FCA money mule review: 238,000 accounts closed in 2025, cashing out peaks at the second hop

The FCA has published a multi-firm review of money mule activity and cashing-out typologies (Money Mules Activity and Cashing-Out Findings), drawing on a survey of 35 regulated firms and a public/private cell of 22 firms (a structured working group bringing together regulated firms and public-sector agencies to share intelligence on live cases) that examined 140 fraud cases across 7 fraud types. Every bank, building society, payment institution (PI) and e-money institution (EMI) is in scope. If you run financial crime controls at any of those firm types, this one needs your attention.

What the data shows

FCA-regulated firms closed 238,396 suspected mule accounts in 2025, up 28.9% over two years from 184,935 in 2023. Retail banks and building societies accounted for 56.1% of closures, though that share fell 10.9% year on year. EMIs recorded the sharpest rise: offboarding volumes up 164.6% compared with 2024.

Account age at closure differs sharply by firm type. EMIs and PIs close accounts quickly after opening: 74.1% and 56.9% of closures respectively involved accounts open less than six months. Retail banks and building societies are the mirror image: 45.4% of their closures involved accounts open more than two years.

Demographically, customers aged 18 to 39 still account for 71.9% of closures, but the fastest-growing cohort is 40 to 49, where offboarding rose 79.8% against 2023 and 44.7% against 2024. Personal accounts represent 93.2% of cases. Where gender was recorded, approximately two-thirds of suspected mules were male.

Where the money goes

Cashing out concentrates between the second and fifth mule account in a chain, with the highest concentration at the second account. The FCA's conclusion is that identifying and disrupting activity as early as possible matters most.

Card payments were the dominant method, used for high volumes of low-value transactions or higher-value payments to local businesses and retailers, making detection harder because the pattern resembles ordinary consumer spending. Cryptocurrency cash-outs were lower in volume but larger in value, suggesting deliberate selective use as a laundering route. International destinations included South Asia, West Africa and the Middle East.

Some accounts had been used multiple times across different fraud types before closure, which the FCA describes as evidence of established criminal infrastructure rather than opportunistic misuse.

What the FCA expects

The review is explicit about control expectations. Firms should look beyond the initial receiving account and consider linked accounts within the institution, payment characteristics, the broader transaction context, and customer profile.

The FCA also calls directly on firms to use information-sharing powers under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA), which allow firms to share information about suspected financial crime with each other without breaching data protection obligations in certain circumstances, to help prevent, detect or investigate economic crime.

On reporting, the proportion of offboarded mule accounts filed to the National Fraud Database (NFD) fell from 17.4% in 2024 to 15.3% in 2025, though Cifas, the UK's fraud prevention service, introduced a dedicated money mule filing category in January 2025 that makes year-on-year comparisons unreliable. PI and EMI filing volumes remain very low.

What comes next

The FCA is working with the National Economic Crime Centre to issue a further alert to relevant firms with additional detail from the cell's findings. No publication date has been confirmed. Supervisory monitoring of firms' approaches will continue. The review sets out its control expectations in enough detail to serve as a benchmarking reference ahead of the NECC alert.

Sources

• Money mules activity cashing out findingsfca.org.uk