A gang made £1 and £2 coins from lead and sprayed them with silver and gold paint, a court heard.

Mark French, 47, Tony Rees, 50, and Anthony Dunn, 53, bought ingots of metal to put through their own press in an east London factory.

Coins worth £10,355 were recovered and the gang processed enough metal to make £16,000 worth of counterfeit currency in a month.

Police had been keeping the men under observation and raided two premises - a rented business unit in Tarling Road, Canning Town, and a house in nearby Hoy Street.

The business unit was disguised as a vehicle recovery garage as the men worked inside making thousands of coins, the Old Bailey heard.

Royal Mint experts examined the buckets of coins and found they were crude copies.

The coins would not have been accepted in a vending machine because they were magnetic and the wrong size.

'There were around five to eight thousand in various stages of production when officers executed a warrant at the premises.

'It was quite a labour intensive process. Each moulded coin had to have a penny placed in the centre before it was sprayed gold and then each was finished by hand to make them appear more genuine.'

To read the complete article, see:Gang made £16,000 of fake £1 and £2 metal coins in just one month by painting lead with silver and gold PAINT(www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2345748/Gang-16-000-fake-1-2-metal-coins-just-month-painting-lead-silver-gold-PAINT.html)