A FORMER soldier accused of plundering thousand from Help For Heroes was paying his mortgage while living on a meagre pension, a jury has been told.

Mike Buss was making monthly payments of £500 and then £200 to his girlfriend despite his only income being £2,800 a year from his time in the forces, she claimed.

The jury heard the 41-year-old also made regular payments from his 'charity account' into his current account, often when it went into the red.

And on more than one occasion hundreds of pounds in coins had been paid in, but no trace could be found of all the cash being handed on to charity.

Former Royal Green Jacket Buss, who is on trial at Swindon Crown Court, denies theft and fraud from the forces' charity between October 2009 and September 2011.

DC Michael Armishaw told the jury how money from Buss' charity account, named Beyond Impossible, was frequently transferred to his current account.

He said it started with bank credits, often the day after he had gone overdrawn, but ended up with a standing order being set up in February 2011.

The officer said that in November 2009, around the time of a charity race, a deposit of £2,730.71p, of which £620.71p was in coins, was made into his bank account,.

But in the following days less than £1,6500 was sent to Help For Heroes and another £100 given to an unknown charity via a Just Giving page, he said.

Another time he told that £726 in coins was paid into his personal account around the time of a charity sleep out.

Kirsty Gorton, the mother of his child, said that until November 2009 Buss was paying £500 into her account towards the mortgage on the house they shared.

From the December, after interest rates plummeted, until they split in February 2011 he had a standing order for £200 a month.

She told the jury at Swindon Crown Court that after he left his job as a college lecturer in 2009 his only income was the pension of about £200 a month.

Ronan McCann, defending, put to her that he was trying to set up a boot camp business training people, but she insisted it never really caught on.

And Mr McCann also said that his client was marketing himself as he hoped to become a professional endurance athlete running ultra marathons.

She said that was correct but denied that he had sold any of the products, like energy drinks, he had been given by sponsors.

Prosecutors say that during two years he raised £40,000 for charity, but kept £23,000 for his own day to day living.

Buss, of Barra Close, Highworth, near Swindon, denies the charges and the case continues.