A woman alleged to have stolen almost half a million dollars from her grandmother was trying to prevent her drug-using father and another man from accessing the cash, a jury heard yesterday.Lorraine Smith, 46, is accused along with her sister Audra-Ann Bean, 44, of financially exploiting Lenice Tucker, 87, and siphoning $493,580 from her bank accounts between July 2010 and January 2011. They deny the charges.Ms Tucker, of Tuckers’ Villa, Middle Road, Southampton, gave evidence against the pair at their Supreme Court trial.During cross-examination by defence lawyer Larry Mussenden, the senior agreed Ms Smith was her favourite of her four granddaughters and she had a good relationship with her.Asked if she had a relationship with Ms Bean, of Lusher Lane East, Warwick, she replied: “Kind of.” Ms Tucker said it wasn’t the same as her relationship with Ms Smith.She chuckled as Mr Mussenden asked her to recall vacations abroad with her two granddaughters and how they would always pick up items she requested when they travelled overseas without her.He asked her if mother-of-four Ms Smith, of Lusher Hill, Warwick, paid her health insurance for her for a period of time and she confirmed she did.Ms Tucker’s son Ivan Bean, the father of the two defendants, was to have paid half but failed to do so, the witness agreed.“So Lorraine ended up paying all of it?” asked Mr Mussenden. “Yes,” replied Ms Tucker.The prosecution alleges that Ms Smith and Ms Bean “descended” upon their grandmother after the death of her sister Lesseline, aged 91, who left $540,000 in five bank accounts to which Ms Tucker was a joint signatory.The Crown’s case is the defendants deceived Ms Tucker into adding them as signatories so they could clear the accounts and use the money for themselves.Mr Mussenden asked Ms Tucker to cast her mind back to July 20, 2010, a few days after her sister died, when he said she attended both HSBC and Butterfield banks.The defence lawyer asked the witness if she remembered Ms Smith having a conversation with her that night. “The conversation was about not letting Ivan use the money in the accounts,” he suggested.Ms Tucker shook her head and replied: “She said he’s all full of drugs and everything and he’s spending money on that. But that’s a lie there. That’s a big lie.”Later, Ms Tucker said she gave her son sums of money from time to time, such as $30 or $40, and knew it was for drugs.She agreed she knew Mr Bean’s son Jason Smith, a former national squad footballer, tried to get his father to stop using drugs.Mr Mussenden quizzed the senior about a maintenance man called Kelly Jones, whom he said moved into Tuckers’ Villa after Lesseline’s death and began using the yard as an auto garage and abusing Ms Tucker.“He started shouting at you and using swear words,” Mr Mussenden said. “He was selling drugs from there too.”Ms Tucker replied: “I know.”Mr Mussenden asked Ms Tucker to recall Mr Bean and Mr Jones taking her to the bank for money on more than one occasion in October 2010.“On one of those occasions you found that there was no money in the accounts other than $100 or so?” he asked.“Yes,” she replied.The lawyer said: “Somewhere in the middle of that, Lorraine had a conversation with you about your bank accounts.”He added: “In this conversation, Lorraine is saying to you that she had transferred the money to another account in the same bank so that Ivan and Kelly couldn’t take you to the bank to get your money.”Ms Tucker replied: “I don’t remember that. I really don’t remember that.”Earlier, she told prosecutor Maria Sofianos she did not agree to add her granddaughters as signatories to her bank accounts and was “very upset” about what had happened.She said she never gave permission for the sisters to take any money from her accounts.The case continues.