A bullion dealer has told how he stopped a bogus Ricky Gervais from turning £200,000 of the comedian's cash into gold.

Anthony Baird said alarm bells rang when an impostor ordered 60lbs of the precious metal in Gervais' name.

Fraudsters then tried to trick him by sticking a photograph of David Brent from a DVD copy of The Office into a dead pensioner's passport.

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.

Company boss Anthony Baird told London's Wood Green Crown Court: "We are fairly experienced at seeing these frauds coming along...and this set alarm bells ringing."

Courier company drivers Craig Reeves, 30, of West Lodge Cottage, Alton, Hampshire, and Harry Peach, 57, of Fairfield Walk, Leatherhead, Surrey, were arrested when they turned up to collect the gold from Baird & Co's head office vaults in Stratford, east London, the court heard.

Alleged insider Sharonjeet Snober, 28, a NatWest call centre assistant manager of Arthur Shirley Road, Southampton, was arrested a few days later.

Javed 43, and jobless Kenneth Speight, 39, of no fixed address were not arrested for another year.

All deny three counts of conspiracy to defraud between February 21 and April 8, 2003.