A nurse told a court she felt conned after falling for the slick patter of a salesman.

Alison Wright assumed she would receive a selection of top-quality branded goods if she handed over £60 during an auction-style sale at The Outlet store in Brighton.

Instead, she was left feeling "ripped off" on discovering her money had bought her a cheap, poor-quality camera, a court heard.

Mrs Wright was giving evidence at the trial of six people accused of conspiracy to defraud customers at the city centre store from October to December 2001.

Mrs Wright told Hove Crown Court she was handed a leaflet as she walked past the store in North Street Quadrant, Brighton, during a shopping trip with her husband Michael.

Her attention was attracted by the flyer's promise of a Nintendo Gameboy for £3 and a table in front of the store containing Playstation 2 and Motorola boxes.

She assumed the goods being sold inside would be of similar quality.

Mrs Wright waited on the pavement for 20 minutes until the crowd that gathered were ushered inside.

She said: "They said 95 per cent of the goods were catalogue returns. They said most of the boxes were really battered and that was the reason they could be offered at such low prices."

The jury were shown a video filmed covertly by Trading Standards officers that showed customers being given cheap goods for nominal or small amounts of money before being shown piles of high-quality branded goods.

They were then given the chance to pay for goods, without explicitly being told what they were getting.

Mrs Wright said she handed over 10p for a cheap personal stereo and £5 for a cheap bottle of perfume, assuming that would mean she was in line for the bigger bargains she expected would come later.

She handed over another £60, assuming she would get some of the top brand goods shown earlier.

She told the jury the end of the sale was sudden, adding: "These people surrounded the crowd and herded them out of the shop very quickly. We didn't realise until we got out the door that we didn't have a chance to look at the goods."

Asked how she felt when she saw the camera, she said: "My thoughts were that I had been rather stingingly ripped off. There's no way I would have paid £60."

The six accused are: Liam McBratney, of Landsdowne Place, Hove; Lisa Firth, of Greenacres, Shoreham; John Sexton, of Tufnell Park Road, London; John Cook, of College Cross, Islington, London; David Cranston, of Little Bay Close, Stotfield, Hertfordshire, and Barry Joseph, of Elia Street, Islington, London.

All deny the charges.

The trial continues.