro Bank results set a concrete target. A 71% detection uplift came from combining behavioral intelligence with beneficiary account data across a shared network. The key signal patterns the FCA identified: unexpected deposits followed by fund dispersal within minutes of receipt, movement to international jurisdictions, and ATM withdrawals shortly after the credit. Getting these combinations flagged in real time rather than the next batch cycle is where the material gains are.

The age data has direct implications for customer due diligence at onboarding. Sixty-one percent of UK mule cases involve people under 30, and their accounts often look like normal new customers at application. Static scoring at KYC misses most of them. Behavioral monitoring across the account lifecycle catches patterns that a one-time onboarding check won't.

FATF Recommendation 20 obligations apply directly. Offboarding a mule account without filing a SAR and reporting to the NFD is not a defensible compliance posture. The FCA's multi-firm review was explicit: regulators disagreed with firms' non-reporting decisions in almost one-third of the cases reviewed.

AI-powered fraud detection that combines transaction signals, behavioral intelligence, and shared consortium data now sets the performance floor. LexisNexis's documented 17x-to-23x detection improvement through combined identity signals quantifies the gap between isolated and network-aware detection. The firms that close that gap in the next 12 months will be the ones that move their reporting rates above the current 37% baseline.

Sources

• BioCatch, "Nearly 2 million money laundering accounts reported in 2024," January 2025
• BioCatch, "Global money mule networks: Using behavioral and device intelligence to shine a light on money laundering," 2025
• Financial Conduct Authority, "Firms' use of the National Fraud Database (NFD) and money mule account detection tools," January 2025
• Cifas, Fraudscape 2025, April 2025
• UK Finance, Annual Fraud Report 2025, May 2025
• LexisNexis Risk Solutions, "Metro Bank achieves 71% uplift in mule payment detection to meet PSR regulations," 2024
• LexisNexis Risk Solutions, "Banks Can Boost Fraud Detection by More Than Ten-fold Through Better Collaboration," November 2024
• Europol, "Paper trail ends in jail time for 1,013 money mules," 2023