Among the criminals sentenced last month, was a factory worker, who was jailed for stealing more than half a million pounds from her employers, and a paedophile who targeted two schoolboys after meeting them while playing games on an Xbox.
A 22-year-old man who racially harassed a commuter before attacking them with an axe at Waverley railway station was jailed last month, as was a man described as a "useful idiot" who set fire to two businesses as part of a gang feud.
5. Fatal crash driver banned again
An East Lothian man who killed three school pals in a horror crash when he was an under-age driver has been banned from the road again after he was caught drink driving. Robbie Gemmell was just 16 when he ploughed his friend Jenna Barbour’s Peugeot 206 into a brick wall on a country road in East Lothian in 2013. Gemmell was spared a jail term and sentenced to 300 hours unpaid work and given a four year driving ban after he admitted to causing death by driving without due care and attention. Gemmell, now 28, was back in the dock at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on February 28 where he was banned from driving again after he drove a motorbike while almost four times the limit on May 13 last year. Gemmell, of Dunbar, East Lothian, also pleaded guilty to charges of assaulting a police officer on May 2, and behaving in a threatening or abusive manner on May 15, both last year. Sheriff Adrian Fraser banned him from driving for 18 months, placed him on a two year supervision order and said he must complete 180 hours of unpaid work as a direct alternative to custody. The sheriff also said Gemmell must attend alcohol treatment services when directed to do so. | The Scotsman
6. Construction firm fined after fatal accident
A construction firm was fined £183,000 last month after one of its employees died after falling through a fragile roof in Edinburgh. Ross Hanratty, 28, was working to clear roof gutters on two blocks of warehouses for IPSUM Drainage (Scotland) Limited, at Seafield Industrial Estate in October 2022 when he fell 24 feet. A health and safety investigation led by the City of Edinburgh Council in conjunction with Police Scotland found no safety measures were put in place to prevent the fall and the company failed to identify fragile sections on the roofs. On February 19, IPSUM Drainage (part of the IPSUM Group), of Hillington Park, Glasgow, pled guilty on Indictment to an offence under Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The investigation found the company failed to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risk to employees while working at height in order to clean gutters on roofs, in particular the hazards presented by fragile roofs, and failed to ensure proper precautions were taken to prevent a fall. It found Mr Hanratty was wearing a harness but there was nothing to connected to it and the company failed to provide information to their employee about what areas on the roof required to be cleaned. | Google Maps
7. Factory worker jailed for stealing from employers
A factory manager who fraudulently obtained more than £500,000 from her employers in a “sophisticated” fake workers scam was jailed last month. Viktorija Lukjanova, 36, made up bogus agency employees and forged time sheets and invoices to defraud the owners of agricultural company East Lothian Produce Ltd over a three year period. Lukjanova used the names of family members to convince bosses of the existence of the fake employees and paid a total of £550,000 into her own bank account before the scheme was uncovered. The mother-of-two admitted carrying out the fraud between January 2021 and February 2024 when she appeared at Edinburgh Sheriff Court in January, and returned to the dock for sentencing on February 23. Sheriff Graham Watson described the fake employee fraud as “a serious, sophisticated and very high value” operation and the offence had taken “a high level of planning” over the three year period. Sheriff Watson said: “By this fraud you obtained over half a million pounds from your employer. You were placed in a position of trust and you abused that trust. There is very little explanation as to why you committed this fraud or what you did with the proceeds.” Lukjanova, from Ormiston, East Lothian, was sentenced to two years in custody. | Alexander Lawrie
.jpg?crop=4:3&trim=&width=800)
8. Xbox paedophile
A paedophile who targeted two schoolboys after meeting them while playing games on an Xbox was last month jailed and banned from contacting his victims for life. Declan Stoddart, 22, befriended the youngsters before sending them horror videos of a man having sex with a dog and images of his penis on the social media apps Snapchat and Instagram. Stoddart then posted disturbing videos of him cutting himself with a knife and told the terrified children he would kill himself if they told anyone about the depraved contact. Stoddart also sent two teenage girls sordid videos of him performing solo sex acts and demanded the pair take and send him nude pictures of themselves. The pervert sent the children hundreds of sexual messages before the online contact was halted when parents checked the phones and found the sick messages he had sent them. Stoddart was arrested by police officers after being traced to his home in the Southhouse area of Edinburgh following the offending in May 2023. But while out on bail he began posting sexual messages to who he believed to be three 13-year-old girls he had contacted on various social media sites. Edinburgh Sheriff Court was told his family were later forced to flee the home after an angry mob descended on the property and smashed windows while protesting. Police attended the scene and after taking Stoddart into custody, cyber crime officers discovered eight indecent images of children stored on his phone. Stoddart appeared from custody at the capital court on February 17 where he pleaded guilty to eight charges across two indictments. Stoddart was handed a 15 month prison sentence for the online contact with the paedo hunter adult decoys backdated to his remand date in May last year. The sheriff then issued Stoddart with a two year jail term for the offences involving the children he had contacted online and placed him on the sex offenders register for 10 years. Sheriff Walls issued non-harassment orders banning Stoddart from contacting all four victims for an indefinite period and further imposed a five year sexual harm prevention order. | PA