The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Company director who stole machinery to pay off loan sharks is jailed
Abusinessman who raided machinery compounds across central Scotland to pay off loan sharks has been jailed.
Douglas Lammie previously admitted stealing £43,000 worth of plant from four different locked compounds in Perthshire, Edinburgh Airport and a cemetery.
Lammie, of Barns Street in Glasgow, raided the machinery yards over the course of eight days but was ultimately foiled by trackers built into the stolen kit.
At Perth Sheriff Court, the 59-year-old was jailed for 11 months.
A yellow JCB digger, used by golf maintenance workers, was taken from Gleneagles on February 4 2019.
It has never been traced. The court heard Lammie visited a lock-up at the complex, which had been secured with a padlocked chain.
The next day, a supervisor checked CCTV footage of the compound and saw the digger had been driven out of the compound and on to Western Road, Auchterarder, towards the A9, at 6.37pm the night before.
Just two days later, Lammie targeted his next machinery lock-up – a high-security yard at Edinburgh Airport.
The yard, operated by construction giants Balfour Beatty, contained a number of machines including an industrial lighting unit, valued at just over £6,500.
Hired from A-plant, now Sunbelt Rentals, the light was stored away by employees in a secure compound.
Ultimately, the rental company were contacted by police to be told that the missing light had been recovered.
Lammie’s third compound was again operated by Balfour Beatty where the firm stored machinery workers were using to dual the A9.
On February 9, Lammie sneaked into the yard at Loak Farm, near Bankfoot, and plundered his next construction vehicle – a roller worth £6,000 which was owned by a plant hire company.
The roller’s tracker showed the vehicle had been activated at 10.48 that day – a Saturday.
Site managers became suspicious because nobody was working there at the time.
Tracker data showed the vehicle was near the
A908 between Dunfermline and Alloa.
Lammie’s fourth and final raid came at The Stables at Denny Cemetery.
On February 12, he stole a £6,000 Caterpillar minidigger parked nearby.
The owner of the digger had parked the machine on February 11 and closed the gate. He found it was missing the next day.
He returned home to get a phone signal to check the tracker, which stated the digger was in the middle of a field near Forestmill, Clackmannanshire.
The Denny digger owner contacted police, who followed the tracker’s
co-ordinates to a depot on the A907.
Police found an area of land which was impossible to pass in their car but discovered a gated red ash road just 50m away.
As they made their way up the road, officers first encountered the roller taken from Bankfoot.
As they progressed, they also discovered the industrial light from Edinburgh Airport and the digger from Denny.
A mobile phone was also found, which was registered to Ardroil Contracts, a company of which Lammie was director.
He was arrested and in a police interview told officers he was driving the vehicles “legitimately” and had “no knowledge of them being stolen”.
At Lammie’s sentencing, solicitor Paul Ralph said: “The company he set up was struggling at this time and sharks in the water approached him and suggested this may be a way to deal with debts.
“Having taken this step, he realised he was well in over his head.”