A woman has been jailed after launching a hate campaign against herself, causing police to waste hundreds of hours after they thought she was targeted by someone else.

She sent herself abusive texts and graffitied her own house as part of a fabricated campaign of harassment.

Carly Buckingham-Smith, 38, wasted hundreds of hours of police time claiming she was being targeted by ‘Asian males’ when in fact she’d made the whole thing up.

She used her own phone to send threatening messages like: “I am going to tie you up and slit your throat and watch you bleed.”

In another, a threat was made to “put petrol through her letterbox and set it alight”.

She even scrawled offensive graffiti all over her own house.

Alarms and cameras had to be fitted at her home by police to catch those she claimed were harassing her.

But officers investigating discovered she’d been lying and charged her with perverting the course of justice.

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 added that a “great deal” of police time had been wasted.

He said police spent 69 hours investigating Buckingham-Smith’s “fabricated and spurious allegations” and a further 500 hours surrounding her own criminal case.