A man has been charged with persistently making hoax phone calls to the emergency services from an address in Perth.
The 48-year-old man has been reported to the the procurator fiscal after allegedly making two hoax calls to the police on December 10.
Officers said joke calls endangered the public by using up vital resources.
“Making malicious or false calls to the emergency services is a crime which is taken very seriously by Police Scotland,” a spokesperson said.
“Hoax calls not only waste valuable resources but can endanger members of the public by diverting vital services from genuine emergencies.”
In February this year, the UK’s worst phone pest was jailed for wasting £100,000 of taxpayers’ cash by repeatedly making hoax 999 calls.
Holly Coogan, 32, was jailed for 12 months after repeatedly calling East Midlands Ambulance Service over a number of days last December while drunk.
Two youths in Aberdeen were charged and reported to the Youth Justice Management Unit in February for pranking the emergency services.
The 12-year-old and a 14-year-old had made a number of fake calls to the police and ambulance services.
In May, a ten-year-old Tayside girl made headlines after penning a heartfelt apology to police for making a ‘double-dare’ 999 hoax call during the pandemic lockdown.
In the note, the girl named Mackenzie, said she was “incredibly sorry” for making the April 25 hoax call.
“I understand I took people away from answering real 999 calls,” she wrote.
“I know that I should never call 999 unless it is a real emergency, no matter what other people said to me.”
Ambulance services across the UK deal with more than 20 hoax calls every day from pranksters.
Statistics obtained through freedom of information requests showed there have been 23,942 malicious ambulance callouts recorded in the past three years.
A Police Scotland spokesperson said: “A 48-year-old man has been charged in connection with two alleged hoax calls from an address in Perth on Thursday December 10.
“A report will be submitted to the Procurator Fiscal.
