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Daily Mirror
26-06-2025
- Daily Mirror
Conman who scammed five-star hotels with fake tea plot jailed after web of lies
Thomas Robinson, 55, has been jailed for three and a half years after he conned top luxury hotels, shoppers and farmers with fake tea plants that he claimed were from the Scottish Highlands He claimed to have lived in the Amazon, been bitten by a deadly snake, dodged bullets on the Thailand-Burma border, and even invented the bag for life. But in reality, Thomas Robinson, 55, was nothing more than a conman in what people are dubbing the ' most British' crime of the year. Robinson, the man behind an elaborate £550,000 tea scam, has been jailed for three and a half years after duping luxury hotels, elite shoppers and even farmers with his fake Scottish brews. Trading as The Wee Tea Plantation, Robinson claimed his brew was grown in the Scottish Highlands, including Perthshire and Dumfries and Galloway. But a court heard how the leaves were actually purchased from wholesalers in Oxford - and likely originated from India or Sri Lanka. Among his high-profile victims were Edinburgh's Balmoral Hotel and London's Dorchester, where his so-called Highland Green, Silver Needles, and Scottish Antlers teas made it onto luxury menus. Calling himself Tam O'Braan, the convicted conman boasted of being a former bomb disposal expert, chemist, agronomist, and Army veteran. He even told one glossy magazine he'd lived in a canoe, been shot at, and bitten by a snake. At one point, he even bragged his tea was the Queen's favourite. His story was so convincing it even fooled BBC News, which featured his "Scottish tea success" in articles and a podcast. But in court, his fantasy life was branded the "CV of a fantasist". The scam ran for five years from 2014, until suspicious tea growers began asking questions. Richard Ross, who bought 500 plants from Robinson in 2015, noticed his crops were failing. Then he spotted Robinson's brands on the Balmoral's prestigious Palm Court menu. "I heard about the Balmoral tea list and decided to have a look," 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. That's because none of them had produced any tea." By 2017, authorities including Food Standards Scotland and Perth and Kinross Council were on the case. They discovered Robinson had no food processing licence - and no local tea, either. He didn't just target posh hotels. Robinson also duped would-be tea growers, flogging them plants he claimed were "specially engineered" to thrive in Scotland's chilly climate. They were actually imported from Italy. He defrauded a dozen genuine tea growers in Scotland and one from Jersey by supplying them with 22,000 plants at £12.50 each. In reality, the plants cost £2. Many of the plants died or failed to thrive while Robinson made almost £275,000 from the sales, the BBC reports. In court, Robinson claimed he'd developed a "special biodegradable polymer" to make tea grow faster. Prosecutors said it looked just like a black bin liner. Lead investigator Stuart Wilson, from FSS, said: "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." He added: "There were a lot of false claims. He built his lies on top of lies." Sentencing at Stirling Sheriff Court was delayed after Robinson's lawyer quit. He represented himself in court, apologising and blaming "hubris and arrogance" for his actions. But Sheriff Keith O'Mahony said the scam was "not victimless" and involved "significant and persistent planning". The Balmoral Hotel, duped into selling Robinson's bogus blends, said it was left "shocked and devastated" by the scandal. General manager Andrew McPherson said: "We work hard to support local Scottish food producers... To have been deceived in such a calculated manner left us all profoundly disappointed and embarrassed." He added: "As 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."
