Three men were caught offloading £1,600 worth of stolen aluminium bronze to a scrap dealer after buying it for just £50, a court heard.

The men had dropped off a wheelie bin full of the metal, which had been taken from an engineering firm in Brierley Hill, but were caught red-handed by police when they returned with a second load.

Officers swooped before a deal could be done at M&S Metals in Brierley Hill.

The metal had previously been taken from Ian Bennett Engineering Ltd and staff from the company had gone looking for it at scrap yards after finding it missing, Dudley Magistrates Court heard.

Alan Buckingham, aged 25, Wayne Golden, 27, and Mike Metembie, 19, all pleaded guilty to handling stolen goods just minutes before a trial was due to start after they had earlier denied the charges.

Scrap metal yard owner David Higgins, 32, of Stanton Grove, Dudley Port, also admitted the same offence along with a charge of failing to make a record of metal he received. Mrs

Marion Bibb, prosecuting, said a total of £3,000 of the “highly valuable” metal had been stolen from the engineering firm in Mill Street on the weekend of September 3 – days after it was delivered to be used in a contract making parts for cranes. The following Monday staff visited local scrap yards in a bid to track down the metal, and discovered it at Higgins’s business.

Mrs Bibb said Higgins had not recorded any details of the metal when it was offered to him, which is “important to do in the current climate of metal thefts”.

Buckingham, of Valley Road, Lye, and Golden, of Wavell Road, Quarry Bank, believed the metal was steel and “not worth much” when they bought it from a known contact, said Mr Surinder Joshi, defending the pair.

Mr David Kelly said his client Metembie, of Valley Road, Lye, had thought he was meeting up with his friends to go to the pub but agreed to carry the metal “in return for a couple of pints”. All three did not know the metal was stolen, the court was told. The case was adjourned for sentence.