Catering assistant turned money mule dodges jail time

A greedy catering assistant who was paid £500 to act as a money mule for a telephone fraudster who scammed a technology firm out of £190,000 has been spared jail.

Christian Aranda, 23, allowed the unidentified crook to filter some of the proceeds of the con committed against family-run Micro-Epsilon UK through his bank account.

The company’s account manager received a call from the hustler who posed as a Lloyd’s Bank employee on 2 February 2017.

She was duped into handing over the log-in details enabling the conman to quickly change them and plunder £190,000.

Aranda’s was one of four mule accounts used to launder the cash which was quickly dispersed in smaller amounts to a number of others later that same day.

Only around £5,000 was recovered from his account before it was redistributed.

Aranda pleaded guilty to a single count of transferring criminal property at the Old Bailey on what was scheduled to be the first day of his trial today (thurs).

Judge Adam Hiddleston told him: ‘By what you did, you allowed the perpetrator of a very serious theft an easy way to launder the money that they had stolen.

‘However, for the £500 you were paid you have now forfeited your good name and from now on you will have a criminal record.

‘A high price, you may think, to pay for your greed.’

Prosecutor Jonathan Gold earlier explained: ‘The offences relate to the laundering of £40,000, which constituted some of the proceeds of a fraud.

‘The fraud in question was a telephone fraud in which a company called Micro-Epsilon UK received a phone call on 2 February 2017.

‘The accounts manager spoke to somebody who called themselves Jonathan purporting to be from Lloyd’s Bank.

‘Essentially, he duped her into passing over details which enabled fraudsters to access the company bank account, change the log-in details and transfer out just under £190,000, all on 2 February.

‘That money was then transferred out in four tranches to four different bank accounts, and £40,000 of that money exactly was transferred into a bank account which belonged to the defendant.

‘The defendant then transferred that money out in 13 separate transfers of £3,000 or less to various other bank accounts and that all happened on that same day.

‘The motive appears to be financial, in that there was a cash withdrawal of £500 from the defendant’s account that day in Norbury, close to where he lives.

‘His account was generally in fairly low credit in the period leading up to this offence.’

Defending, Gabrielle Heaney told the court that Aranda left school at 16 to go straight into catering college for three years before getting full-time work as a catering assistant.

‘This may be viewed as an aberration in his conduct which he is highly unlikely to repeat again,’ she said.

‘This was a young man who very much lived within his means.

‘He was not in debt, he was not extravagant in terms of his purchases and in other respects led a very regular life.’

Aranda, of Portland Road, Croydon, southeast London, admitted transferring criminal property and was handed a 10-month sentence, suspended for 12 months.

He was also ordered to complete 180 hours’ unpaid work and pay £2,000 prosecution costs.

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