Two men tried to install a secret camera in the roof of a service station to record customer's bank details.

But Senthivez Arikaran, 28, and Vijayakumar Jegapirathapan, 27, were caught red-handed by police after a colleague tipped them off.

At Lewes Crown Court the two men were both jailed after they admitted their part in the crime.

The court heard Arikaran got a job as a cashier at the Shell Service Station, on the A23 near Hickstead, in January this year after filling in false details on the application form.

In March he asked a colleague to swap shifts and offered him a £5,000 payment.

Danny Robinson, prosecuting, said Arikaran warned his colleague he should not tell anybody as Arikaran knew people who would break his limbs.

In the early hours of March 3, Arikaran arrived at the garage with Jegapirathapan and they both started working on the ceiling.

Meanwhile, the cashier activated a silent police alarm. When officers arrived they found the two men, both from Sri Lanka, setting a covert camera system in the roof space above the cash desk.

Mr Robinson told the court the camera would have directly filmed customers tapping in the numbers for the chip and pin payment system.

When Arikaran was arrested he told the police he had committed the offence following a mixture of bribes and threats because he could not work legally in the country.

He said after he was helped to get the job under a false name by a group of people he met in Swindon, he claimed they threatened to inform the authorities he was working illegally and to beat him up if he did not do as they ordered.

Jegapirathapan said he was offered £300 to work on some equipment by a man who approached him in Tooting, London, but he did not know what it was for.

The court heard he has a previous conviction for credit card fraud committed while he was working at a service station in Maidstone. He used a card, which he claimed he found in the street, eight times to buy £400 worth of chocolate to send to Sri Lanka to his family, where it is considered a luxurious treat.

Judge Charles Kemp jailed Arikaran for 26 months and Jegapirathapan for 20 months.

He told the men, who have both been in custody since their arrest, they were involved in a sophisticated covert operation but he accepted they were just the foot soldiers in the enterprise.

He said: "I have no doubt had the plan worked those responsible would have obtained large sums of money from innocent people's bank accounts.

"I sentence you both on the basis you were pressured into taking part by other unscrupulous people who are not in front of the courts."

Arikaran, from Croydon, and Jegapirathapan, from Reading, both admitted possessing articles for use in fraud. Arikaran also admitted committing a fraud by abusing his position of employment.