FOUR men who stole more than £270,000 from the accounts of dead bank customers have been ordered to pay just £1 back.

In December last year the workers at the BMW Mini plant in Cowley were jailed for their part in the hundreds of thousands of pounds scam after they admitted transferring criminal property.

As none of the men had any available assets to pay back the stolen money, Judge Stephen Eyre QC made a confiscation order against them of just £1 each at a hearing on Wednesday.

Kyle Wilson, 29, of Haldane Road, who was falsely named as an executor of the late customers' wills, twins Pawel and Lukasz Pyszczek, 32, of Cowley Road, and Mateusz Bazanek, 31, who lived with them will only have to pay back a fraction of what they took from an elderly man and woman.

The group became involved in the scam when Ravi Dubede, the man behind the plot, worked at Barclays Bereavement Services in Coventry and assessed the account of a deceased customer to make a repayment to the Department for Work and Pensions.

He changed the address on the account to that of Wilson and in April 2013 the bank received a letter containing a false will and forged grant of probate naming Wilson as sole executor.

The four men working at the Mini plant were the link between the thieves and the money launderers.

The criminals created false documents and a total of £112,348 was stolen from an elderly woman's account in 2012 and £162,923 was taken from an elderly man's account and transferred into their accounts.

But the offences came to light after the genuine executors of the wills contacted Barclays to ask what was happening.

Wilson was jailed for 21 months, Pawel Pyszczek for nine months, Lukasz Pyszczek for seven months and Bazanek for six months.

Following a financial investigation of the men's accounts prosecutor Tom Walking said at Warwick Crown Court that if the men were to come into money in the future it could be seized to pay off the balance.

Judge Eyre said the four should face one day in prison if they defaulted in their payment of £1 by Thursday, December 22.

Although they could have been ordered to serve up to six months, Mr Walking said: "If they refuse to give us a pound, I don’t think it’s fair to jail them for that long."