Farmer accused of lacing baby food with shards of metal to blackmail Tesco
Farmer Nigel Wright denies contaminating the baby food to blackmail the supermarket chain out of 拢1.4m in bitcoin.
Tuesday 11 August 2020 21:58, UK
Two mothers say they were moments away from feeding their young children food laced with fragments of a craft knife blade, a court has heard.
The women were giving evidence at the trial of a farmer accused of planting shards of metal in baby food between May 2018 and February 2020 to blackmail Tesco out of £1.4m in bitcoin.
Nigel Wright, 45, from near Market Rasen in Lincolnshire, denies contaminating the food at the supermarket's Rochdale branch.
Mother Morven Smith later found the shards of metal in a jar of Heinz sweet and sour chicken baby food she was feeding to her 10-month-old son in December last year, jurors at the Old Bailey heard.
Wright is accused of placing the blades in the jar and leaving it in the store, before drafting a message to Tesco which demanded payment in exchange for revealing the location of the jars.
At the time, Tesco issued a national product recall of all jars of the product and removed all remaining stock from its shelves.
Following the recall, Harprett Kaur Singh told the chain she had also found 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 but a few days later she found more pieces of metal in a jar of cheese and tomato pasta stars, the jury heard.
A total of 42,000 jars of Heinz baby food were recovered, although there is no evidence that any more had been tampered with.
Police found photographs of the contaminated baby food on Wright's laptop at his family home, prosecutor Julian Christopher QC said.
The labels were clearly visible, and two of the jars - the cheese and tomato pasta stars and Sunday chicken dinner - were 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 other letters, he allegedly claimed to have spiked canned food with salmonella and other chemicals - but there is no evidence to show he actually did this.
He had also threatened to start poisoning goods with prussic acid, otherwise known as hydrogen cyanide, the court heard.
The prosecution said Wright appeared to be playing "cat and mouse" through his letters and may have been "enjoying the game".
Wright claims he was forced to get involved in the scheme by travellers who had come to his land and threatened to kill him unless he gave them £1m.
He also claimed to be angry at the low price dairy farmers were being paid for their milk, signing off his letters as "Guy Brush and the Dairy Pirates", the court heard.
The farmer denies two counts of contaminating goods and three counts of blackmail for demanding cryptocurrency from Tesco.
He faces a further charge of blackmail for allegedly demanding £150,000 worth of bitcoin from a driver he was involved in a road rage altercation with.
The trial continues.