Sheep farmer put broken knives into Heinz baby food at Scottish Tesco as part of elaborate blackmail plot
Nigel Wright, 45, hatched a plot to get rich by deliberately contaminating jars of Heinz baby food between May 2018 and February 2020.
He sent dozens of letters and emails to the supermarket giant in a bid to extort £1.4 million in bitcoin.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdTwo mothers – one in Lockerbie and the other in Rochdale – were just moments away from feeding their infants the food before they spotted the potentially lethal contaminants.
Wright spiked the jars with broken-up blades of a craft knife and iron filings.
At trial, Wright denied masterminding the plot – claiming instead that he was himself being blackmailed by a group of travellers who had threatened to kill his children and rape his wife.
But he was convicted 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 by a jury at the Old Bailey in August.
He was also convicted of a further charge of blackmail for demanding £150,000 worth of bitcoin from a driver with whom he had had a road rage altercation in an anonymous letter.
At his sentencing hearing on Monday, Mr Justice Warby compared Wright’s actions to terrorism, saying: “Here, the fear that you relied on when you blackmailed Tesco was that babies would be caused serious injury by eating food contaminated with sharp pieces of metal.”
He said: “You were under no pressure from others, or from circumstances.
“You chose to use threats of a particularly blood-curdling nature, deliberately designed to exploit the vulnerability of children, and the consequent vulnerability of a supermarket concerned for its business.”
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdJustice Warby said Wright had been “remorseless” and “clearly revelling in the process”.
He jailed Wright for 11 years for the plot against Tesco, with a further three years for the anonymous letter sent to the driver, in which he threatened to execute him with a rifle and murder his wife and children.
The investigation into Wright – named Operation Hancock – became the largest blackmail investigation ever conducted in the UK.
In one draft note, Wright 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.”
He signed off his letters and emails as the “Guy Brush and the Dairy Pirates”, claiming 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.”
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdA second mother later came forward in Rochdale to say she too had discovered metal while feeding her nine-month-old daughter.
A message from the Editor: