Mr. Michael Cryan:

In my experience, the vast majority of money mules are recruited in one of two ways. One is through social media, where there are advertisements about making easy money and so on and the other is through personal interactions with people they know. They are recruited through an offer of easy money or through a sob story and they become a money mule. The people who recruit them are called herders. They are money mule to money mule herders and they are usually based locally, somewhere in Ireland. There are other levels above them and as the levels go up, some still involve people in Ireland but those at the very high levels are most probably outside of Ireland. We have arrested or been involved in the arrest of up to 100 people who are at money mule level or higher in the organisations. Quite a few of them have been charged and are before the courts so we obviously will not go into any specific details. Quite a few of them have been convicted as well and are serving prison sentences. The organisations are very structured and people have different roles within that. Some people have multiple roles so the money herders, for example, may also perform other roles like making withdrawals and so on. A lot of the herders start off as money mules and move up within the structure.