Pedigree Petfoods and Heinz extortion campaign

Pedigree Petfoods and Heinz extortion campaign

Date	August 1988 - 21 October 1990
Duration	26 months
Location	Basildon and Rayleigh, Essex, United Kingdom
Motive	Financial
Outcome	Convicted, sentenced to 17 years imprisonment
Non-fatal injuries	5
Arrests	1
Suspects	1
Charges	18 charges including blackmail, demanding money with menaces and contaminating food products (contrary to section 38(1) of the Public Order Act 1986)
Trial	Old Bailey, [East London]], England
Verdict	Guilty
Convictions	Rodney Whitchelo
Sentence	17 years imprisonment (of which Whitchelo served half)

The Pedigree Chum dog food and Heinz extortion campaign was an attempted extortion against Pedigree Petfoods and Heinz, during which an extortionist contaminated tins of dog and baby food. Pedigree was advised by police to pay limited sums of money to the extortionist, while cash machines were put under surveillance. Heinz lost millions in sales and eventually offered a £100,000 reward, which the extortionist attempted to collect. However, he was arrested at the cashpoint, where police discovered the extortionist was former Metropolitan Police Detective Sergeant Rodney Whitchelo.

Whitchelo was found guilty on six counts of blackmail, two counts each of contaminating food products and attempting to obtain property by deception, as well as one count of making a threat to kill, and was sentenced to 17-years imprisonment.

Rodney Whitchelo

Whitchelo was born in Hackney, London, in 1947. He attended Hackney Secondary Modern, before starting his first job with the Johnson Matthey chemical firm in Hatton Garden.

In 1976, Whitchelo enrolled in the Metropolitan Police, completing training at Hendon Police College. His career saw him become a qualified armed officer, before being promoted to Detective Sergeant.

In July 1986, Whitchelo was a detective sergeant working in East London. Then, aged 38, Whitchelo attended a training school for detectives located at the Derbyshire Constabulary headquarters. It was during this time that Whitchelo and fellow trainee detectives received a lecture on the emergence of a new type of terrorist in the 1980s, known as the 'consumer terrorist'. These individuals would target large companies, demanding ransom money that was significantly lower than the potential loss of profits resulting from consumers avoiding their products due to fears of tampering.

The challenge for these extortionists lay in collecting the ransom money, as it necessitated their presence at a specific location and time to claim the funds. The lecturer noted that Whitchelo displayed an unusually keen interest in the subject matter during the lecture.

Whitchelo finished his policing career with the Criminal Investigation Department at Hackney, having previously worked with the Regional Crime Squad (RCS) in East London. On the grounds of ill health from suffering with asthma, Whitchelo took early retirement, after 13 years with the Metropolitan Police. He left with a commendation for exemplary conduct.

While working for the police, Whitchelo started a side business, creating his own computer firm. However, this placed Whitchelo into debt.

Beginnings

Contaminated dog food and extortion letter sent to Pedigree Petfoods

In August 1988, Pedigree Petfoods received a package to their Leicestershire office. Within it was a can of dog food and a letter that had been written on a typewriter. The letter started:

This is a demand of Pedigree Petfoods to pay £100,000 to prevent it’s [sic] products being contaminated with toxic substances.

The letter stated that the dog food that had accompanied the letter had been mixed with certain chemicals, which were biocides and which had been chosen due to them being ‘colourless, odourless and highly toxic’.

The letter stated that the chemicals were ‘virtually undetectable’ by a pet owner and that’ if payment is not forthcoming from Pedigree Petfoods or Mars Inc., then large numbers of similarly contaminated tins will appear on retailers shelves throughout Great Britain’.

Whitchelo pretended that he was a gang of blackmailers, he explained to Pedigree Petfoods to acknowledge his letter with a coded message in the personal column of The Daily Telegraph.

Initial police involvement

Pedigree Petfoods contacted the Leicestershire Police, who advised them to place the advert in the paper, with the police including a telephone number, hoping that the blackmailers would contact them.

