A FRAUDSTER tricked a man into quitting his career by offering him a job in Norway that didn’t exist, a court has heard.

Emma Walker was working for a recruitment agency when she devised the “madcap scheme” which led a job-seeker to quit his job as a car dealership after-sales manager.

The “manipulative” 22-year-old, who had previously been convicted of fraud at a dance school in Northumberland, was asked by Stephen Clark to find him new employment in the offshore industry.

Walker claimed to have found him a job on an oil rig in Norway, but no such job existed.

But Mr Clark had been so convinced the offer was genuine that he quit his job and flew to Norway, where he remained for two weeks while Walker continued to fool him and make excuses.

Eventually Mr Clark’s wife contacted the recruitment firm Walker was working for, and when they checked their files they found they had no record of Mr Clark.

It then turned out Walker had forged the signature of her boss on the bogus contract she had given Mr Clark.

She also used a company credit card to pay for her victim’s trip to Scandinavia and to pay her own rent, bills and to buy a washing machine, racking up a bill of £11,000, £3,000 of which she spent on herself.

Walker was convicted of fraud in 2011 after conning parents into believing their children were going to Disneyland Paris for a dance competition.

And in her latest appearance at Newcastle Crown Court, it also emerged she failed to declare that conviction while setting up a dance school in Shiremoor, North Tyneside.

Walker, who continues to run dance schools in Cowgate, Newcastle and West Allotment, North Tyneside, even forged a Criminal Records Bureau certificate while setting up the Shiremoor class.

Despite pleading guilty to three counts of fraud, Walker walked free from court with a suspended prison sentence.

Sentencing her, Recorder Charles Ekins told her: “The impression you have given by your conduct over the last three years is of a thoroughly and persistently dishonest woman.

“You are clearly intelligent and able to manage your life, and yet time and time again you have allowed yourself to act in what may be described as a thoroughly dishonest fashion.

“It’s clear to me a custodial sentence is absolutely inevitable and you have come within a whisker of going straight to prison.”

In a statement to the court, Mr Clark said: “She’s deceitful and manipulative and she nearly destroyed me.”

When Walker was arrested she admitted she had provided a false contract and had used the company credit card to fund the Norway trip and to pay her rent and bills and buy a washing machine.

The court heard she committed a separate fraud between July 2011 and May 2012 when setting up the dance school in Shiremoor, North Tyneside, by failing to disclose her previous conviction for fraud with regard to the Disneyland trip and handing in a forged copy of her CRB certificate issued in 2007.

Walker, 22, of Harrogate Court, Ashington, Northumberland, pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud and was given nine months in prison suspended for two years, with 100 hours of unpaid work and supervision.

Robin Mairs, defending, said: “She was going well at the recruitment agency and was over-confident of getting him a job. He gave up his job and she felt responsible and came up with what was a madcap scheme to get him out to Norway in the hope a job would materialise, although inevitably a job wasn’t going to materialise.

“It was not done out of malice, quite the reverse.”

Walker was given a conditional discharge in July 2011 for fraud by abuse of position whilst running Just Dance, in Ashington, Northumberland. She planned a trip to Disneyland for a competition and asked parents to provide a £10 deposit.

No trip happened and Walker denied stealing the money, which was recovered from her home.