A TOP secret ‘mole gang’ inspired a plot in a hit Channel 4 show with an ‘elaborate’ plot underneath a car park.

The so called Manchester “mole gang” spent six months digging a 100ft long tunnel under a car park in order to raid the contents of a cash machine inside a Blockbuster.

Once they had arrived under the machine they had to drill through 15 inches of concrete to reach the ATM.

Unfortunately the machine had recently been emptied and contained only £6,000.

The bizarre stunt took place in 2012 when criminals targeted a cash machine in a store on Fallowfield Retail Park, south Manchester.

Speaking at the time police suspected the gang may have spent more on the excavation that they recovered from the cash machine.

A spokesman for the force dismissed the haul as “pocket change.”

A source at the shopping precinct said : “There was just over £6,000 in the machine.

“It was only when security came to fill the machine back up that they discovered the hole.”

A few months later Shameless ran a two-part cliff-hanger about a gang that dug out an audacious tunnel.

The show’s producer Jean Holdsworth suggest art had imitated real life when he said: “We’ve spent months working and filming our tunnel heist, which we thought was a top secret storyline.

“It’s a major cliff-hanger for the end of the current series of Shameless and we couldn’t believe it when we saw the news at the weekend.”

For some the Blockbuster raid had echoes of 2008 film Bank Job, when crooks dug out a tunnel beneath a fast food restaurant
to reach an underground vault.

The raid came just a few years after a similar stunt at the same shopping precinct.

Builders laying cables discovered an elaborate tunnel leading toward the Blockbuster store.

Detectives suspected the same gang was probably responsible for both tunnels.

Speaking after the 2012 incident Ian Shore, from Longsight CID, south Manchester, said: “In all my years of service,I have never seen anything quite as elaborate as this.

“These people obviously spent a long time plotting this crime and I doubt they would have been able to keep their plans secret for all that time.

“The financial detriment to the victim could have been a lot worse.”