The first coded message wrote:

SANDRA HAPPY BIRTHDAY darling. Want to help, must talk, John.

Collecting the ransom money

Whitchelo replied with a further letter, stating that the Pedigree Petfoods reply had been seen, but that the problem would be the pickup of the money. However, Whitchelo came up with an idea that involved the ransom money being dispensed to three accounts, where the money could be collected at ATMs across the country. The account details were sent to a postal address in Hammersmith, London, where police discovered that the accounts, from Abbey National, Halifax and Nationwide banks, had been opened two years previously and were untraceable. The police realised that the blackmailers could withdraw £300 each day.

Police pay the ransom money

The police only paid ransom money into the Halifax account, which limited the Whitchelo to 900 cashpoints across the country. Police were hopeful that if withdrawals were made in one particular area, that this would further reduce the number of cashpoints, allowing them to conduct a surveillance operation.

However, Whitchelo chose various cashpoints across the United Kingdom, including Wales and Scotland. Limiting the amount of cashpoints by only putting the ransom money into the Halifax account frustrated Whitchelo. It was at that point, he decided to contaminate dog food and put it in public.

Petfood contaminated

On 5 December 1988, after a number of hoax calls were made to police, Essex Police were told that contaminated Pedigree Chum dog food had been placed on the shelves at Savercentre Supermarket in Basildon. Intercepting some of the tins, forensic scientists discovered that they had been contaminated with salicylic acid.

Leicestershire Police asked Pedigree Petfoods' to keep the situation a secret, as it was obvious which cans had been tampered with and therefore the public were not at risk. However, Whitchelo threatened causing issues with sales to Pedigree in a further letter, stating that the tactics of the ‘blackmailers’ were changing, with razor blades being put into the tins, of which the public would then come forward to reveal that tins were being tampered with.

Extortion letter to Heinz

On 22 March 1989, Whitchelo wrote a letter to the Heinz baby food company, who were based in London. Within the letter, he stated that for five years, he wanted £100,000 from Heinz and that if they did not deliver on this, he would contaminate their baby food products with caustic soda.

Operation Roach

Operation launched

The Metropolitan Police launched Operation Roach. The investigation was headed up by the Regional Crime Squad at New Scotland Yard. An incident room was set up, headed by Detective Chief Superintendent, Pat Fleming, with Detective Chief Inspector, Gavin Robertson, deputy in the investigation. The nationwide police investigation cost £3 million.

The Metropolitan Police team were told that it appeared a gang, who had been threatening Pedigree Petfoods, were also responsible for the threats towards Heinz.

Initial surveillance

Fleming stated that at that stage, surveillance was the only viable option. This involved assigning three officers to each potential cashpoint machine: one officer monitored the computer to track the activity in the blackmailer's account, while the other two were tasked with intercepting the individual at the cashpoint. Given that there were 900 potential cashpoints associated with Halifax, it was estimated that 3,000 officers would be needed for the operation. However, it was believed that the blackmailers would not anticipate the police monitoring every cashpoint.

Teams of officers nationwide conducted surveillance on cashpoints as part of the operation. Despite these efforts, on the night of April 27, 1989, the blackmailers did not make any withdrawals.

Whitchelo aware of police investigation tactics

What police were not aware of, was that Whitchelo was friends with officers within the surveillance operation, who inadvertently briefed him about the surveillance taking place.In fact, Whitchelo had worked with Robertson when he was in the police and in June 1989, whilst the investigation into him was ongoing, called Robertson.

Operation Stab

A separate operation, Operation Stab, was set up around June 1989, in order to keep surveillance on eight false addresses. These addresses had been set up by Whitchelo.

Surveillance continues and a blackmailer is seen

Fleming later set up video surveillance at a few of the cashpoints and on 23 December, a withdrawal was made from the blackmail account at a cashpoint covered by one of the cameras, in Ipswich, Suffolk, 66.9 miles northeast of London. The footage showed a person approach the cashpoint, however, they were dressed in a motorbike helmet, obscuring their face and leaving police unable to establish the person's identity.

