A Fife woman has been given more than 23 years to pay £6,000 she stole from her daughter.
Carolanne Whitehouse, 63, from Coronation Place, Coaltown of Wemyss, previously admitted that between 2012 and 2022 she pretended to Barclays bank she was her daughter and induced the company to provide her with credit.
Solicitor Sally McKenzie said Barclays had sold the debt to debt recovery firm PRA Group UK Ltd.
She said “the real issue is her ability to repay the debt” due to being on benefits.
“It comes out at roughly £230 per week. Her outgoings are similar.
“It’s not ideal.
“I don’t think there’s much social work indicated they could do with her as well.”
Sheriff Elizabeth McFarlane made a £6,000 compensation order, payable at £5 per week.
She said: “Ms Whitehouse, there’s very little I can do by way of punishment.
“Obviously if you win the lottery, pay it off.”
Guilty of murder
John Lizanec was found guilty of murdering his wife Michelle at their home in Inchture and has been jailed for life. Lizanec cut his wife’s throat and hid her body in an airing cupboard before fleeing to his mother’s home in Dundee, prompting an armed police siege.
Killer detained
A man who stabbed his nephew to death was ordered to be held at a high security psychiatric hospital under a compulsion order.
Erlend Fraser, 50, left his victim with 20 stab wounds in the fatal attack at his home in St Margaret’s Hope, Orkney, on June 19 last year.
A judge heard that the killing of prospective St Andrews University student William Fraser, 21, had a devastating impact on family members of the deceased.
The High Court in Edinburgh heard Fraser has a mental disorder in the form of a learning disability and judge Lord Matthews said imposing a compulsion order with restrictions on his discharge was appropriate.
He said: “This is for your benefit rather than a punishment for what you did.”
The imposition of the order means any decision to allow him access to the community in future would be under conditions set by a tribunal with oversight by the Scottish Ministers.
The court earlier heard that the victim had been with friends before ending up at his uncle’s door on the night of the killing.
A relative and her partner later arrived to find blood on sofas and the floor and the IT technician dead in the toilet.
He suffered wounds to his neck, chest, back and left arm.
The court heard he had just been accepted to the Fife university but ended up taking a job with the island council instead.
Shared neo-Nazi video
A Fife man who shared a Neo-Nazi group’s propaganda video online has been convicted of distributing a terrorist publication. Colin Webster, 61, reposted the footage by National Action (NA) – proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK Government – in December 2021 on social media website GAB and on Twitter.
Admonished after accidental glass assault
A Fife woman who accidentally struck her former partner in the face with a glass at a Wetherspoon pub after trying to throw drink at him has been admonished.
Sophie Williams, 23, pled guilty to assaulting the man at the pub in Dunfermline High Street on February 19 last year.
She admitted shouting and swearing and throwing a liquid within a glass at him, causing the liquid and the glass to strike him on the head.
Williams, of Reverend Downie Wynd, Saline, previously had sentencing deferred for four months to be of good behaviour.
Prosecutor Laura McManus told the court the pair argued in the pub over a family matter after meeting by chance and “the accused then picked up a glass which has been sitting on the table.”
She said: “She has then gone to attempt to throw the liquid from the glass but what actually happened is the glass slipped out her hand and both the liquid and glass itself hit (the complainer) on the right cheek, though the glass did not smash”.
The fiscal said the man sustained an approximate 1.5cm cut to his cheek bone and did not require medical intervention.
Defence lawyer Aime Allan said her client had intended to throw the liquid in the glass but it slipped from her hands.
The solicitor said since the incident there have been no further issues.
Sheriff Francis Gill told Williams it was fortunate her victim did not sustain more serious injury but noted it was her first offence and there had been no repetition.
Voyeur ‘deserved jail’
A paedophile Fife joiner who secretly snapped a naked picture of a 15-year-old girl with a hidden camera has been told he deserved to be jailed. Voyeur Blair Mackie was caught with a perverted picture on his tablet. He was given a community sentence by sheriff who said the available jail term would have been too short.
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