Farmer who planted metal shards in Tesco baby food is an ex-Tory councillor

Nigel Wright, who faces up to 15 years of prison after being convicted last week, was also a Ukip parliamentary candidate.

He had planned to blackmail the supermarket chain by deliberately contaminating jars of Heinz baby food in several UK stores between May 2018 and February 2020, the Old Bailey heard.

He sent dozens of letters and emails to Tesco in a bid to extort £1.4 million in bitcoin.

Wright served as chairman of the Great Grimsby Conservative Association before being elected Tory councillor in the Freshney Ward on North East Lincolnshire Council in 2003.

He lost the seat in May 2006 and stood for the Conservatives in Heneage in May 2007, but came a distant third.

He switched to Ukip in 2010 and ran as Ukip’s candidate in the Brigg and Goole constituency in the General Election, but won just 1749 votes.

The Conservative leader of North East Lincolnshire Council, Philip Jackson, commented: "Clearly what he has done is wrong and I would not defend anything he has done, not for a moment."

READ MORE: Farmer convicted of planting baby food laced with metal in Scottish Tesco

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."

Wright was caught on CCTV placing the tampered jar on a Tesco shelf before leaving with flowers for his primary school teacher wife, a bottle of wine, and more jars of baby food.

A second mother later came forward in Rochdale to say she too had discovered metal while feeding her nine-month-old daughter.

Harpreet Kaur-Singh told Tesco she had found shards of metal in a jar of Heinz Sunday chicken dinner and a jar of cheesy pasta stars.

Kaur-Singh said in her evidence that at the time she had not thought anything of it, but that she had binned the two jars and her remaining stock of baby food as a precaution.

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

When Wright was tracked down to his family home outside Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, police found photographs of contaminated baby food on his laptop – with some the same flavour as the Rochdale jars.

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.

Officers also recovered some £100,000 in bitcoin which had been sent by undercover officers during the investigation.

Giving evidence, Wright admitted planting one contaminated jar in the Lockerbie store but denied tampering with stock in Rochdale.

He claimed he was forced into it by travellers who had threatened to rape his wife and hang his children "from the trees".

But prosecutor Julian Christopher QC told him: "The truth is you were not in fear at all.

"You were carrying on your life normally while hoping to make yourself rich by threatening Tesco in this way while endangering the life of others in the process."

A jury deliberated for four hours and 33 minutes to find Wright guilty 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.

He was also convicted of 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.

Following the incident on the A46, the driver withdrew his complaint after receiving a "nasty anonymous letter".

Justice Warby listed the case for sentence on September 28 and asked for a psychiatric report on Wright to be prepared ahead of the hearing.

AD He warned the defendant he faced a "lengthy custodial sentence".