STV News
25-06-2025
- STV News
Conman jailed for three and half years for duping hotels with fake Scottish tea
A conman who bought tea from around the world and sold it on as Scottish has been jailed for three and a half years after being found guilty of a fraud totalling more than half a million pounds. Thomas Robinson, 55, also known as Thomas O'Brien or Tam O'Braan, rented land on a former sheep farm near Loch Tay and began supplying Edinburgh's top Balmoral Hotel with what he described as authentically Scottish single-estate tea. He claimed he'd been told that the tea he had supplied to London's five-star Dorchester Hotel was 'the Queen's favourite'. STV News Thomas Robinson, 55, also known as Thomas O'Brien or Tam O'Braan. A court heard he bought tea plants from a nursery in Sussex called 'Plants4Presents' and installed them for show in a former kitchen garden at the property, Dalreoch Farm, Amulree, Perthshire, shortly before an expected visit from a buyer acting for top people's foodstore Fortnum and Mason's. He said he had found a way to make his tea grow in half the usual time – using a 'special biodegradable polymer' which the prosecution said looked like black bin liner – and claimed to have given a presentation on his methods to the Royal Horticultural Society. The tea menu at the Balmoral's Palm Court, based on descriptions Robinson gave them, boasted 'Our Scottish-grown teas come from gardens in our farming heartlands in Perthshire and Dumfries and Galloway'. They had names like Dalreoch White, Silver Needles, Scottish Antlers Tea, and Highland Green. STV News Trading as The Wee Tea Plantation, Robinson spun customers what Falkirk Sheriff Court heard were 'elaborate lies' that he'd sold tea to Kensington Palace, played rugby for Blackheath, was a multi-millionaire, a landowner, a polymer scientist, had invented the 'Bag For Life', had served in the British Army in bomb disposal, had worked for the Obama administration in America on a maize project, had studied botany at Edinburgh University, and that his wife was a solicitor. Prosecutors described this as 'the CV of a fantasist'. He also sowed success stories in the press and appeared on a BBC podcast, telling presenter Mark Stephen he'd learned to grow tea plants 'like rhubarb under a sink' by restricting UV light. An expert said this would actually kill them. The court was told he secured deals to supply single-estate Scottish-grown tea products from his own plants and other tea gardens in Scotland to France's oldest tea house Mariage Frères, as well as the Balmoral, The Dorchester, Fortnum and Mason and a Dunfermline-based firm called The Wee Tea Company, of which he had briefly been appointed a director before resigning as a result of what he called a 'schism' with the owners. The court heard Robinson bought over a tonne of tea grown abroad, repacked it, and sold it on. He disguised what he was doing by getting the foreign leaf delivered to a mailbox address in Glasgow registered to a company called 'Thomas James Consultants', and paying through a joint personal bank account, not the Wee Tea Plantation business account. One expert said a kilo of top tea from Africa could be sold for 100 times its cost if passed as grown in Scotland. Robinson also claimed to have produced tea plants at Amulree from cuttings and seed. Between 2015 and 2018, he supplied 22,000 plants to a dozen other growers in Scotland and one in Jersey at £12.50 each. The jury heard that over the same period, he was actually importing tea plants at three euros each from a horticulturalist in Italy. He either passed them off as Scottish-grown or allowed his customers to assume they were. Many died or did not thrive, and yields were a fraction of what Robinson had given his customers to expect. One grower, an antique dealer, who bought thousands of plants for his wife's family farm near Castle Douglas, said Robinson had told him he could expect to be picking his first tea at the end of a year, and could eventually expect a yield of 100 kilos of top tea plus 450 kilos of secondary leaf for blends. After battling for seven years, they finally managed to harvest just 100 grammes of finished tea. Robinson claimed that with the exception of 15,000 plants sold to a grower in Jersey, all the Italian plants had been in Scottish ground for a period, and that made them Scottish. The scam began to unravel early in 2017 after Perth and Kinross Council started to check up on whether Robinson had a food processing licence; then he received a visit from a Scottish Government advisor about plant passports. He told the advisor the only plants he had were for his own use, then, in what the Crown said was an attempted cover-up, he sent out a story to the local press claiming thousands of his plants had been stolen. The Food Crime and Incidents Unit of Food Standards Scotland was called in, and an investigation was launched, headed by a retired police inspector. Prosecutor Joanne Ritchie said Robinson had formed 'a scheme to deceive and make money on the basis of lies'. She said: 'When you look at what he was actually doing, the suggestion that this was genuine Scottish tea or these were Scottish-grown plants is almost laughable. 