A 45-year-old sheep farmer from Lincolnshire, England, Nigel Wright, has been arrested for extorting Bitcoin nearly around USD 1.8 million from retail giant Tesco.
As announced by The Guardian on August 11, Wright tried to blackmail Tesco, claiming he had planted slivers of metal inside baby food and in a number of the retail giant’s stores and would expose the locations if the cryptocurrency ransom was paid.
Ransom for 200 Bitcoins
It was claimed that Wright had barraged the retail giant with emails and letters using the name “Guy Brush” from May 2018 to February 2020. His initial demand was 100 Bitcoin, but this amount rose to 200 valued at nearly £1.4 million (USD 1.8 million) in February.
Wright was part of an organization of disappointed dairy farmers known as “Guy Brush and the Dairy Pirates,” who believed Tesco underpaid them. He, consequently, saw blackmail as the only way out of this stalemate.
According to the report:
“THE PROSECUTION ALLEGES THAT OVER A PERIOD OF TWO YEARS FROM SPRING 2018, THE DEFENDANT HOPED TO MAKE HIMSELF RICH BY MEANS OF BLACKMAIL.”
Tesco experienced complaints from two clients from Rochdale and Lockerbie in November and December 2019 after they found slivers of metal in baby food while feeding their children.
His life now threatened
Wright claimed that he carried out the blackmail because he feared for his life and that of his family as a group of men called Travellers had made way to his land and demanded £1 million.
Julian Christopher, the prosecutor, noted:
“YOU, THE JURY, WILL HAVE TO DETERMINE WHETHER HIS STORY OF BEING THREATENED BY TRAVELLERS IS TRUE. THE PROSECUTION SUGGESTS THAT IT CHANGES WHENEVER HE IS CONFRONTED WITH MORE EVIDENCE WHICH HE HAS TO EXPLAIN, AND IS COMPLETELY UNTRUE.”
Although, Wright refused to plant the shards of metal in the baby found retrieved from Tesco’s Rochdale branch.
Lately, an Australian female hacker was slapped with a 2-year jail term because of her joining to a $400k Ripple crypto heist.
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