Purpose This paper aims to provide a systematic literature review (SLR) on contemporary cardinal money mule issues. Design/methodology/approach This paper reviews the most common money mule themes in perpetrating financial crime activities, especially its roles, recruitment and awareness. A systematic review protocol called preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocols is adopted for this study. Findings Money mules are used by organized criminal groups (OCG) or fraudster to launder illicit funds from outrageous criminal activities. They allow their accounts to be used for money laundering by OCG. The attacker, OCG or fraudsters would layer the stolen funds using money mule accounts. These money mules are recruited using various approaches, oftentimes deceived by opulent lifestyles to captivate the interest of potential money mules. Originality/value This paper presents money mule awareness needed by accountant, bank employees and the society. It is an unprecedented SLR on money mule. This paper will be beneficial for future money mule researchers, enforcement agencies and practitioners in banking industry.

The threat of money mule syndicate continues to undermine the stability of financial system. Over the years, money mule syndicate has helped to launder ill-gotten funds by colluding as intermediary. The defense of financial system from ensuing money mule problem lies in the responsibility of financial crime compliance officers. Submission of Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) by these officers helps in combatting money mule phenomenon at the enforcement level. Hence, the building of money mule risk assessment among financial crime compliance officers is unequivocally critical. This paper presents the estimation of reliability of instrument developed to measure the novel money mule risk assessment based on Judgment and Decision Making (JDM) theory. Professional self-awareness, task complexity and AML software astuteness are the constructs influencing financial crime compliance officers’ risk assessment in money mule investigation at bank’s level. An instrument with 118 items was developed and disseminated digitally for pilot test. The distribution of instrument targeted financial crime compliance officers working for financial institutions in Malaysia. A total of 31 respondents from commercial banks in Malaysia participated in the pilot test. The four constructs score Cronbach’s values above 0.80 which show good and satisfactory reliability for the next phase of data collection.