'He lied to every single witness who encountered him, but more than that, he lied to the population at large, to the people who had been buying this tea on the understanding it was Scottish.' After a three and a half week trial, involving thousands of pages of documentation, jurors took six hours to find Robinson, of Amulree, guilty of defrauding the tea growers of £274,354 and the hotels and tea companies of £278,634 – a total of nearly £553,000 – between January 1, 2014 and 28 Feb 2019. The verdict was unanimous, and with no deletions to any of the charges. Robinson denied the crimes, claiming that paperwork he could have used in his defence had been destroyed in a flood and his electronic records had been lost because his storage had been turned off. He insisted he had done no wrong and was 'proud' of his work, telling the jury: 'I wanted to leave something that would stand in the history of tea.' Robinson shook his head when the verdicts were announced last month. Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
STV News
25-06-2025
- STV News
Conman to be sentenced for duping top hotels and growers with fake Scottish tea
A conman who bought tea from around the world and sold it on as Scottish will be sentenced on Wednesday after being found guilty of a fraud totalling more than half a million pounds. Thomas Robinson, 55, also known as Thomas O'Brien or Tam O'Braan, rented land on a former sheep farm near Loch Tay and began supplying Edinburgh's top Balmoral Hotel with what he described as authentically Scottish single-estate tea. He claimed he'd been told that the tea he had supplied to London's five-star Dorchester Hotel was 'the Queen's favourite'. STV News Thomas Robinson, 55, also known as Thomas O'Brien or Tam O'Braan. A court heard he bought tea plants from a nursery in Sussex called 'Plants4Presents' and installed them for show in a former kitchen garden at the property, Dalreoch Farm, Amulree, Perthshire, shortly before an expected visit from a buyer acting for top people's foodstore Fortnum and Mason's. He said he had found a way to make his tea grow in half the usual time – using a 'special biodegradable polymer' which the prosecution said looked like black bin liner – and claimed to have given a presentation on his methods to the Royal Horticultural Society. The tea menu at the Balmoral's Palm Court, based on descriptions Robinson gave them, boasted 'Our Scottish-grown teas come from gardens in our farming heartlands in Perthshire and Dumfries and Galloway'. They had names like Dalreoch White, Silver Needles, Scottish Antlers Tea, and Highland Green. STV News Trading as The Wee Tea Plantation, Robinson spun customers what Falkirk Sheriff Court heard were 'elaborate lies' that he'd sold tea to Kensington Palace, played rugby for Blackheath, was a multi-millionaire, a landowner, a polymer scientist, had invented the 'Bag For Life', had served in the British Army in bomb disposal, had worked for the Obama administration in America on a maize project, had studied botany at Edinburgh University, and that his wife was a solicitor. Prosecutors described this as 'the CV of a fantasist'. He also sowed success stories in the press and appeared on a BBC podcast, telling presenter Mark Stephen he'd learned to grow tea plants 'like rhubarb under a sink' by restricting UV light. An expert said this would actually kill them. The court was told he secured deals to supply single-estate Scottish-grown tea products from his own plants and other tea gardens in Scotland to France's oldest tea house Mariage Frères, as well as the Balmoral, The Dorchester, Fortnum and Mason and a Dunfermline-based firm called The Wee Tea Company, of which he had briefly been appointed a director before resigning as a result of what he called a 'schism' with the owners. The court heard Robinson bought over a tonne of tea grown abroad, repacked it, and sold it on. He disguised what he was doing by getting the foreign leaf delivered to a mailbox address in Glasgow registered to a company called 'Thomas James Consultants', and paying through a joint personal bank account, not the Wee Tea Plantation business account. One expert said a kilo of top tea from Africa could be sold for 100 times its cost if passed as grown in Scotland. Robinson also claimed to have produced tea plants at Amulree from cuttings and seed. Between 2015 and 2018, he supplied 22,000 plants to a dozen other growers in Scotland and one in Jersey at £12.50 each. The jury heard that over the same period, he was actually importing tea plants at three euros each from a horticulturalist in Italy. He either passed them off as Scottish-grown or allowed his customers to assume they were. Many died or did not thrive, and yields were a fraction of what Robinson had given his customers to expect. One grower, an antique dealer, who bought thousands of plants for his wife's family farm near Castle Douglas, said Robinson had told him he could expect to be picking his first tea at the end of a year, and could eventually expect a yield of 100 kilos of top tea plus 450 kilos of secondary leaf for blends. After battling for seven years, they finally managed to harvest just 100 grammes of finished tea. Robinson claimed that with the exception of 15,000 plants sold to a grower in Jersey, all the Italian