A devious driver thought he had devised a perfect alibi when he wrote off his pride and joy.
Garry Bremner and a friend hatched a plot to tell police his 2.8 litre Ford Capri had been crashed by car thieves.
However, it had been snowing - and footsteps from the car wreckage led police straight to Bremner's front door.
The 28-year-old and friend Martin Gammie, 22, both from Inverurie, both admitted their role in the doomed scheme at Aberdeen Sheriff Court yesterday.
Fiscal depute Geoff Main told the court that the B-registration car had skidded on ice and crashed into a lamppost in Inverurie in the early hours of a Saturday morning in February.
The pair went to Bremner's nearby Selbie Drive home and, after drowning their sorrows with drink, agreed call police and say the car had been stolen.
But police at the scene of the crash saw footprints in the snow.
''They followed these footprints and they led directly to 20 Selbie Drive,'' Mr Main said.
The court heard the Ford Capri was Bremner's ''pride and joy''. But it was written off in the crash.
Bremner admitted failing to stop and report the accident, failing to identify the driver had been and attempting to defeat the ends of justice by pretending it had been stolen.
Gammie, of Ladeside Road, Port Elphinstone, Inverurie, admitted attempting to defeat the ends of justice.
Sheriff David Kelbie fined Bremner a total of #600 and banned him from driving for a year.
Gammie was placed on probation for a year.
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