A gang who stole �200,000 of coins from phone boxes has been jailed.
The three men from Leicester took the money from phone boxes around England after discovering what police described as an "elaborate system" for extracting coins from payphones.
Grigor Gevorgyan (48), Karine Gevorgyan (46) and Tigran Aglintsyan (42), all Armenian nationals, admitted conspiracy to steal at Leicester Crown Court.
They were each sentenced to three years in prison, and all three will be deported at the end of their jail terms.
Their crimes were discovered when BT noticed in September, 2009, that telephone kiosks in Leicester were not making much money.
In May 2010, BT approached Leicestershire police for help with a surveillance operation.
After the culprits were identified, the UK Border Agency's foreign national crime team took charge of the operation and arrested the gang the following month.
Aglintsyan, from Hinckley Road, Leicester, was arrested on June 22 last year while he was attacking a phone box on Maidenwell Avenue, Hamilton. Grigor and Karine Gevorgyan were arrested at their home in Empire Road, Newfoundpool, Leicester, on the same day.
The gang had carried out similar crimes in Yorkshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Cambridgeshire.
Kam Hyare, from the UK Border Agency's foreign national crime team, said: "As a result of the excellent technical, forensic and intelligence work carried out by the team at Leicestershire Constabulary, the defendants had no choice but to plead guilty due to the weight of evidence against them.
"This was not the work of amateurs. This was a highly sophisticated operation to steal a very large amount of money from BT.
"We will now take action to recover the proceeds from their crime and send them back to Armenia once they have served their time in prison.''
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