Money mules: how young people are lured into laundering cash

Criminals are using students and others to unwittingly move funds through their bank accounts

• Readers' 1m losses highlight scale of the UK's fraud crisis

The job advert seemed timely. It offered between 500-1,000 a week to work from home as an agent for cryptocurrency transactions. Lauren*, 21, was heavily in debt after a period of unpaid sick leave and leapt at the chance to rebalance her finances.

It had been promoted on social media by a couple of people I'd been at school with so I trusted it," she says. It seemed such a coincidence that this came along just when I needed it."