Nigel Wright, a 45-year-old farmer from Lincolnshire in the U.K., has been sentenced to 14 years behind bars after his horrifying Bitcoin blackmail plot went awry, Daily Mail reports.
In August, Wright was found guilty of extorting $1.8 mln worth of Bitcoin from grocery chain Tesco following a two-year long investigation, the largest of its kind in U.K. history.
He started placing baby food with metal shards in it on supermarket shelves back in September 2018.
Until his eventual arrest in February 2020, Wright—who is himself a father of two—would send anonymous letters to Tesco with very graphic threats.
He claimed that a Bitcoin payment would inspire him to reveal the location of the deadly jars and save lives. After initially demanding 100 BTC, he then upped the ante to 200 BTC.
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Several mothers claimed that they nearly fed contaminated food to their babies before discovering pieces of metal in it. Morven Smith described the sheer horror of noticing “something shiny” in a spoonful of sweet and sour chicken:
I took the bowl out of the microwave—I gave my son a couple of spoonfuls and noticed something shiny—I pulled it out with my fingers at that point. It was horrendous. I felt sick. I was so shocked.
The police managed to catch Wright red-handed by sending him a cryptocurrency payment worth over $130,000. He was also recorded on a CCTV camera.
The man stated that he was forced into sending threats by tourists. His sentencing was postponed in August due to a missing psychiatric report.
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