Nigel Wright from Market Rasen placed metal shards in baby food jars and blackmailed Tesco for £1.4million and now faces up to 14 years in prison Share Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now Sign up to FREE email alerts from GrimsbyLive – Daily Subscribe When you subscribe we will use the information you provide to send you these newsletters.Sometimes they’ll include recommendations for other related newsletters or services we offer.Our Privacy Notice explains more about how we use your data, and your rights.You can unsubscribe at any time.Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email
A Market Rasen farmer has been convicted of blackmailing Tesco over contaminated baby food laced with shards of metal in two stores.
Nigel Wright, of Pine Meadows, Caistor Road, denied the charges at The Old Bailey in London but was found guilty by a jury.
He could face a maximum of 14 years in prison.
The 45-year-old had demanded £1.4m from Tesco after lacing baby food with razor sharp shards of metal.
He denied two counts of contaminating goods and four counts of blackmail and claimed he was threatened by a group of travellers.Nigel Wright, 45, in a Tesco store in Lockerbie planted a jar of Heinz baby food laced with fragments of a craft knife as part of a plot to blackmail the supermarket chain for £1.4 million in bitcoin (Image: PA) Read More Related Articles Lincolnshire farmer accused of ‘blackmailing Tesco by putting shards of metal in baby food’
But the court heard two mothers found the metal fragments when they were feeding their children after Wright began his two-year campaign in the spring of 2018.
The married father-of-two threatened to inject tins of fruit with cyanide and salmonella unless the supermarket giant handed over the cash in Bitcoin.
Wright signed off his emails and letters ‘Guy Brush & the Dairy Pirates + Tinkerbell the naughty fairy,’ and claimed he represented dairy farmers who had been underpaid by Tesco.
He triggered two nationwide recalls on both Cow & Gate and Heinz baby food as a result of the threats, prompting the supermarket to clear 140,000 products from the shelves.
A detective posed as a Tesco employee named Sam Scott and handed over £100,000 in the crypto-currency to trap the blackmailer.
The jar of Heinz baby food that was laced with fragments of a craft knife by Nigel Wright, 45, as part of a plot to blackmail the supermarket chain for £1.4 million in bitcoin (Image: PA)
Wright was caught on CCTV buying wine and flowers for his wife after placing a contaminated jar on the shelves of a Tesco branch in Lockerbie in Scotland on November 29 last year.
He also placed two jars of contaminated food on the shelves of a Rochdale shop.
Prosecutor Julian Christopher, QC, said the blackmailer took ‘delight’ in his extravagant plan to outsmart the supermarket giant.
He believed he could ‘get rich’ without leaving any trace of his identity by using the bitcoin cryptocurrency and downloading the browser Tor allowing for anonymous communication.
But his emails and letters were forwarded onto police and he was soon unwittingly interacting with an undercover officer.
A draft of an email to Tesco was found on one of Wright’s devices after his property was searched.Nigel Wright, 45, in a Tesco store in Lockerbie where he planted a jar of Heinz baby food laced with fragments of a craft knife as part of a plot to blackmail the supermarket chain for £1.4 million in bitcoin.
(Image: PA)
The threat read: “Imagine a baby’s mouth cut open blood pouring out and the inside of their belly cut and bleeding.”
Reading excerpts of emails sent by Wright, the prosecutor said: “Dear Sam, we have been polite and courteous as we recognise you’re just an employee who goes home at the end of the day.We say you pay us then we will email you.
“It appears we both failed to do what we said we would.If you set up a bank account you can purchase bitcoin and transfer them into our account.
“As a goodwill gesture we will tell you you have eight jars of Cow & Gate baby food left on your supermarket shelves on Tuesday 21 and Wednesday 22 [January] there were only six jars left so only six potential dead babies.”
Wright admitted sending the emails and letters to Tesco demanding the money but told jurors he was forced to by a gang of gypsies.
He claimed the travellers had come to his farm and threatened to kill his children and rape his wife unless he paid them £500,000.Contact Grimsby Live
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Asked why he ordered the company to pay him triple that amount, Wright said: “I’d seen somewhere that ransoms are never paid in full, only half are paid.”
But an Old Bailey jury today rejected the account and convicted him of two counts of contaminating goods and four counts of blackmail.
One of the blackmail charges related to a separate chain of threats he sent to a driver following a road rage altercation in the spring of 2018.
Wright stood in silence as the guilty verdicts were announced.
The maximum term for blackmail is 14 years while the maximum for contaminating goods is 10 years.
He was remanded in custody ahead of sentence on a date to be fixed after reports are prepared.grimsbylive.
