Fraudsters have cost Mersey tunnels a huge £86,000 in a fake coin scam.
Merseytravel has launched an investigation after the phoney £1 pieces were found amongst cash collected at the toll barriers.
It is believed drivers have been using the coins in both the Queensway and Kingsway tunnels for the last six months.
The counterfeit coins are produced to the same size and weight as genuine £1 pieces making them very difficult to detect.
Merseytravel bosses said the problem was a nationwide issue, not specific to Merseyside, and vowed to catch the perpetrators.
Merseytravel is making its own enquiries and they have informed Merseyside Police about the large-scale fraud.
The haul of coins was first spotted when sophisticated electronic equipment, in a secure storeroom, flagged up that they were not authentic.
High-level discussions are due to take place to decide how best to monitor criminal users.
Reports last year suggested that the number of fake £1s has doubled in the last five years, and stands at around 30m.
Ways to spot a fake include indistinct lettering, wrong typefaces, the Queen’s head the wrong way round, and discolouring.
A Merseytravel spokesman said: “Millions of people use the tunnels every year and 99.9% of them do so in a appropriate way.
“Every time someone puts a fake £1 into the cash collection system at Mersey Tunnel tolls, they are committing an act of fraud.
“But we are on to them.
“This is a massive nationwide problem, but something we picked up on locally and we are actively looking at ways we can tackle this, in discussion with Merseyside Police.”
In 2008, there was widepsread opposition to the tunnel toll being increased to £1.40 for a standard car vehicle.
The Mersey tunnel users’ association branded the move a “scandal” and said: "The tolls are a tax that is imposed regardless of income and are a kind of Congestion Charge that falls predominently and unfairly on the residents of Wirral, Cheshire and North Wales.
"Liverpool and the Wirral have suffered tolls for nearly 75 years from the tunnel tolls and it is high time they were abolished."
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