A woman has been jailed after launching a hate campaign against herself, causing police to waste hundreds of hours after they thought she was targeted by someone else.
Carly Buckingham-Smith, 38, sent herself abusive texts and graffitied her own house. She then told police she was being targeted by “Asian males” when in fact she’d made the whole thing up.
She used her own phone to send threatening messages like: “I am going to tie you up and slit your throat and watch you bleed.”
In another, a threat was made to “put petrol through her letterbox and set it alight”.
She even scrawled offensive graffiti all over her own house.
The cleaner, from Eastleigh, Hampshire, made 11 witness statements to police concerning the texts, claiming she was being harassed.
So, police fitted alarms and cameras at her home in an effort to catch those she claimed were harassing her.
But it was later discovered she had been lying.
She was charged with perverting the course of justice.
A jury at Southampton Crown Court found her guilty and she’s now been jailed for six months.
The court heard how Buckingham-Smith initially made a complaint against an Uber driver, which was dismissed by police.
She then claimed she was being harassed and was facing “intimidating behaviour” linked to the driver.
But police soon established she was making “false complaints and was attention-seeking”.
When interviewed about her “fictitious reports” of arson attacks and men banging on her door in the night, she made no comment.
Judge Nicholas Rowland called her campaign “nasty” and added that a “great deal” of police time had been wasted.
He said police spent 69 hours investigating Buckingham-Smith’s “fabricated and spurious allegations” and a further 500 hours surrounding her own criminal case.