Farmer ‘poisoned baby food’ to blackmail Tesco
Father of two claimed to have planted jars laced with metal in attempt to extort £1.4m, court told
A SHEEP farmer claimed to have laced Tesco baby food with metal and salmonella as part of a £1.4 million blackmail plot, a court has heard.
Nigel Wright, 45, is accused of sending the supermarket letters and emails claiming contaminated food had been planted in numerous stores between May 2018 and February 2020.
Mr Wright said he would only reveal the whereabouts of the products once more than £1 million in bitcoin had been paid to him, the court heard. The sum later rose to 200 bitcoin – worth around £1.4million in February 2020.
In November and December 2019, two customers found slivers of metal in jars of baby food as they fed them to their children in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, and Lockerbie, Scotland.
Mr Wright, from Market Rasen,
Lincs, denies two counts of contami- nating goods and four counts of blackmail.
On the first day of his trial at the Old Bailey yesterday, the father of two is alleged to have used the pseudonym “Guy Brush” to carry out the blackmail while claiming to be part of a cohort of disgruntled dairy farmers who believed they were underpaid by Tesco.
The jury heard how Mr Wright also claimed that salmonella and chemicals had been injected into other canned food, and threatened to continue if payment was not made.
A draft of messages that were sent to Tesco were found on Mr Wright’s laptop and photos of tins of food and jars of baby food and slivers of metal.
There is no evidence that any products other than the two jars of metalspiked baby food in Lockerbie and Rochdale were actually contaminated, the Old Bailey heard.
In one of the counts of blackmail, Mr Wright allegedly threatened to kill a driver with whom he had a road rage altercation unless he paid him bitcoin worth £150,000.
Mr Wright allegedly tracked the man down and sent him a letter that including a picture of the complainant and his wife with bullet holes and a target superimposed on it, the court heard.
He was eventually tracked down to his farm outside of Market Rasen where he lives with his wife and two children and their flock of sheep.
Mr Wright admits carrying out various elements of the campaign but claims that he was forced to do so by travellers who had come to his land and demanded he give them £1 million.
He claims the group of men threatened to rape his wife and kill him and his children and that he was acting in fear of his life.
The trial continues.