Farmer contaminated Tesco baby food as part of £1.4m blackmail plot, court hears
A sheep farmer claimed that he poisoned Tesco baby food as part of a £1.4 million blackmail plot, a court has heard.
Nigel Wright, 45, is accused of sending the supermarket letters and emails threatening that contaminated food had been planted in numerous stores between May 2018 and February 2020.
Mr Wright would only reveal the whereabouts of the products once more than £1 million in bitcoin had been paid to him, the court heard. The sum later rose to 200 bitcoin - worth around £1.4 million in February 2020.
In November and December 2019, two customers found slivers of metal in jars of baby food as they fed them to their children in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, and Lockerbie, Scotland.
Mr Wright, from Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, denies two counts of contaminating goods and four counts of blackmail.
On the first day of his trial at the Old Bailey on Tuesday, the father of two is alleged to have used the pseudonym "Guy Brush" to carry out the blackmail while claiming to be part of a cohort of disgruntled dairy farmers who believed they were underpaid by Tesco.
The jury heard how Mr Wright also claimed that salmonella and chemicals had been injected into cans from other brands, and threatened to continue poisoning Tesco products if payment was not made.
A draft of messages that were sent to Tesco were found on Mr Wright's laptop and photos of tins of food and jars of baby food and slivers of metal.
There is no evidence that any other products other than the two jars of metal-spiked baby food in Lockerbie and Rochdale were actually contaminated, the Old Bailey heard.
In one of the counts of blackmail, Mr Wright allegedly threatened to kill a driver with whom he had a road rage altercation unless he paid him bitcoin worth £150,000.
Mr Wright allegedly tracked him down and sent him a letter including a picture of the complainant and his wife with bullet holes and a target superimposed on it, the court heard.
He was eventually traced to his family home on a farm outside of Market Rasen where he lived with his wife and two children and their flock of sheep.
Mr 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 demanded he give them £1 million.
He claims the group of men threatened to rape his wife and kill him and his children and that he was acting in fear of his life.
Mr Wright denies planting the shards of metal in the baby food found in the Rochdale branch of Tesco.
The prosecutor said: "You the jury will have to determine whether his story of being threatened by travellers is true."
He added: "The prosecution suggests that it changes whenever he is confronted with more evidence which he has to explain, and is completely untrue."
The trial, which is expected to last three weeks, continues.
