A single mother who worked for the Child Support Agency stole £150,000 from her employer to pay for two holidays and a new car.

Audrey Foy, of Turner Crescent in Methil, Fife, was employed by the agency in Kirkcaldy and took the money over a period of two years between June 2014 and March last year.

The 50-year-old was jailed for 21 months at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court on Tuesday after pleading guilty to the embezzlement charges.

She had used her position with the company to transfer the money in to her own bank account in what was called a "systematic fraud on the CSA" by sheriff Grant McCulloch during her trial.

The court heard she "squandered" the cash on relatively minor things, with the only tangible purchases during the 21-month-scam being two holidays and a new car.

The rest, it was heard, was "frittered away" on her son.

Before the trial Foy told her 12-year-old son she "won't be coming home tonight" but wept in the court as the sheriff imposed the sentence on her after her guilty plea.

During the trial, her defence solicitor Peter Mullen said "she was always going to be caught" and the money being transferred into her own account would inevitably lead back to her eventually.

On handing down the sentence, reduced from 30 months due to her early guilty plea, Mr McCulloch told Foy she had shown little remorse for what she had done.

He said: "You were not only in a position of trust at work but also for your son. £150,000 has been taken and used for whatever purpose we know not, so it is correct that for a fraud this size a custodial sentence be imposed."

Before concluding: "It is with regret, but with necessity, that I impose a sentence of 21 months."

Mr Mullen said Foy had "prepared herself logistically, if not mentally" for leaving her son.