Emily the Criminal (2022)
Dummy Shopper Credit Card Scam Operator Dreams of Integrating Proceeds into a Large Real Estate Purchase
Emily the Criminal, the noir-crime thriller about a woman struggling with student and credit card debt enters the world of credit card fraud for some quick money. Emily Benetto (Aubrey Plaza) is saddled with more than $70,000 of student debt and is working at a catering company while she looks for a ‘real’ job. Unfortunately, she has a criminal background of a prior assault and driving under the influence, which is an impediment to her during job interviews.
While at the catering company, Emily prepares and delivers meals for catered luncheons and business meetings at corporate offices, feeling the pressure of where she is at in life as the meeting attendees look down at her delivery mistakes. Post-delivery, Emily agrees to help a catering colleague by filling in for him as a dummy shopper to make $200. A dummy or mystery shopper is a fraud scam that involves a person being paid to shop for goods or prepaid cards using fraudulent means, such as stolen identities added to credit cards or debit cards.
Fraudsters use multiple methods to steal credit and debit card information such as random access memory (RAM) scraping using installed malware on point of sale terminals, skimming using a device installed on point of sale or automated teller machines, email spoofing a victim to reveal sensitive information by simple changes to email senders, websites, etc., and phishing scams that seek to appear like a legit business or communication only to trick the recipient into sharing sensitive information to a hacked or fake website.
For the dummy shopper job Emily shows up at a vacant storefront, which is an old laundry facility, and heads to the back where a group of people are sitting awaiting instructions. The leader, Youcef Haddad (Theo Rossi), informs the attendees they will be paid $200 cash, but each must do something illegal to be paid. After they agree, each attendee receives a credit card with stolen details, a matching driver’s license, and are instructed to buy a flat screen television from a local retailer for $1,999.99. Emily completes the task with no issues, delivers the television to a white commercial van in the parking lot. Once inside the van, Youcef offers Emily a bigger job for $2,000 cash.
The next job requires Emily to use of an American Express Black Card, which maintains no credit limit, and a cashier’s check, which are financial institution-issued checks that represent good funds to the payee. The two instruments would be used on a split purchase to buy a BMW from an independent dealer. A common fraud mitigant is a callback to verify the purchaser on credit card transactions or to verify the authenticity of the cashier’s check by contacting the issuing financial institution.
Based on the purchase size, Youcef informs Emily the credit card company will call the seller to verify the credit card purchase, and she has eight (8) minutes to leave. Beyond eight (8) minutes, she runs the risk of being exposed. After the purchase, when getting into the BMW, the seller realizes the potential fraud, then seeks to remove Emily from the car, breaking her nose. She races off with the car; the seller chases her in another car and cuts her off; he gets out and approaches Emily only to be sprayed with pepper spray. Bleeding and busted up, Emily returns the car to Youcef, where she gets paid $2,000 cash.
As Youcef seeks to impress Emily, he reveals to her he wants to use his money to buy a 40-unit apartment building with the intent to fix up the units and rent them. Emily is intrigued and curious as to how much money Youcef makes to be able to afford such an expensive purchase. Real estate purchases are a common form of integration, which is the third stage of money laundering, whereby the illicitly obtained funds are integrated back into society without detection from its origin.
After the car heist, Emily remains disenfranchised with her catering job as her boss removed her from the upcoming schedule – she did not show up as she was performing the car heist – and reminds her she is an independent contractor, not a unionized worker with job protections. Desperate, Youcef shows her how to ‘card’ – creating physical credit cards with stolen names using a card embossing machine; then scans the credit card chip with a magnet, which transfers the stolen data to the newly minted credit card.
After her initial taste of carding, Emily goes all in on a life of crime: Youcef gives her the card machine embosser, a stun gun, and a box of blank cards. She steals more TVs, then resells them online with meeting the buyer in a public space. However, Emily gets hustled by the buyer when he renegotiates the price from $600 to $300 cash. Emily kills the deal, threatens to walk away, but then the buyer agrees to the $600, then he asks Emily what else she has? Emily gets hooked. She starts to sell a bunch of fraudulently obtained products to the same buyer.
As Emily and Youcef get closer, Khalil (Jonathan Avigdori), Youcef’s brother, does not trust Emily believing she would expose their operation. As a result, Khalil double-crosses Youcef by taking all the money leading in the end to a physical altercation between Youcef, Khalil, and Emily.
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