Member of the public discovers contaminated baby food

In Rayleigh, Essex, a member of the public located a printed label in the bottom of a jar of Heinz baby food that read ‘POISONED NAOH’ (NaOH being the chemical symbol for sodium hydroxide). The person, who had bought the baby food for her dog, discovered the label had sunken to the bottom of the jar, when she was spooning out the contents, prior to giving the food to her dog.

In another incident, a nine-month-old baby was admitted to hospital having eaten food laced with razor blade fragments.

Officers discovered enough poison in another jar of Heinz’s cauliflower baby food to kill 27 children.

Fleming and Robertson suspect a leak in the investigation

As the surveillance continued not to bring any success, Fleming, on speaking to Robertson, discussed how it was as if the blackmailers knew when the police surveillance was occurring. It was wondered whether there was a leak within the investigation team.

Decision to take the card from the blackmailers

At this stage, a total of £14,000 of ransom money had been withdrawn. In order to get past the daily £300 withdrawal limit, at times, Whitchelo would use a cashpoint just before midnight, then shortly afterwards, enabling him to take £600 from one visit of the cashpoint. The police decided at this stage, that the banking computer system should be programmed to swallow the card whenever it was used next, perhaps being able to take a fingerprint to identify a suspect. However, Whitchelo always wore gloves.

The operation is made public

The next time that Whitchelo used the card, the cashpoint swallowed it. In response, Whitchelo wrote another letter where he stated:

We are the commercial terrorists who have been contaminating your products. We’re about to return with a vengeance. Next time, it will be potassium cyanide in your jars. Other Heinz products and tins will also be contaminated. If we’re prosecuted for murder, we might as well deserve it, but we’re confident we’ll never be caught. An infant’s death will be another statistic as far as we’re concerned.

The risk of a member of the public dying led police to go public about the operation, with Fleming briefing the media about the threat that Heinz had received. After the briefing, in just one month, there were over 2,000 reported copycat false-alarms. Heinz faced a massive slump in sales and offered a reward of £100,000 for information leading to the conviction of the blackmailers.In April 1989, as a result of Whitchelo, Heinz spent £32 million to replace their baby food containers, shrink-wrapping them.

Heinz offer a reward and an 'informant' approaches them

Soon after Heinz stated they would provide a reward, a letter was received by managing director, John Hinch, which in exchange for the reward, offered inside information about the blackmail gang. The writer of the letter stated that they were aware police had been watching the cashpoints, and knew the codenames of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, that the writer of the original letters had used. The difference between the original letters and this letter to Heinz was that the original letters were typed, whereas this letter was stencilled. The matter of payment of the reward was to be through building society accounts. This led Fleming to believe that police were dealing with a blackmailer, as opposed to an informant. The only other person aware of the letter other than Fleming was Robertson, to prevent any information reaching the blackmailers.

Fleming's belief that the letter attempting to claim the reward money from Heinz was not from an informant, but rather a blackmailer, was correct; it was Whitchelo who had written the letter. Due to the card to the ransom money account having been taken off him, Whitchelo's income had stopped, causing him to use two other bank accounts, that had been set up in the name of Ian and Nina Fox. Whitchelo pretended to be an informant to claim the reward money.

Operation Agincourt

New, top-secret operation is setup

Fleming and Robertson wanted to give their team the impression that Operation Roach, the investigation into the blackmailers, was slowing down. However, a new, top-secret operation had commenced, codenamed ‘Operation Agincourt’. Two officers who were on the previous investigation team were transferred, with one being told to tell his colleagues he was off on sick leave and the other, at a later stage, to tell them that he was off work due to compassionate reasons. Fleming added some of the reward money into the Ian and Nina Fox accounts, which showed that the person withdrawing the money was doing so more locally, as opposed to travelling further distances as they had done so before. It showed the majority of withdrawals were occurring within the London area, with a slight favour towards cashpoints in the east.

