A Scottish conman who pocketed more than £1 million selling Italian tea falsely branded as Perthshire-grown produce has been freed under the Scottish Government’s early release scheme, having served only a fraction of a three-and-a-half-year sentence handed down in June 2025.
Thomas Robinson, 56 — also known as Thomas O’Brien or, with a certain brazenness, ‘Tam O’Braan’ — was convicted by a jury at Stirling Sheriff Court of a fraud that prosecutors described as involving “significant, determined and sometimes complex planning”. He will now face proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act, though the recoverable sum remains undetermined pending disclosure of his assets.
A Convincing Fiction, Carefully Constructed
Robinson rented land on a former sheep farm near Loch Tay in Amulree, Perthshire, and began positioning himself as the proprietor of something genuinely novel: a working Scottish tea plantation. Trading as The Wee Tea Plantation, he ordered tea plants from a nursery in Sussex and installed them in the farm’s kaleyard, where they served as props for visits from buyers at premium retailers including Fortnum & Mason.
His pitch was elaborate. He claimed to have developed a proprietary growing method using a “special biodegradable polymer” — which prosecutors noted bore a strong resemblance to a black bin liner — that allowed tea to flourish despite Scotland’s climate. He further asserted, falsely, that he had presented this technique to the Royal Horticultural Society.
The story sold. Edinburgh’s Balmoral Hotel and London’s five-star Dorchester both became clients. The Balmoral’s Palm Court tea menu declared that its Scottish-grown teas came from “gardens in our farming heartlands in Perthshire and Dumfries and Galloway”, offering varieties with names such as Dalreoch White, Silver Needles, Scottish Antlers Tea, and Highland Green. Robinson had also told the Dorchester, with characteristic audacity, that his tea was the Queen’s favourite.
In reality, he was sourcing the product from Italian wholesalers, repackaging it, and reselling it to retailers at roughly five times the original cost. He also defrauded a group of genuine Scottish tea growers by selling them plants under the false pretence that they were a premium single-origin Scottish variety.
When confronted, Robinson denied all wrongdoing, claiming that exculpatory paperwork had been destroyed in a flood and his electronic records wiped. The jury was unpersuaded.
The Proceeds and the Policy
Food Standards Scotland led the investigation that brought Robinson to court. Helen Nisbet, Procurator Fiscal for Tayside, Central and Fife, was unambiguous in her assessment: “This was a planned and deliberate fraud. Individuals, businesses, and genuine Scottish tea growers suffered financial and reputational harm as a consequence of Robinson’s deceit.”
The financial scale of the scheme proved larger than initially understood. The Crown’s original estimate of £550,000 was revised upward; after eliminating an element of double-counting from an even higher figure of £1.6 million, fiscal depute Asif Rashid submitted a benefit amount of £1.068 million. Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings are now under way, though how much Robinson will ultimately be ordered to repay depends on assets not yet disclosed in open court.
His early release — under the SNP Scottish Government’s sentence reduction scheme — has attracted sharp criticism. A sentence of three and a half years for a seven-figure, premeditated fraud was already a modest tariff; releasing Robinson before he has served even that raises legitimate questions about whether Scotland’s criminal justice system is pricing fraud at a level that meaningfully deters it. The scheme was designed to ease prison capacity pressures, but its indiscriminate application to serious economic criminals sits uneasily with any credible commitment to protecting consumers, honest businesses, and the integrity of Scottish food provenance.
For the upmarket hotels and retailers whose reputations Robinson exploited, the reputational damage is done. For the genuine Scottish tea growers he defrauded, the financial harm is real. And for a policy framework that allowed him to walk free ahead of schedule, the questions will persist well beyond his release.