The Philippines could lose an estimated P603 billion annually to fraud involving mule accounts, according to a joint report by IDfy Philippines and CIBI Information Inc., which urged financial institutions to strengthen identity checks and share information on suspicious activities.
Mule accounts are bank or e-wallet accounts used by criminals to receive and move illicit funds. These may be rented or purchased from willing account holders or taken over without their owners’ consent, allowing scammers to transfer stolen money while concealing its trail.
The white paper titled “Mule Hunting: Are We Chasing Ghosts?” based its estimate on P24.74 trillion in combined transactions processed through PESONet and InstaPay in 2025. These systems allow electronic fund transfers between participating financial institutions.
“A mule syndicate can rapidly execute a transaction burst across multiple platforms like BDO, UnionBank, or GCash while each individual compliance team sees only a small, fractured fraction of the larger picture,” CIBI president and CEO Pia Arellano wrote in the report’s foreword.
Read more about the
PhilStar story