A new surveillance operation occurred, planned for October 20 and 21. This was to be London-focused, as opposed to national-focused. The team decided to focus on the Woolwich area of London, choosing 15 cashpoints to stakeout. Officers from Special Branch were brought in to assist with the surveillance, in order for the secrecy of the operation to be maintained.

However, prior to the planned surveillance operation being started, a workman accidentally cut through an electrical cable servicing the Woolwich mainframe computer. This meant that police now could not know when the account was being used at a cashpoint. Although this was a setback, the operation had already been setup and Fleming decided to proceed with it.

Whitchelo is spotted and arrested

Whitchelo attempted to use a cashpoint in Uxbridge, which was not the focus of surveillance. However, due to the workman's accident, it had been placed out of order. Whitchelo attempted to find another machine to withdraw money from. At 12:30 in the morning in Enfield, Middlesex, officers conducting surveillance noticed a person getting out of a car, wearing a motorbike helmet, matching the description they had been given. Officers exited their vehicle and followed the person to a cashpoint; it was Whitchelo. However, the cashpoint he attempted to use was also out of order. Whitchelo returned to his vehicle, where the surveillance officers searched him. Asked why he was wearing a crash helmet, Whitchelo replied that it stopped him from getting wet. On his person, officers located a card in the name of Ian and Nina Fox. Whitchelo was arrested in connection with offences of blackmail and threats to kill. Whitchelo had managed to withdraw £34,000 in total.

Charge

On 23 October 1989, Whitchelo appeared at Marylebone magistrates court. He was accused of ‘conspiring with a person or persons unknown that between August 1988 and October this year [1989], with a view to gain for himself, he made an unwarranted demand for £1.25m on H.J. Heinz and Company'.

Whichelo was remanded in custody for one week, scheduled to return to court on 20 November 1989.

Post-arrest investigation

Police discovered that Whitchelo often called his mother and friends on his mobile phone as he travelled. These times and locations were cross-referenced with the cashpoint withdrawals, showing a match.

A tape was located of a recording between Whitchelo and a friend, who was a journalist, who were planning to write a book about Whitchelo's policing career. On one evening, the conversation turned to how the perfect crime could be committed. Whitchelo claimed the most important rule was the ‘golden rule’, which was not to be greedy; a rule that he appeared to have broken.

Trial

Whitchelo's trial was held at the Old Bailey, in front of Judge Nina Lowry.

Throughout his trial, Whitchelo claimed that he had been ‘set up’ by other police officers.

On 17 December 1990, Whitchelo was found guilty of six counts of blackmail, two counts each of contaminating food products and attempting to obtain property by deception, as well as one count of making a threat to kill. Whitchelo was sentenced to 17-years imprisonment.

Aftermath

In August 1998, Whitchelo was released from prison, having spent nine years in prison. Speaking to the Sunday Mirror, Whitchelo believed he had atoned and apologised for his actions.

See also

• Tesco blackmail plot - an extortion attempt against Tesco and which led to the largest blackmail investigation in the UK, between 2018 and 2020, where an extortionist threatened to contaminate baby food with salmonella, white powder and knives.
• 2007 Tesco blackmail campaign - an extortion attempt against the British supermarket chain Tesco in 2007, where an extortionist threatened to put caustic soda in yoghurt sold in the store.
• Tesco bomb campaign - an attempted extortion against British supermarket chain Tesco in August 2000, in which a blackmailer identified by the pseudonym "Sally" sent letters to Tesco stores threatening to harm customers if his demands—for Clubcards, modified so that the holder could withdraw cash from ATMs—were not met. Several months after the threat first came to light, "Sally" sent out several letter bombs.
• Edgar Pearce - dubbed the 'Mardi Gras bomber', Pearce targeted six different branches of Barclays bank and five branches of Sainsbury's supermarkets with home-made bombs, attempting to get the companies to pay him money.