A man has been jailed for 14 years for lacing jars of baby food with shards of metal and placing them on Tesco shelves.
Nigel Wright, 45, from Lincolnshire was sentenced for blackmail after he plotted to extort £1.4 million from the supermarket giant.
During his trial last month, the court heard how Wright had demanded that Tesco pay him in cryptocurrency in exchange for revealing where the jars were placed.
He was captured on CCTV leaving one of his contaminated jars on the shelf of a supermarket in Lockerbie, Scotland, reports Metro.
The jars were spiked with broken-up blades of a craft knife and iron filings.
A mother told how she was moments away from feeding the product to her child when she spotted the shards contained in the food.
Another mother came forward in Rochdale, Greater Manchester to say that she too had found shards of metal while feeding her 9-month-old daughter.
The incidents led to 42,000 jars of Heinz baby food having to be recalled.
The total cost to Tesco of the recall, refunds and investigation was an estimated £2.7 million.
The investigation into Wright, named Operation Hancock became the largest blackmail investigation ever conducted in the UK.
At various points during the investigation there were more than 100 officers deployed across the country on the case working day and night shifts.
In a letter sent to Tesco and read out in court, 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 as the fictional character ‘Guy Brush’ and ‘the Dairy Pirates’ and claimed to be part of a cohort of farmers angry at the low price they were paid for their milk.
Wright was handed 11 years by Mr Justice Warby at the Old Bailey on Monday for his plot against Tesco, and a further three years consecutive for a charge of blackmail against a driver with whom he had had a road rage altercation.
Wright sent the driver a letter demanding £150,000 in bitcoin with threats to execute him with a rifle and kill his wife and children unless he complied after an incident on the A46.
Mr Justice Warby described the contents of the letter as ‘blood chilling’.
Passing sentence, the judge told Wright: ‘You were under no pressure from others, or from circumstances’.
‘It is not as if you had for instance a legitimate grievance against Tesco, nor can any other explanation easily be identified for engaging in this series of repulsive actions, apart from greed.
‘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.’
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