Police looking for drugs stumbled on a counterfeit coin factory which was nearly ready to go into production.

Officers were thinking drugs could be hidden in the Heybridge factory unit, but what they discovered was a well-organised machine shop ready to produce fake 50p coins.

The coin factory had been set up by James Laming. Chelmsford Crown Court heard how he was planning "a right little earner" to give himself a nice pension.

Police saw Laming, 57, through the open door of the unit at the Bentalls industrial estate and when they went in, they found various machines including a press, milling machines and a furnace.

On the floor were stainless steel discs and an impression of a 50p piece was found on one of them.

Laming, of Surrey Road, Peckham, was arrested. He told police he had bought the furnace to make millennium souvenirs. When his home was searched, a metal stamp similar to a 50p was found, said Jane McIvor, prosecuting.

He later told police: "It was going to be like copying the Royal Mint. It was to be the perfect fraud. I hoped to be in production by June. Say it's a pension. You are having a go at the authorities and the Queen and it's a better kind of crime - a crime of the old school and a go at the other departments."

Miss McIvor said he was extremely helpful and took police around all the equipment and explained how it all worked as officers took video evidence.

Laming told them a dye he had produced would have lasted long enough to make £10,000 of dud 50p coins. He also said the machinery was capable of producing 100 50p coins every minute.

"I was aiming for a perfect faultless coin, same as the mint," Laming told police.

He was jailed for 18 months. A police expert confirmed Laming had the knowledge and expertise to make the fake coins.

Roderick Johnson, mitigating, said: "He resorted to this offence because he was in need of a specific sum. He had family and accommodation problems and he needed money to sort these problems out."

Judge John Rogers QC told Laming: "On the bad side of the coin, you put yourself in the bracket of offences where a prison sentence is inevitable but on the other side of the coin, there is a lot to be said of you.

"Your chances of being highly successful were remote," the judge added.

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