A MAN has appeared in court charged with impersonating his police officer brother in order to get credit cards.

Alan MacFarlane is said to have impersonated his sibling, PC Mark MacFarlane, between 2009 and 2018, obtaining £29,784 by fraud in the process.

He denied two charges against him when he appeared in the dock at Paisley Sheriff Court as the case against him called for the first time.

MacFarlane, 33, denied impersonating a police constable between November 17, 2017, and March 14, this year at a property in Carnock Crescent, Barrhead, in breach of Section 92(1)(a) of the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012.

The charge states that he “did impersonate a constable with an intent to deceive and did apply for credit cards and monetary loans with various financial institutions stating [he] was Mark MacFarlane, [his] brother, a police constable employed by Strathclyde Police Service and Police Scotland, and were given a number of credit cards in the knowledge that, without impersonating a police officer, [he] would have been denied said credit cards.”

MacFarlane also faces a second charge of obtaining £29,784 by fraud between February 10, 2009, and March 14 this year by pretending to various financial institutions that he was Mark MacFarlane and inducing them to issue credit cards, which he then used to obtain “money and goods” to that value.

Defence solicitor Matt Lynch told Sheriff Moira MacKenzie that MacFarlane was pleading not guilty to both charges and was seeking bail to his new address in the Cranhill area of Glasgow.

Sheriff MacKenzie released him on bail with standard conditions in place and adjourned the case until January for a trial to be held, with a pre-trial hearing set for December.