Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha.
A man has been convicted of a £550,000 scam after deceiving luxury hotels and stores by selling imported tea as “Scottish-grown.” Thomas Robinson, operating as The Wee Tea Plantation, supplied high-end customers such as Edinburgh’s Balmoral Hotel and London’s Dorchester with teas like Dalreoch White, Highland Green, Silver Needles, and Scottish Antlers Tea, falsely claiming they were produced on farmland in Perthshire.
Robinson also defrauded genuine Scottish tea growers by selling them plants that he alleged were grown in Scotland. The 55-year-old rented a former sheep farm near Loch Tay and fabricated elaborate stories to customers, including claims of being a multi-millionaire, a polymer scientist, a former bomb disposal expert, and the inventor of the “bag for life.” He also touted a “special biodegradable polymer” to expedite tea plant growth, which turned out to be a black bin liner.
In reality, Robinson purchased over a tonne of foreign-grown tea, had it delivered to a mailbox address in Glasgow under a different company name, and passed it off as Scottish. An expert noted that top tea from Africa could be sold for 100 times its actual cost if misrepresented as Scottish. Robinson duped a dozen genuine Scottish tea growers and one from Jersey between 2015 and 2016 by providing them with overpriced plants, many of which perished or failed to flourish.
The scheme began to unravel in 2017 when authorities investigated Robinson’s lack of a food processing license. Following an inquiry by Food Standards Scotland’s food crime unit, Robinson was found guilty of defrauding tea growers, hotels, and companies of nearly £553,000. Despite denying the charges and claiming evidence had been destroyed in a flood, Robinson faces sentencing and potential proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More
Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha.