A female ambulance paramedic has gone on trial accused of stealing an 87-year-old patient’s purse and using her bank card to withdraw £1,400.

Anna Mogford, aged 38, was a driver with the South Western Ambulance NHS Trust when she and a colleague were called to a bungalow in a Devon village where an elderly woman had suffered broken ribs in a fall.

She is alleged to have stolen her purse from her handbag and used it four times within nine hours to make withdrawals at three different cashpoints.

Mogford was filmed on CCTV using ATMs in the foyer of the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital and a Tesco store in the city at exactly the time when withdrawals were made, Exeter Crown Court was told.

Another two withdrawals were made at 8.50 am at an Aldi store in Cullompton which was close to the school where Mogford’s daughter attended.

After she was arrested, she handed police forged bank statements which purported to show she had withdrawn £50 from the hospital cashpoint when she did not.

Mogford, of Longlands Lane, Cullompton, denies theft of the purse and fraudulent use of the Lloyds bank card. She has admitted perverting the course of justice by producing the fake bank statements.

Mr Gordon Richings, prosecuting, said Mogford was the driver of a paramedic ambulance called to Mrs Joyce Bealey’s bungalow at Stoke Canon, near Exeter, on Saturday July 1 last year.

She had broken eight ribs and a shoulder in a fall and was taken to hospital. At one stage Mogford was left alone when she went to fetch a dressing gown.

Mr Richings said Mogford stole £40 cash from the purse and used the Lloyds bank card and PIN to withdraw a total of £1,400 using the PIN number she kept in the purse.

The withdrawals were at a Tesco in Exeter at 11.27 pm on July 1, the hospital foyer at 6.08 the next morning, and at Aldi in Cullompton at 8.51 and 8.52 am the same day.

The money has since been refunded by Lloyds bank.

A matron at the hospital later found the purse on top of a drugs cabinet in the triage room in the emergency department and returned it to Mrs Bealey.

Her daughter Ann alerted the hospital and police after checking her mother’s account. Mogford accepted she was the person seen at the cashpoints at Tesco and the hospital but said she did not use the first and withdrew £50 of her own money at the hospital.

There was no CCTV at Aldi but Mr Richings told the jury the shop was close to where Mogford took her daughter to school and the transactions were made shortly before 9 am.

In a statement read to the jury, Mrs Bealey’s daughter told how she found out about the withdrawals.

She said: ‘They were made while my Mum was in hospital. She did not know how to use a cashpoint machine anyway. I felt sick and I contacted Lloyds straight away.’

Mogford denies stealing the purse or using the cards.

The trial continues.