Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson were warned that police had identified between 100 and 110 "victims" of phone hacking, and were investigating alleged payments from the News of the World to private investigator Glenn Mulcaire of more than £1m following his 2006 arrest, the Old Bailey has heard.
An internal email from News International lawyer Tom Crone to Coulson, then News of the World editor, outlined details relayed to the then Sun editor Brooks by police after the arrest of Mulcaire and former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman.
In the email, dated 15 September 2006, and shown to the jury, Crone wrote: "Andy, here's what Rebekah told me about info relayed to her by the cops."
"They are confident they have Clive and GM [Mulcaire] bang to rights on the Palace intercepts." From accessing Mulcaire's emails, recordings and notes "they have a list of 100-110 victims", he wrote.
"The only payment records they found were from News International, ie the NoW retainer and other invoices. They said that over the period they look at going way back there seemed to be over £1m in payments."
Crone continued that the police were examining a "pattern of victims", with one replaced by the next one who becomes "flavour of the month".
"In terms of the News of the World they were not widening the case to include other NoW people but would do so if they got direct evidence … say NoW journos directly accessing the voicemails (this is what did for Clive)."
Crone wrote that the police had got back copies of the News of the World and were "trying to marry CG [Goodman] accesses to specific stories".
He added: "In one case – Hugh Grant and Jemimah [sic] Khan – they seem to have a phrase from an NoW story which is identical to the tape or note of G's access".
"They have no recording of NoW people speaking to GM or accessing voicemails.
"They do have GM's phone records which show sequences of contacts with NoW before and after access – obviosly [sic] they don;' [sic] have the content of the calls … so this is at best circumstantial."
The jury has been told Mulcaire was on a £105,000-a-year contract with the News of the World, and that both he and Goodman were convicted of phone-hacking charges in January 2007.
Brooks, the former News International chief executive officer who has edited both the News of the World and the Sun, and Coulson, who succeeded her as News of the World editor, deny conspiracy to intercept mobile voicemail messages .
The trial continues.
