A hooded Ricky Gervais lookalike tricked a lawyer into signing a fake passport for a gang of gold bullion fraudsters, a court heard.

The document, bearing a picture of the comedian taken from a DVD of The Office, was used in a plot to fleece almost £200,000 from his account.

Mushtaq Javed, 43, of Ashdown Drive, Crawley, is accused of taking part in the scam with three other men and a woman.

Javed is head of the Express Despatch bullion courier company in Redhill, Surrey, where two of the other defendants worked.

The court heard an impostor walked into the office of a north London law firm and paid just £15 for the passport photocopy to be authorised by a solicitor.

Lawyer Phyllis Egole, in a written statement presented to Wood Green Crown Court, said: "The man purporting to be Ricky Gervais did bear a true likeness to Ricky Dean Gervais.

"The only difference was that the male in question was clean shaven."

But the lawyer who runs Egole and Co in Hornsey Road, Hornsey, did not think it strange the top comic should be wearing "jeans and a dark hooded top".

The gang had adapted a passport which belonged to a pensioner in, Worksop, Notts.

Giving evidence in statement form, Gervais told the jury how he was targeted by the gang.

He said: "I have never had a UK passport issued to me with a photograph that appears on the last page of the passport."

The trial continues.