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A former office worker jailed for defrauding two construction companies has been ordered to pay back more than £80,000 under proceeds of crime laws. Stephanni Houston, 41, of Ayr, was sentenced to 38 months in prison in November 2023 for embezzling over £516,000 from two construction com

Three Scottish secondary schools will this month battle it out in the final of a public speaking contest. Pupils from St Andrews in Fife, Trinity High School, Renfrew, and St Aidan’s High School in Wishaw, Lanarkshire, will go head-to-head for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service&rsq

A woman jailed for stealing thousands of pounds from a children’s charity and a family-run coffee firm has been ordered to repay more than £36,000 under proceeds of crime laws. In January 2025, Beverley Bennie, 37, was sentenced to 20 months’ imprisonment after she admitted embezzl

Two drug traffickers who tried to smuggle cannabis with a street value of almost £600,000 into Scotland on a flight from Canada have been jailed for a total of five years and six months. Jamaal Darbasie, 27, and George Manton, 19, were stopped by UK Border Force officers when they arrived at G

A former foster carer who subjected four children to a catalogue of abuse over the course of a decade has been jailed.  Yvonne Keenan pled guilty to four charges of cruel and unnatural treatment on 28 April 2025. The 56-year-old's offending took place at addresses in Glasgow between 1994 a

The Crown Office has approved a pilot to evaluate the use of CT scanning in instructed post-mortem. The pilot has been developed by the University of Glasgow and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and will build on experience of similar work previously carried out by NHS Lothian.

A Banffshire farm has been fined £20,000 after a 24-year-old man died when his clothing became trapped in machinery. Melrose Farms, a family-owned potato farming partnership, pled guilty to a breach of health and safety legislation at Inverness Sheriff Court after part-time seasonal worker Ada

A prison officer who believed he was sending sexual messages to a child on a social media messaging app has been sentenced. Peter Sugden, of Falkirk, began communicating with the Kik profile on 11 June 2024 and was told it belonged to a 13-year-old girl from Essex. 

A telecoms worker from Paisley has been sentenced for creating and storing AI-generated images of child sex abuse.  Risto Bergman, 42, who is originally from Finland, pled guilty to making pictures showing young girls being abused. 

A woman who embezzled £1.5 million from a family scrap metal business in Aberdeen has been ordered to repay almost £670,000 under proceeds of crime laws. Coleen Muirhead, 57, of Aberdeen, was jailed for three years and four months in September 2023 after she admitted a charge of embezzle

Two men who set up a drugs trafficking network worth hundreds of thousands of pounds have been imprisoned for a total of nine years. Jamie Montgomery, 44, and Darrin Campbell, 39, both of Glasgow, orchestrated the sale and supply of large quantities of cocaine and cannabis.

A former local authority employee who embezzled more than £1 million from Aberdeen City Council over a 17-year period has been ordered to repay more than £165,000 under proceeds of crime laws. Michael Paterson, 60, was imprisoned for four years at the High Court in Edinburgh last July af

A man who was extradited from Germany to stand trial after raping a vulnerable teenage girl has been jailed for eight years. Marwan Al-Bakr was found guilty of attacking the 15-year-old near Hampden Park Football Stadium in Glasgow on 14 February 2022. The now 32-year-old first approached the v

The Crown Office has lodged a first notice to begin the court process for a discretionary fatal accident inquiry into the death of David Ainsworth. Mr Ainsworth, 59, was admitted to Hairmyres hospital on 20 January 2020 following concerns raised by a home carer. His condition deteriorated and he die

A business owner who conned dozens of customers out of more than £100,000 by breaking promises to build garden sheds and summerhouses has been jailed for three years and four months. Alistair Baxter, 36, took thousands of pounds for the work from almost 70 people, some of them pensioners in th