A victim of serial conman Steven Truswell says she was left out of pocket and out of a job after he set up a bogus company.

Truswell, who went under the fake name ’Oliver Hunter’, was this week jailed for two years and eight months after earlier pleading guilty to five counts of fraud.

Hannah Simpson, aged 28, of Peel, was introduced to and employed by ’Oliver Hunter’ through island recruitment agency Search & Select.

In December last year she had an interview at the offices of Search & Select for the position of ’social media marketer’ with a new eCommerce start-up company called Rotten Republik.

Hannah said: ’I was anxious about working for a start-up, but Oliver advised me that he had seven other successful businesses behind him and had invested more than £1 million into this new venture.’

The interview went very well and she was offered the job that same day.

’I was absolutely delighted. I’d been working self-employed as a freelance marketer for the previous 18 months and was very keen to get back into employment and earn a reliable income again,’ she said.

’Oliver’ asked her to start the job on January 2 and assured her she would receive her contract before Christmas.

Hannah handed in her resignation to Manx Telecom, where she had been working four days a week on a temporary contract, and notified her freelance clients that she would no longer be working for them.

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Two others were employed for Rotten Republik through Search & Select.

But Hannah became very concerned when Oliver began to come up with a new excuse almost daily about why he had to push back the contract signing.

’I was regularly meeting with him to discuss the business so I tried not to worry too much,’ she said.

She and a fellow recruit went into Search & Select to express their concern about having no contract.

They were told that delays in contracts are completely normal for a start-up company. Hannah specifically asked ’are you sure this man is legitimate?’ but was told not to worry. ’I trusted their professional judgement,’ she said.

Hannah officially began work with ’Oliver’ on January 2 and the team met every few days in the unit that he told them he had rented. And yet they were still awaiting their contracts.

She called Search & Select to again express her concerns and advised them that she would hand in her resignation if she didn’t receive her contract that day.

’They understood my reasons but again they said they believed everything was okay,’ she said.

On January 11 she resigned, notifying ’Oliver’ via message.

’I spent the entire weekend feeling very upset about this and wondering if I’d made the wrong decision. I was also now facing the fact that I had no source of income at all,’ she said. The next day, the truth came out when she and the other employees met up with the girlfriend of ’Oliver’ and the owner of the car he had stolen.

’We finally all joined the dots and realised this man was a complete fraudster,’ said Hannah.

’I was in total shock at how much he had lied to all of us because although I had my suspicions you just don’t believe something so crazy could really happen.’

The next day she and the other two people employed through Search & Select went into the offices. They apologised and admitted they had trusted ’Oliver’. Following the meeting, Hannah and the two employees went straight to police headquarters to file a statement about ’Oliver Hunter’.

’Setting up this fake business scenario is what enabled him to commit this fraud and led to all these people being conned,’ she said.

Hannah has secured a new job but says she is seeking compensation from Search & Select for loss of earnings only, which they have so far refused.

She believes the agency should have been more thorough about carrying out due diligence.

She said: ’This entire situation has been overwhelmingly stressful for me due to loss of income and financial worry.’

’I am dumbfounded that they refuse to accept any sort of responsibility about this situation.

’They are the only reason I was out of work, and the fact remains that I have lost income due to a situation that could have been completely avoided had they just asked for one form of formal identification from Steven Truswell (aka Oliver Hunter).’

Search & Select declined to comment, saying that it was still a police matter.