THE business partner of two North-East conmen who fled the region last year is having to sell her home to pay the customers they fleeced.

Gary Upson and his son, Ryan, disappeared along with hundreds of thousands of pounds from their Darlington business, Just Trucks, last May, as revealed by The Northern Echo.

The pair, who left scores of customers out of pocket after promising them horseboxes that were never delivered, are still being hunted by detectives from Durham Police's fraud squad.

Now Karen Winks, 34, a bookkeeper the Upsons persuaded to front the business, has applied for insolvency and is selling her £115,000 home in Brompton-on-Swale, North Yorkshire, to pay off creditors.

Ms Winks could not be contacted for comment, but her insolvency application, which has been lodged at Darlington County Court, reveals how she was duped by the pair.

"I first noticed the business had cashflow problems in the latter part of 2003. It was around this time that my trust of the Upsons also began to falter," she said.

Ms Winks said that the pair began cashing cheques from the business without providing documents of what they had bought.

She said that last April, Gary Upson asked Lloyds Bank, which held the Just Trucks account in her name, to provide a temporary overdraft of £7,000 and also to honour several cheques because he was awaiting a large deposit from a customer.

The deposit never appeared and the account was left £17,000 in the red.

After they vanished, Ms Winks discovered that she was liable for more than £100,000, which the Upsons had taken from customers for trucks that were never delivered.

Ms Winks' proposal for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement is believed to have been agreed at a creditors' meeting last August.

The 32 known creditors are likely to receive about 34p in the pound.

Tom Blair, who paid the Upsons £62,000 for a motor home that never arrived for his severely disabled son Ian, 27, said he hoped to recoup about £10,000.

"I really feel for Karen Winks. It looks as though she has been as nave as I was," said Mr Blair, 63, from Middlesbrough.