A Dundee father-of-three was jailed for 32 months after he was caught storing heroin and cocaine worth more than £90,000.
The High Court in Edinburgh was told Aaron Ogilvie did not know the value of the drugs police recovered from an address at Ormiston Crescent.
Judge Lord Arthurson told the 30-year-old he would have faced a four-year jail term but for his early guilty plea to two charges of being concerned in the supply of cocaine and heroin on July 17 last year.
During a search, officers found more than half a kilo of heroin and three kilos of bulking agent in a holdall, along with quarter of a kilo of cocaine in a gift bag and smaller amounts of cocaine.
The cocaine was assessed as having a maximum value of £50,500 and the heroin £40,000. Officers also found £460 in a jacket pocket.
Defence solicitor advocate Kris Gilmartin said Ogilvie was laid off from his employment last summer.
“He accepts he was abusing drugs at the time and he was suffering financial difficulties.”
He said Ogilvie agreed to store the drugs but stood to gain very little financially and “did not know the value and did not know that heroin was also present”.
He added: “He accepts fully his involvement in these offences and appreciates that he must be punished.”
“A significant part of that punishment is letting his family down. His actions have caused misery to those closest to him.”
Power boss ban
A senior manager at power firm SSE has been banned from driving for two years after he drunkenly careered his car into a Perth woman’s garden. Peter McKessick was five times the limit when he ploughed his Land Rover Discovery through a hedge.
More time for bogus tradesman
A Fife tradesman who swindled thousands of pounds from customers has been given a hefty compensation order and told for a second time to do unpaid work.
Craig Aitchison, 25, appeared at Dunfermline Sheriff Court after failing to do the 160 unpaid work hours to which he was originally sentenced about a year ago for the crime.
The court heard he has only done one hour.
Aitchison, of Sherbrooke Road, Rosyth, previously pled guilty to three fraud charges.
On March 1 2023 at an address in Nether Currie Road, Edinburgh, he pretended he would carry out work to renovate a room in his house and obtained a £1,300 deposit by fraud, knowing he had no intention of doing the work.
He fraudulently obtained a £1,400 deposit from a woman by pretending he would install a new kitchen at her home in Leadside Crescent, Wellwood, on September 28 2023.
Between April 21 and September 27 of that year at an address in Goulden Place, Dunfermline, he obtained a £3,200 deposit by fraud by pretending he would carry out building work.
Defence lawyer Pete Robertson said Aitchison – who remains in joinery work – started his own business but got himself into debts and ended up “putting his head in the sand”.
The lawyer said Aitchison’s focus until February this year was cocaine use but that he has started to take steps to abstain, is now more pro-social and is assessed in a background report as suitable for unpaid work.
Sheriff Susan Duff made a compensation order for the full amount and gave Aitchison 74 weeks to pay at £100 per week. He will be under offender supervision.
The sheriff also told Aitchison to do 159 hours of unpaid work – taking account of the one hour he did – within three months.
‘Murder suspect’ claim
A security engineer who clambered into a fire tragedy Perth hotel to reclaim his CCTV cameras told a court how he was treated by police as a murder suspect. Jamie Grierson entered the New County Hotel through an upstairs window just weeks after the horrific blaze in January 2023 that claimed the lives of three people. After a lengthy trial he was cleared of breaking into the hotel and stealing the cameras.
Drunken rant
David Penman drunkenly dished out racist and homophobic abuse at Dundee bar, Captain’s Cabin.
As he was arrested, he called police “Nazis” and “woke”.
Sheriff Tim Niven-Smith told Penman: “If I were woke perhaps I would step back from a custodial sentence.”
Dundee Sheriff Court heard how the 40-year-old approached door staff at the North Lindsay Street bar at around 11.50pm on November 23 2024 and said: “Your venue is full of Nazis
“Why do you let all these black b******s in?”
He was refused entry and became “irate and agitated”, a prosecutor said.
He began shouting, “Nazi b******s” at patrolling police and after being handcuffed and taken to the nearby police headquarters, shouted: “You mutants, you freaks.
“Woke p**f. Transgender woke c**t. You’re a f****t.”
Penman kicked out repeatedly and kicked one PC on the body.
Solicitor Gary McIlravey said of his client: “He had no recollection whatsoever.
“He has not covered himself in glory with his behaviour and underpinning the offences was the excessive consumption of alcohol.”
Penman was placed on a restriction of liberty order (10pm-6am) for four months.
Raped missing girl
A pizza chef who smoked cannabis with a missing 12 year-old girl before raping her in Fife has been jailed for five years. Erick Fragnito exploited the youngster at his then-home in Burntisland in June 2023 and claimed in the high court he thought the child was older than she was.
Bus station abuse
A 53-year-old who made a sexual remark to a 15-year-old girl at Glenrothes bus station and stole money from a pensioner has been jailed for 14 months.
On other occasions at the same bus station, Alexander Hamilton struck a bus service employee on the head with his crutch and was racially abusive to another man.
Hamilton appeared at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court for sentencing by video link to prison after earlier pleading guilty to separate offences of directing sexual verbal communications at a child, assault, theft, and acting in a racially aggravated manner.
Prosecutor Matthew Knapp told the court the teenager was left “alarmed and very uncomfortable” on July 31 last year when Hamilton asked her age then told her “you have good boobs and a bum for a 15-year-old.”
Defence lawyer Calum Harris said Hamilton, of Glenrothes, was under the influence at the time and has little recollection of the incident.
Hamilton had already been told at the station he was banned from Stagecoach buses after leaving blood-soaked bandages on a coach on June 22 last year.
He had reacted by hitting a supervisor with his crutch, cutting his head.
His bus station offending also included, on August 19 2023, acting in a racially-aggravated manner by repeatedly uttering racist abuse and raising his crutch at a man in an aggressive manner.
On June 15 last year at an address in Postgate, Glenrothes, Hamilton stole a “quantity of cash” from an 81-year-old man.
Referring to a previous background report, Mr Harris said his client had been sleeping rough for three years prior to his remand in March.
He said Hamilton has been a drug user since the age of 13, when he was first introduced to heroin and more recently, crack cocaine.
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