A woman, who lied that she was receiving abuse from unknown Asian males, was exposed when police realised the messages were from her own phone.
Carly Buckingham-Smith, 28, daubed graffiti on her own house as she tried to claim that she was part of a targeted campaign of harassment.
In fact she was making the whole thing up.
She said she had received messages that said things like: “I am going to tie you up and slit your throat and watch you bleed.”
Among the 11 statements she gave to police she also said she got a message saying someone would “put petrol through her letterbox and set it alight.”
She even used a felt tip pen to scrawl offensive graffiti on her own house in Eastleigh, Hampshire.
Police took the complaints so seriously that they fitted alarms and cameras to her house to find the perpetrators.
But her pack of lies began to unravel and she ended up being charged with perverting the course of justice.
She has now been found guilty and was jailed for six months at Southampton Crown Court.
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 adding that a ‘great deal’ of police time had been wasted.