The number of adverts for ‘money mules’ appearing in UK situations vacant columns has risen by over 200 per cent in three years.

According to Apacs, in 2007, 1,462 fake recruitment ads were found, compared with 472 in 2005. The banking organisation has released guidance to help consumers avoid these scams because they are becoming increasingly sophisticated.

The fraudsters often pose as bona fide companies seeking employees to work from home, handling ‘orders’ and financial transactions. A lot of the ads appear on popular online recruitment sites such as Gumtree and monster.co.uk.

Computeractive also found household names such as Costa Coffee were used by the criminals to give the adverts legitimacy.

Andrew Goodwill, director of the fraud prevention specialist firm 3rd Man group, said he was not surprised at the growth in the number of these fake ads.

“I started issuing warnings about this two years ago. With the economic climate we are entering, I expect to see a large increase in this activity,” he said.

A 'money mule' is someone recruited by fraudsters needing to transfer money from one country to another. The criminals recruit gullible or greedy people in order to launder funds through their bank accounts.

After the money goes into the mule's account he or she withdraws the funds, takes a commission and transfers the balance back overseas using a wire transfer service. However, the funds the mule receives have been stolen from other people's bank accounts or credit cards, or the cheques sent are fake.

So once they have transferred the funds back out of their account, the mules find they are out of pocket and in debt to their bank.

Computeractive investigated this problem back in September 2007 after Mr Goodwill alerted us to the issue.

Although the fraudsters will email these job offers, working alongside Mr Goodwill we found many of the popular free classified advert websites were littered with these spoof job vacancies.

A typical ad could read as a job vacancy seeking a 'UK representative', ‘financial manager' or 'sales manager’. Many used legitimate company names as a smoke screen.

To test how well the owners of these sites monitored for fraudulent ads, Mr Goodwill placed a spoof advert on the website adzozok.

Entitled 'work from home by becoming a money mule', he waited to see if the ad would be taken down.

“Despite repeatedly advising Trinity media group, the publishers of this site, the spoof job ad remained live for weeks. The owners and operators of these job websites have a social responsibility to make sure they protect the public; some will know what they are getting into, others won't because many of these ads pretend to come from legitimate companies," he said.

He also warned of a new twist in the tale; people are also being asked to take in parcels. The fraudsters then arrange to have these picked up or the ‘employee’ send them on to other addresses. However, these goods have been bought with stolen credit card details.

Not only are people risking having their bank accounts drained, they are also party to the fraud.

“The law states quite clearly that ignorance is no defence, so I urge anyone who is thinking about taking this type of employment to make sure they are not going to become a mule,” Mr Goodwill said.

Apacs' advice to consumers is:

• Be cautious about any unsolicited offers or opportunities offering you the chance to make some easy money.
• Be especially wary of offers from people or companies overseas as it is harder for you to find out if they really are who they say they are.
• Take steps to verify any company which makes you a job offer and check their contact details (address, phone number, email address and website) are correct and whether they are registered in the UK.
• Never give your bank details to anyone unless you know and trust them.

Sandra Quinn, director of communications at Apacs, said: “Anyone who has disclosed their bank account details or received funds into their account for what they think could be a money mule scam should contact their bank immediately.”