Conman made over £1m selling fake 'Scottish-grown tea'

A “tea planter” jailed for buying tea from around the world and passing it off as grown in Scotland made over a million pounds from his criminal conduct, a court has heard.

Thomas Robinson, 56, was jailed for three and a half years last June after he was found guilty by a jury of carrying out a fraud involving “significant, determined and sometimes complex planning”.

He was convicted of scamming £550,000 from victims, including top hotels, tea retailers and other planters.

But Stirling Sheriff Court was told that he profited by almost twice that amount.

Fiscal depute Asif Rashid said the “benefit amount” alleged by the Crown is £1,068,000.

Mr Rashid said it had been thought even higher – at £1.6 million – but after eliminating an element of double counting, the Crown was submitting the lower figure.

The revelation came during a preliminary hearing on an action by the Crown under the Proceeds of Crime Act to assess and confiscate Robinson’s profits.

How much Robinson is eventually ordered to pay the public purse will depend on his available assets, which have not yet been revealed in open court.

Any defence challenge to the alleged benefit amount will also be considered.

Trading as “The Wee Tea Plantation”, Robinson, also known as Thomas O’Brien or “Tam O’Braan”, ordered tea plants from gifts nursery in Sussex and planted them in the kaleyard of a former sheep farm rented near Loch Tay.

There he showed them to buyers from upper-class outlets, including top people’s grocers Fortnum & Mason.

He claimed to have found a way to make his tea flourish despite the Scottish weather using a “special biodegradable polymer”, which prosecutors said resembled a black bin liner.

He said he had given a presentation on his methods to the Royal Horticultural Society, began supplying Edinburgh’s Balmoral Hotel with what he described as authentically Scottish single-estate tea, and claimed he’d been told that the tea he supplied to London’s five-star Dorchester Hotel was “the [late] Queen’s favourite”.

Jurors heard that he had bought over a tonne of tea grown abroad, repacked it, and sold it on.

He disguised what he was doing by getting the foreign tea delivered to a mailbox address in Glasgow and paying for it through a private bank account.

Prosecutors said a kilo of African tea could be sold for 100 times its cost if passed as grown in Scotland.

Robinson, a father of four, of Amulree, Perthshire, denied the crime, claiming that paperwork he could have used in his defence had been destroyed in a flood and his electronic records wiped.

A full proof hearing into the case will be heard later this Spring – probably in May – and could take two days or more, the court was told.

Sheriff Elizabeth McFarlane ordered that a further preliminary hearing should be held next week, on March 18.