The procurator fiscal for Tayside, Central and Fife has called on local authorities to do more to report illegal dumping after it emerged only a tiny fraction of cases were properly reported to prosecutors.
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A Fife woman who tried to hide a £380,000 tax fraud by claiming vital documents had been destroyed in a flood has been jailed for two years.
Lesley Dykes, 66, of Markinch, stole the money during a five-year fraud while running The Crusoe Hotel in Lower Largo and Dunnikier House Hotel in Kirkcaldy.
A spokeswoman for HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) said the public purse was the victim of her crime and the money would have paid the wages of 15 nurses.
She was caught out in an investigation by the tax agency.
Lesley Dykes, 66, of Markinch, Fife, stole the money during a five-year fraud, an HMRC investigation revealed. Between August 2011 and July 2014, she submitted false returns for The Crusoe Hotel in Lower Largo and The Dunnikier House Hotel in Kirkcaldy and then failed to submit returns at all from August 2014 to July 2016 – evading £380,000 in tax. HMRC officers raided Dykes’ home in Mount Frost Place as well as the two hotels on August 9 2016, seizing documents, mobile phones and computers. These included sales records from both hotels – documents that Dykes had previously told HMRC were destroyed in a flood. She was sentenced to two years in jail at a hearing at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court on Thursday, having pleaded guilty in November.