Farmer guilty of putting metal shards in baby food
ASHEEP farmer has been 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 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.
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 found pieces of metal in a jar of Heinz sweet and sour chicken baby food.
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.
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 home outside Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, police found photographs of contaminated baby food on his laptop. They also recovered £100,000 in bitcoin which had been sent by undercover officers during the investigation.
Giving evidence, Wright admitted planting one contaminated jar in the Lockerbie store but denied tampering with stock in Rochdale.
He was found guilty of two counts of contaminating goods and three counts of blackmail for demanding cryptocurrency from Tesco in exchange for revealing where the contaminated food had been placed.
He was also convicted of blackmail for allegedly demanding £150,000 worth of bitcoin from a driver with whom he had had a road rage altercation.
He will be sentenced next month.