Farmer tried to blackmail Tesco by poisoning baby food with metal, court hears

• e-mail

Two mothers were just moments away from feeding their children baby food laced with metal after a farmer planted contaminated jars in Tesco as part of a blackmail plot, a court has heard.

Nigel Wright, 45, from Lincolnshire, is on trial at the Old Bailey for allegedly trying to extort nearly £1.5 million in Bitcoin from the supermarket chain because he was angry at being underpaid for milk.  

The court heard Morven Smith was feeding her 10-month-old son a jar of Heinz sweet and sour chicken baby food in December 2019 when she noticed fragments of a craft knife blade.

Wright is accused of contaminating the jar with the blades, and of depositing it in the store while delivering a car to a buyer on behalf of a neighbour.

The discovery prompted Tesco to issue a national product recall of all jars of the product and to remove all its remaining stock from its shelves.

Nigel Wright, 45, is on trial at the Old Bailey for allegedly trying to extort nearly £1.5 million in bitcoin from the supermarket chain because he was angry at being underpaid for milk 

Following the recall, Harprett Kaur Singh told the chain she too had discovered fragments of metal when she was feeding her nine-month-old daughter a jar of Heinz Sunday chicken dinner.

Ms Singh threw the jar away, the jury heard, but a few days later she found more pieces of metal in a jar of cheese and tomato pasta stars.

A total of 42,000 jars of Heinz baby food were recovered, although there is no evidence that any more had been tampered with.

Wright denies 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 faces a further charge of blackmail for allegedly demanding £150,000 worth of bitcoin from a driver with whom he had had a road rage altercation.

When he was tracked down to his family home outside Market Rasen, police found photographs of the contaminated baby food on his laptop, the court heard.

The labels were clearly visible, and two of the jars - the cheese and tomato pasta stars and Sunday chicken dinner - are open with pieces of metal placed inside, the jury was told.

One draft of a letter to Tesco found on the device read: '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.'

In November and December 2019, two mothers found slivers of metal in jars of baby food as they fed them to their children. The first jar was bought in Rochdale (pictured) 

Wright claimed to be part of a cohort of dairy farmers angry at the low price they were paid for their milk, and he signed off his letters 'Guy Brush and the Dairy Pirates', the court heard.

In other letters, Wright claimed to have spiked canned food with salmonella and other chemicals - although there is no evidence to show he actually did this.

The court heard he also threatened to start poisoning goods with prussic acid - otherwise known as hydrogen cyanide.

Wright admits carrying out various elements of the campaign but claims he was forced to do so by travellers who had come to his land and threatened to kill him unless he gave them £1 million.

He denies planting the shards of metal in the baby food found in the Rochdale branch of Tesco.

Prosecutor Julian Christopher QC told the court: 'The defendant is a small scale farmer in Market Rasen in Lincolnshire.

'The allegation is that over a period of two years he hoped to make himself rich by means of blackmail by making threats firstly against Tesco saying that, unless they paid him, he would place contaminated food on their supermarket shelves. 

'Although the defendant has pleaded not guilty to each of these counts, in fact he accepts that he did indeed carry out most of the acts alleged against him by the prosecution.

Wright, from Market Rasen in Lincolnshire, denies four counts of blackmail and two counts of contaminating goods at the Old Bailey 

'He says, however, that he was compelled to do so by some travellers who had visited his farm and threatened to kill him and his children, and to rape his wife, if he did not give them half a million pounds, which they later increased to £1m.' 

Mr Christopher said that, through his letters, Wright was playing 'cat and mouse' with the supermarket chain.

He added: 'The jury may think (the letters) indicate that the blackmailer was rather enjoying the game, rather than acting in fear of his life.'

Wright is also alleged to have sent Tesco an envelope of white powder claiming it was a homemade chemical he would use to poison jars of baby food if he was not paid.  

He was said to have penned emails claiming: 'Acting quickly will save your customers' and telling the supermarket it was to blame for any injuries.

In a chain of emails sent to the company under a second alias, he claimed a female accomplice was visiting every branch in the country, prosecutors claim.

He said the 'Dairy Pirates' had placed a can of tinned fruit injected with blue food dye onto the shelves of each store, marked by a blue 'pirate sign' cross underneath. 

The trial, which is expected to last three weeks, continues. 

Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article.