plants had been in Scottish ground for a period, and that made them Scottish. The scam began to unravel early in 2017 after Perth and Kinross Council started to check up on whether Robinson had a food processing licence; then he received a visit from a Scottish Government advisor about plant passports. He told the advisor the only plants he had were for his own use, then, in what the Crown said was an attempted cover-up, he sent out a story to the local press claiming thousands of his plants had been stolen. The Food Crime and Incidents Unit of Food Standards Scotland was called in, and an investigation was launched, headed by a retired police inspector. Prosecutor Joanne Ritchie said Robinson had formed 'a scheme to deceive and make money on the basis of lies'. She said: 'When you look at what he was actually doing, the suggestion that this was genuine Scottish tea or these were Scottish-grown plants is almost laughable. 'He lied to every single witness who encountered him, but more than that, he lied to the population at large, to the people who had been buying this tea on the understanding it was Scottish.' After a three and a half week trial, involving thousands of pages of documentation, jurors took six hours to find Robinson, of Amulree, guilty of defrauding the tea growers of £274,354 and the hotels and tea companies of £278,634 – a total of nearly £553,000 – between January 1, 2014 and 28 Feb 2019. The verdict was unanimous, and with no deletions to any of the charges. Robinson denied the crimes, claiming that paperwork he could have used in his defence had been destroyed in a flood and his electronic records had been lost because his storage had been turned off. He insisted he had done no wrong and was 'proud' of his work, telling the jury: 'I wanted to leave something that would stand in the history of tea.' Robinson shook his head when the verdicts were announced last month. Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Fraudster conned luxury hotels and retailers out of £580k by selling fake Scottish tea
A man has been found guilty of fraud totalling almost £600,000 after he passed off ordinary tea as a premium product grown in Scotland. Thomas Robinson, 52, claimed the tea was a unique variety he had grown at his Perthshire estate using innovative techniques. Operating as The Wee Tea Plantation, he then fraudulently sold it to high-profile clients in the hospitality sector, including luxury hotels and retailers, between January 2014 and February 2019. Varieties listed on the website - which touted partnerships with train operator Caledonian Sleeper and the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh - include Dalreoch White, Silver Needles, Scottish Antlers Tea, and Highland Green. Also known as Tam O'Braan and Thomas O'Brien, Robinson was found to have misled genuine Scottish tea growers by selling them plants he falsely claimed were a unique, locally-grown variety. He also bolstered his credibility by fabricating academic qualifications and industry awards. An investigation by Food Standards Scotland (FSS) found Robinson's misrepresentations led to his clients losing a total of £584,783. He was found guilty of two counts of fraud by a jury at Falkirk Sheriff Court on Thursday, and is due to be sentenced at Stirling Sheriff Court on 25 June. Read more from Scotland: In a statement, Ron McNaughton, head of Scottish food crime and incidents unit at FSS, said: "This was not a victimless crime - individuals, businesses, and an emerging sector of genuine Scottish tea growers suffered real financial and reputational harm as a result of deliberate deception." He then thanked a witness who came forward and added: "Fraud of this nature is often difficult to detect and even harder to prove, but we were determined to pursue every line of inquiry to build the strongest possible case."
STV News
29-05-2025
- STV News
Conman duped top hotels and growers out of £550,000 by selling fake Scottish tea
A conman who bought tea from around the world and sold it on as Scottish has been jailed after being found guilty of a fraud totalling more than half a million pounds. Thomas Robinson, 55, also known as Thomas O'Brien or Tam O'Braan, rented land on a former sheep farm near Loch Tay and began supplying Edinburgh's top Balmoral Hotel with what he described as authentically Scottish single-estate tea. He claimed he'd been told that tea he had supplied to London's five-star Dorchester Hotel was 'the Queen's favourite'. STV News Thomas Robinson, 55, also known as Thomas O'Brien or Tam O'Braan, rented land on a former sheep farm near Loch Tay. A court heard he bought tea plants from a nursery in Sussex called 'Plants4Presents' and installed them for show in a former kitchen garden at the property, Dalreoch Farm, Amulree, Perthshire shortly before an expected visit from buyer acting for top peoples' foodstore Fortnum and Mason's. He said he had found a way to make his tea grow in half the usual time – using a 'special biodegradable polymer' which the prosecution said looked like black bin liner – and claimed to have given a presentation on his methods to the Royal Horticultural Society. The tea menu at the Balmoral's Palm Court, based on descriptions Robinson gave them, boasted 