Several waves of phishing emails promoting "money mule" scams leveraging compromised York University users' accounts have been detected. These emails claim to offer recipients a well-paying remote job with no requirements and link to a Google form that requests personal information.

The "job" in question is a money mule scheme whereby victims are told to launder fraudulently obtained cheques through their personal bank accounts to purchase gift cards for the scammers. Banks inevitably flag the transactions as fraudulent, resulting in the victims' bank accounts being frozen, causing great inconvenience and potential liability for the fraud they facilitated.

The emails described above are NOT legitimate. Please do NOT reply to the email or click on its link. If you have already clicked on the emails' link, provided information, or performed any tasks for the threat actor, cease communication with them IMMEDIATELY and contact York University's Information Security team with the details of what you experienced.

 

Please exercise extreme suspicion against emails offering jobs or requesting personal information (including passwords) from you, even if the email is sent from a York University email. Be sure to inspect links before clicking on them, and avoid opening suspicious attachments.