A landlord has been fined £650 after making threatening remarks to two of his tenants.
Mark Fortune, 42, lost his temper after the tenants fixed a broken lock and a shower at a flat he owned in Edinburgh and asked him to pay the £160 repair bill.
Fortune, said to be a millionaire car dealer, was angered that the tenants had changed the lock without telling him.
He shouted and swore, threatened to kick one of the tenants, and told them: “You go and find out who my friends are, OK? Three of them have just been locked up for shooting somebody.”
The incident happened last September and Fortune faced Edinburgh Sheriff Court this week as a result.
Fortune’s lawyer, Murray Robertson, admitted the outburst would have alarmed the tenants but described it as “bluff and bluster”.
He said the tenants owed Fortune rent and were later evicted, and that his client had been “aggrieved” when they asked him for money.
The tenants claimed they only did the repairs themselves after trying in vain to talk to Fortune about them.
In court, Fortune, who is thought to own around 39 properties across Scotland, admitted threatening the tenants and breaching the peace.
A second case was dropped. It had been claimed that Fortune impersonated a court official in phone calls to seven witnesses in a separate case in a bid to stop them going to court.
The case involved charges of unlawfully operating an HMO. In April last year, councillors ruled he was unfit to hold an HMO licence. He was subsequently fined £1,000 earlier this year after being convicted of operating without such a licence.
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