'Our Scottish grown teas come from gardens in our farming heartlands in Perthshire and Dumfries and Galloway'. They had names like Dalreoch White, Silver Needles, Scottish Antlers Tea, and Highland Green. STV News The Wee Tea Plantation's Dalreoch White, Silver Needles, Scottish Antlers Tea, and Highland Green. Trading as The Wee Tea Plantation, Robinson spun customers what Falkirk Sheriff Court heard were 'elaborate lies' that he'd sold tea to Kensington Palace, played rugby for Blackheath, was a multi-millionaire, a landowner, a polymer scientist, had invented the 'Bag For Life', had served in the British Army in bomb disposal, had worked for the Obama administration in America on a maize project, had studied botany at Edinburgh University, and that his wife was a solicitor. Prosecutors described this as 'the CV of a fantasist'. He also sowed success stories in the press and appeared on a BBC podcast, telling presenter Mark Stephen he'd learned to force tea plants 'like rhubarb under a sink' by restricting UV light. An expert said this would actually kill them. The court was told he secured deals to supply single-estate Scottish-grown tea products from his own plants and other tea gardens in Scotland to France's oldest tea house Mariage Frères, as well as the Balmoral, The Dorchester, Fortnum and Mason and a Dunfermline-based firm called The Wee Tea Company, of which he had briefly been appointed a director before resigning as a result of what he called a 'schism' with the owners. The court heard Robinson bought over a tonne of tea grown abroad, repacked it, and sold it on. He disguised what he was doing by getting the foreign leaf delivered to a mailbox address in Glasgow registered to a company called 'Thomas James Consultants', and paying though a joint personal bank account, not the Wee Tea Plantation business account. One expert said a kilo of top tea from Africa could be sold for 100 times its cost if passed as grown in Scotland. Robinson also claimed to have produced tea plants at Amulree from cuttings and seed. Between 2015 and 2018 he supplied 22,000 plants to a dozen other growers in Scotland and one in Jersey at £12.50 each. The jury heard that over the same period he was actually importing tea plants at three euros each from a horticulturalist in Italy. He either passed them off as Scottish-grown or allowed his customers to assume they were. Many died or did not thrive, and yields were a fraction of what Robinson had given his customers to expect. One grower, an antique dealer, who bought thousands of plants for his wife's family farm near Castle Douglas, said Robinson had told him he could expect to be picking his first tea at the end of a year, and could eventually expect a yield of 100 kilos of top tea plus 450 kilos of secondary leaf for blends. After battling for seven years, they finally managed to harvest just 100 grammes of finished tea. Robinson claimed that with the exception of 15,000 plants sold to a grower in Jersey, all the Italian plants had been in Scottish ground for a period and that made them Scottish. The scam began to unravel early in 2017 after Perth and Kinross Council started to check up on whether Robinson had a food processing licence; then he received a visit from a Scottish Government advisor about plant passports. He told the advisor the only plants he had were for his own use, then, in what the Crown said was an attempted cover-up, he sent out a story to the local press claiming thousands of his plants had been stolen. The Food Crime and Incidents Unit of Food Standards Scotland was called in, and an investigation was launched, headed by a retired police inspector. Prosecutor Joanne Ritchie said Robinson had formed 'a scheme to deceive and make money on the basis of lies'. She said: 'When you look at what he was actually doing, the suggestion that this was genuine Scottish tea or these were Scottish-grown plants is almost laughable. 'He lied to every single witness who encountered him, but more than that he lied to the population at large, to the people who had been buying this tea on the understanding it was Scottish.' After a three and a half week trial, involving thousands of pages of documentation, jurors took six hours to find Robinson, of Amulree, guilty of defrauding the tea growers of £274,354 and the hotels and tea companies of £278,634 – a total of nearly £553,000 – between January 1, 2014 and 28 Feb 2019. The verdict was unanimous, and with no deletions to any of the charges. Robinson denied the crimes, claiming that paperwork he could have used in his defence had been destroyed in a flood and his electronic records had been lost because his storage had been turned off. He insisted he had done no wrong and was 'proud' of his work. He told the jury: 'I wanted to leave something that would stand in the history of tea.' He shook his head when the verdicts were announced. Sheriff Keith O'Mahony deferred sentence for reports until June 25 and remanded Robinson in custody. He warned him: 'There will be significant sentencing consequences for you.' Advocate Colin Neilson, defending, reserved mitigation. Robinson will also face proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act. Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
