Man who laced baby food with shards of metal faces ‘lengthy custodial sentence’
A SHEEP farmer has been warned he faces a “lengthy custodial sentence” after being found guilty of planting baby food laced with shards of metal in stores as part of a lengthy blackmail campaign against Tesco.
Nigel Wright (45) hatched a plot to get rich by deliberately contaminating jars of Heinz baby food between May 2018 and February 2020, the Old Bailey heard.
He sent dozens of letters and emails to the supermarket giant in a bid to extort £1.4m in bitcoin, jurors were told. In one draft note, he wrote: “Imagine a baby’s mouth cut open and blood pouring out, or the inside of their bellies cut and bleeding. You pay, you save them.”
Wright, who signed off as the fictional character “Guy Brush” and “the Dairy Pirates”, claimed to be part of a cohort of farmers angry at the low price they were paid for their milk.
Tesco was forced to issue a product recall when a mother from Lockerbie discovered pieces of metal in a jar of Heinz sweet and sour chicken baby food.
In December 2019, Morven Smith had already fed a few spoonfuls to her 10-month-old baby when she spotted “something shiny” in the bowl and pulled it out.
She said: “It was horrendous. I felt sick I was so shocked.”
Wright was caught on CCTV placing the tampered jar on a Tesco shelf before leaving with flowers for his primary school teacher wife, a bottle of wine, and more jars of baby food.
A second mother later came forward in Rochdale to say she too had discovered metal while feeding her nine-month-old daughter.
Harpreet Kaur-singh told Tesco she had found shards of metal in a jar of Heinz Sunday chicken dinner and a jar of cheesy pasta stars.
Mrs Kaur-singh said in her evidence that at the time she had not thought anything of it, but that she had binned the two jars and her remaining stock of baby food as a precaution.
In all, 42,000 jars of Heinz baby food were recovered, although there is no evidence that any more had been tampered with.
When Wright was tracked down to his family home outside Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, police found photographs of contaminated baby food on his laptop — with some the same flavour as the Rochdale jars.
Officers also recovered some £100,000 in bitcoin which had been sent by undercover officers during the investigation.
Mr Justice Warby listed the case for sentence on September 28 and asked for a psychiatric report on Wright to be prepared ahead of the hearing. He warned the defendant he faced a “lengthy custodial sentence”.