Fraudster made £550,000 promoting pretend ‘Scottish-grown tea’

A fraudster who tricked luxurious accommodations and shops into purchasing “Scottish-grown tea” that was once grown in a foreign country has been discovered accountable of a £550,000 rip-off.

Thomas Robinson equipped high-end shoppers corresponding to Edinburgh’s Balmoral Hotel and the Dorchester in London with types with names like Dalreoch White, Highland Green, Silver Needles and Scottish Antlers Tea.

Trading as The Wee Tea Plantation, he claimed that they had been grown on farmland in Perthshire.

Instead, the tea were imported, repackaged after which resold at hugely-inflated costs, Falkirk Sheriff Court was once instructed.

Robinson additionally defrauded authentic aspiring Scottish tea growers by means of promoting them vegetation he claimed have been grown in Scotland.

The 55-year-old, who’s often referred to as Thomas O’Brien or Tam O’ Braan, rented a former sheep farm close to Loch Tay and started spinning “elaborate lies” to shoppers.

Prosecutors mentioned he created the “CV of a fantasist” – claiming amongst different issues that he was once a wealthy person, a polymer scientist, a former bomb disposal professional and had invented the “bag for life”.

He additionally claimed to have evolved a “special biodegradable polymer” that might make the tea vegetation develop in part the standard time. The courtroom was once instructed it gave the impression of a black bin liner.

Robinson’s false declare that “our Scottish grown teas come from gardens in our farming heartland in Perthshire and Dumfries and Galloway” was once reprinted at the Balmoral Hotel’s Palm Court luxurious tea menu.

He boasted that tea he had equipped to London’s Dorchester Hotel was once “the Queen’s favourite”.

The media was once additionally taken in with a large number of tales showing, together with at the BBC News website online and in a BBC podcast.

The courtroom heard that actually Robinson had purchased over a tonne of tea grown in a foreign country and had it brought to mailbox cope with in Glasgow, the use of a distinct corporate identify to hide his tracks.

One professional mentioned a kilo of most sensible tea from Africa might be bought for 100 instances its price if handed off as Scottish.

Robinson claimed his tea vegetation were grown from cuttings and seeds at Dalreoch Farm, at Amulree in Perthshire.

When a purchaser from the celebrated meals retailer Fortnum and Mason’s sought after to consult with he hurriedly purchased in vegetation from a nursery in Sussex and put them on display.

Between 2015 and 2016 he conned a dozen authentic tea growers in Scotland and one from Jersey by means of supplying them with 22,000 vegetation at £12.50 each and every.

The courtroom heard he had if truth be told imported them from a horticulturist in Italy at 3 Euros each and every.

Many of those vegetation died or didn’t thrive.

One grower from Dumfries and Galloway was once instructed he may be expecting to reap his first tea after a 12 months and experience a yield of 100kg of most sensible tea in addition to 450kg of secondary leaf for blends.

After combating for seven years, the grower was once most effective in a position to reap 100g of completed tea.

The rip-off started to resolve in 2017 after Perth and Kinross Council began to test if he had a meals processing licence.

Eventually the meals crime unit at Food Standards Scotland was once known as in and an investigation introduced, headed up by means of a retired police inspector.

Robinson denied the costs and claimed bureaucracy that might have proved his innocence were destroyed in a flood.

He mentioned he was once pleased with his paintings and instructed the jurors: “I wanted to leave something that would stand in the history of tea.”

After a three-week trial jurors took six hours to seek out him accountable of defrauding tea growers, accommodations and tea corporations of just about £553,000 in general.

He shall be sentenced at a later date, and in addition faces court cases beneath the Proceeds of Crime Act.