A make-up artist who disguised a gang said to have carried out Britain’s biggest cash robbery is to identify the men involved.

Michelle Hogg, 32, had been charged, along with seven men, with carrying out the £53 million armed raid at the Securitas sorting depot in Tonbridge, Kent, in February 2006. But earlier this month prosecutors offered no evidence against her and she was found not guilty of three charges.

Yesterday, she appeared in the witness box at the Old Bailey in London to give evidence against her former co-defendants. Earlier, she had told police that she feared reprisals.

Miss Hogg spoke in a shaky voice and trembled visibly as she gave evidence. She admitted creating false noses, chins, beards and moustaches for a group of men last February.

She told the jury that she was later shocked when her mother told her about the robbery. “She told me to put the television on because there had been a robbery in Tonbridge,” she said. “My mum knew I was working in Tonbridge on a make-up job.”

She said that she immediately suspected that she may have helped to develop the gang’s disguises. “I just couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I was just, ‘Oh my God, please don’t let that be what they have done’.”

Describing her role, she said: “It involved doing casts, positive and negative masks, and making latex noses and chins and supplying hair for moustaches and beards.”

Miss Hogg, who previously worked as a sales assistant at Harvey Nichols but was employed at Hair Hectik in Forest Hill, southeast london, at the time of the robbery, said that she immediately dumped the make-up and latex to try to banish the memories of her involvement.

“All the make-up I was told I could keep for my make-up kit, but I threw it away. I cut the latex up and threw it away in my rubbish bin outside the flat. I didn’t want in the future to look at a product, look at it and think that was used for that.”

Police later discovered make-up, latex, false hair and detailed instructions about what disguises were needed in the bins at her home in Plumstead. She was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the robbery and admitted that she had created the disguises although she insisted that she did not know what the prosthetic masks would be used for.

She initially refused to give names, claiming that she feared reprisals from those involved in the robbery. Yesterday Sir John Nutting, for the prosecution, asked: “Are you now in a position to tell us who you made up?” Miss Hogg said she was.

Jurors have heard how on February 21 last year armed robbers disguised as police officers kidnapped Colin Dixon, the manager of the money-sorting depot, and took him to a farm in Staplehurst, Kent. Members of the gang then went to Mr Dixon's home in Herne Bay and told his wife, Lynn, and child that he had been injured in a crash. They offered to take Mrs Dixon and the child to see him in hospital but instead took them to the farm.

The next day the gang forced Mr Dixon to take them through security at the depot, where they rounded up staff, loaded a lorry with cash and fled. Staff were told: “You will die if you do not do as you are told.”

The seven men on trial are Stuart Royle, 48, John Fowler, 58, Emir Hysenaj, 27, Jetmir Bucpapa, 26, Lea Rusha, 24, Roger Coutts, 30, and Keith Borer, 53.

It is said that Mr Hysenaj passed the gang inside information and even made a video of the depot.

Mr Royle, from Maidstone, Mr Fowler, from Staplehurst, Kent, Mr Bucpapa, from Tonbridge, Mr Rusha, from Southborough, near Tunbridge Wells, Mr Hysenaj, from Crowborough, East Sussex, and Mr Coutts, from Welling, all deny conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to commit robbery and conspiracy to possess a firearm.

Mr Borer, from Maidstone, denies handling stolen goods.

The trial continues.

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