Fraudster jailed for selling fake 'Scottish-grown tea'

A fraudster who tricked luxury hotels and stores into buying "Scottish-grown tea" that was actually from abroad has been jailed for three-and-a-half-years.

Thomas Robinson also conned aspiring tea growers by selling them plants he claimed had been "specially engineered" to grow in Scotland's climate - but in reality they had simply been bought in from Italy.

The 55-year-old, who was known to his many customers as Tam O' Braan, spun an elaborate backstory claiming among other things that he was a former bomb disposal expert, had lived in the Amazon and had invented the "bag for life".

Last month he was found guilty of the £550,000 scam that spanned five years from 2014.

He supplied high-end customers such as Edinburgh's Balmoral Hotel and the Dorchester in London with varieties of tea with names like Highland Green, Silver Needles and Scottish Antlers Tea.

Sentencing Robinson and Stirling Sheriff Court, Sheriff Keith O'Mahony said his crimes were not victimless and involved "significant and persistent planning".

Trading as The Wee Tea Plantation, Robinson claimed his brews had been grown on farmland in Perthshire and Dumfries and Galloway, but really the tea had been bought from a wholesaler in Oxford and resold at hugely-inflated prices.

Concerns were raised with the authorities when genuine tea growers caught wind that Robinson had populated the Balmoral Hotel's Palm Court luxury tea menu with Scottish brands.

Richard Ross bought 500 plants from Robinson in 2015 but as the crop failed he followed stories of Robinson in the media.

"I heard about the Balmoral tea list and decide to go and have a look," Mr Ross said.

"He'd taken names of genuine plantations but no-one involved in the actual plantations had heard they were selling to The Balmoral and that's because none of them had produced any tea from their plants."

In 2017, Perth and Kinross Council started to check if Robinson had a food processing licence.

At the same time Food Standards Scotland (FSS) was alerted and Robinson's fraud began to unravel.

Lead investigator Stuart Wilson said: "It didn't take long to establish that the tea he was selling to the hotels was being bought from wholesalers, likely to have originated in Sri Lanka or India.

"He'd created such a story that people were taken along. Once we started digging into it, it was quite clear that not only could the quantity of tea not be grown but the plants he sold couldn't have been grown either in the quantities claimed."

Mr Wilson added: "It was quite clear there were a lot of false claims.

"He claimed at certain points to be a chemist, a scientist and an agronomist. He claimed to have served in the Army as well as many other things.

"Digging in to each aspect, it was quite clear that all of these were falsehoods and he built up his lies upon these falsehoods."

The Balmoral said it was "shocked and devastated" when the fraud was discovered and has since tightened its procurement process.

General manager Andrew McPherson said: "We work hard to support local Scottish food producers, providing them with a global platform to showcase their products.

"To have been deceived in such a calculated manner left us all profoundly disappointed and embarrassed.

"As the hotel general manager, I would like to extend my sincerest apologies to everyone affected by this tea incident, particularly our loyal guests, who trusted in the authenticity and quality of our offerings."

Robinson couldn't help but embellish his credentials when trying to defraud.

He boasted that tea he had supplied to London's Dorchester Hotel in 2017 was "the Queen's favourite".

The media was also taken in with numerous stories appearing about his tea "success", including on the BBC News website and in a BBC podcast.

One magazine feature introduced Robinson as having previously lived "on a canoe in the Amazon, bitten by a deadly snake in Brazil and shot at on the Thailand-Burma border" before he turned to tea.

During his trial, it was heard that he created the "CV of a fantasist" - claiming he was a multi-millionaire, a former bomb disposal expert and an inventor.

He claimed to have developed a "special biodegradable polymer" that would make the tea plants grow in half the usual time. The court was told it looked just like a black bin liner.

Mr Wilson from the FSS investigation said Robinson was a unique character.

"Fraudsters will do whatever it take to continue their lies but once caught they tend to diminish away into the background - but Tam O'Brann, or Thomas Robinson, was quite happy to stand up in court and continue his lies.

"Clearly the jury didn't believe him."

Along with the hotels, high-end shops were also targeted, raking in £278,000 for Robinson.

When a buyer from the prestigious food store Fortnum and Mason's wanted to visit his plantation near Loch Tay, he hurriedly bought in plants from a nursery in Sussex and put them on show.

Robinson's scam also hit tea enthusiasts trying to build the industry in Scotland.

He defrauded a dozen genuine tea growers in Scotland and one from Jersey by supplying them with 22,000 plants at £12.50 each.

Robinson claimed they were "specially engineered" for Scottish conditions but he had actually imported them from a horticulturist in Italy at around £2 per plant.

Many of the plants died or failed to thrive while Robinson made almost £275,000 from the sales.

Islay Henderson started growing tea at a plantation in Tighnabruaich, in Argyll and Bute, seven years ago, after hearing a radio interview with Hamilton.

She and her husband bought 1,500 plants from him.

"He told us we were buying tea (plants) that were selectively grown in Scotland for 11 years, so we thought we had Scottish seed that had already been trialled.

"When we realised they weren't actually from Scotland, it was quite a worry.

"We felt really lied to – he was promising so much with these plants and I guess that's when the suspicion became a bit more obvious."

Robinson denied the fraud at his trial and claimed paperwork that would have proved his innocence had been destroyed in a flood.

He said he was proud of his work and told the jurors: "I wanted to leave something that would stand in the history of tea."

Genuine tea grower Mr Ross said the industry in Scotland had been damaged but was now moving on.

"It's hard enough to convince people that tea growing is a thing in Scotland," he said.

"It's taken a number of years for us to bolster our credentials. Tea Scotland has now collaboratively produced a tea – a product of honest toil."

He added: "Right from the first day when tea was traded in this country there has been nefarious practices around it.

"There's been smuggling, contraband tea, counterfeit tea.

"When there's money to make from a high-value product, there's always somebody who's going to try and take a shortcut and try to make the most of it."