A teenager who took a stolen sports car for a joyride around Aberdeen has been spared a custodial sentence.
Jordan Chesser and notorious car thief Liam Smith appeared at the city’s sheriff court in July and admitted acting together to race a stolen Mercedes and Range Rover Sport around the city.
Repeat offender Smith, 19, was given eight months detention last month for his part in the incident, but sentence on Chesser had been deferred for more background reports to be carried out.
And yesterday Sheriff Graeme Napier gave him one more chance to avoid joining his friend behind bars and agreed to release him on a tag.
Chesser, 17, who calls himself “the thief of the north-east” on social networking sites, was also ordered to carry out 160 hours of unpaid work in the community and banned from driving for a year.
When the pair first appeared in the dock the court heard Smith was caught committing the offences, which took place in April, by another motorist who had a CCTV camera mounted on his bonnet.
The car was seen being driven recklessly across the city and in Dyce at excessive speeds. Witnesses saw him overtaking a long queue of traffic in the face of oncoming vehicles.
The court heard a number of motorists had to pull over or swerve to avoid crashing into him.
Alongside Smith, Chesser, who also claims to work for “Liam Smith and co”, had also been driving the stolen Range Rover Sport, valued at £20,000, around the city in a dangerous manner.
The court heard it was accepted that the two were travelling together in their stolen cars.
For more than a year a gang of teenage thieves have been masking their faces and heading off into the night in search of expensive and high-powered vehicles to steal, before driving them recklessly across Aberdeen.
In June, Smith was detained for 18 months after he admitted his part in stealing cars worth almost half a million pounds from outside a businessman’s home.
In July last year Smith took part in a “planned and orchestrated course of criminal conduct” when he and two other teenagers raided the Banchory-Devenick home of oil tycoon Sean Dreelan.
They stole keys for an Aston Martin Rapide, a white Porsche 911, a grey Audi A5 and a grey Toyota Land Cruiser.
Then they drove away with the cars in the middle of the night.
A Ferrari 599 GTO was also stolen from the house, but prosecutors accepted last month that the teens were not responsible for taking it.
Smith was responsible for stealing the Porsche 911 as well as the Toyota Land Cruiser.