Western Union is not exempt from KYC requirements.  Most agents of it, however, sound something like &quot;the owner of your local bodega.&quot;  They&#x27;ll satisfy themselves of your identity, either via personal knowledge or asking to see an ID.  They&#x27;ll then ring up your transfer.  The person on the other end of the transfer is &quot;Some person in Jamaica.&quot;  That doesn&#x27;t automatically scream FRAUD unless you say &quot;Lottery&quot; -- the overwhelming majority of Americans wiring money to someone in Jamaica are, in fact, supporting family or friends there.<p>Fraudsters also tend to get pretty decent about instructing their marks to structure payments to avoid the obvious controls, for example by using mules [+] or by striping a $5,000 transfer into multiple smaller transfers on different days to different recipients controlled by the same operation.  This is explained to the mark as something like &quot;Oh, different tax bureau than last time&quot; but it&#x27;s operationally to avoid having velocity checks tripped at WU.<p>[ + ] Witting or unwitting co-conspirators who receive money in their own name and then forward it to the criminals, often for a cut of the profits.