ONE third of Brits fell for a rogue job advert requesting applications for a money mule set up by Santander UK.

Details of the Financial Transaction Control Analyst role included 'receiving and processing of incoming cash funds' and 'transferring funds to accounts indicated by our managers'.

The experiment was designed to shed light on just how convincing bogus job ads are - a technique which criminals use to lure people looking for work into transferring money connected to criminal activity.

Thirty-two per cent of the 2,000 adults sampled, aged 18 to 55, said they would apply for the role and 27 per cent said they would leave their current job to join Money Spark Company, the fictitious organisation created by Santander.

Chris Ainsley, head of Fraud Strategy at the bank, said: “Criminals often target vulnerable people, such as those desperate for a job, and our research illustrates how easily some people can be tricked into falling victim.

“We are seeing a rise in the number of fake job ads such as the one used in our experiment and raising awareness of the issue is key to preventing people unwittingly getting involved and ultimately facing life changing consequences for their actions.”

Gazette:

How easily would you have fallen for this?

While some people were suspicious of the description of the role and spotted the tell-tale spelling mistakes and fake link in the advert, only 15 per cent correctly spotted the role was for a money mule.

And 71 per cent of people, did not know what the phrase meant.

Around four per cent of respondents to Santander’s research believed they, or someone they knew had been approached by a criminal looking to recruit money mules.

This figure doubled to eight per cent for those aged 18 to 24, or an estimated 453,3604 young adults across the UK.