A pensioner laundered millions of pounds for criminal gangs while posing as an estate agent.

John Maurice led a double-life that saw him run a property business selling homes abroad while also smuggling bundles of cash to the continent in used notes.

But the 68-year-old was caught after a sniffer dog found wads of pounds and Euros worth £60,000 stuffed in his pants when he was stopped by Customs officials as he boarded a ferry from Dover to France.

Now he has been sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of laundering money totalling £3,828,000. He is expected to serve half the sentence in jail.

A Customs investigation revealed he was using a Worthing money exchange bureau to launder millions of pounds for criminals.

Maurice was known as “Spanish John” in Worthing and ran firms selling overseas property, with registered addresses in Station Parade, Tarring, and Church Road, Hove.

Between April 2005 and June 2008 he used a single foreign exchange bureau about 180 times.

He would change sterling into Euros before crossing the Channel.

When questioned he claimed he was changing money for clients who wanted to buy furniture for their homes in Spain.

But he could not produce any evidence of this and refused to reveal the identities of his clients to Customs officials.