BABY FOOD BLACKMAILER CAGED
A FARMER who launched a blackmail campaign against Tesco by planting shards of metal in baby food was yesterday jailed for 14 years.
Nigel Wright, 45, sent letters to the supermarket giant demanding it pay him about £1.5million in Bitcoin for him to reveal what goods had been contaminated.
One of the stores Wright targeted was a Tesco in Lockerbie, Dumfries and
Galloway, where a shocked mum found pieces of metal in her child’s food.
More than 180,000 jars were recalled by Tesco in a bid to stop more customers unknowingly buying the tampered products.
Wright, who denied all allegations throughout his prosecution, carried out his destructive blackmail campaign between May 2018 and February 2020 using a single laptop and smartphone.
The sheep farmer, of Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, also sent letters threatening to inject salmonella into tins of food, a court heard previously.
Wright was earlier convicted at the Old Bailey of four counts of blackmail and two of contaminating food “with menaces” between May 2018 and February this year.
Jailing Wright at the Old
Bailey in London, the Judge Mr Justice Warby told him: “You chose to use threats of particularly blood-curdling nature, deliberately designed to exploit the vulnerability of children, and the consequent vulnerability of a supermarket concerned for its business.”
Andrew Campbell-Tiech QC, in mitigation, claimed Wright was an “unlikely criminal” and an “isolated” man who probably has a high level of autism.