Egg cheat gets his comeuppance
How’s this for a scuzzball?
A businessman has been jailed for three years for masterminding a scam which saw tens of millions of battery hen eggs sold as free-range or organic.
Keith Owen, who admitted three charges under the Theft Act, was told by a judge at Worcester Crown Court he had abused “well-intentioned” public trust.
Folk pay twice the price for free range and even more for organic. I am one of them. String him up.
The eggs were sold in supermarkets and other stores across England.
And nobody from the supermarkets was sent to check their suppliers?
Owen, 44, of Warbage Lane, Dodford, Worcestershire, has been ordered to repay £3m, plus £250,000 in costs.
Eggcellent!
Judge Toby Hooper QC told him he had to settle the confiscation order within 12 months, or face a further six-and-a-half years in prison.
He deserves to be locked up for this length of time anyway. Preferably in a cage just larger than himself, just like all those chooks whose eggs he sold as free range.
Earlier this month Owen, who ran Heart of England Eggs Unlimited, admitted providing false information for accounting purposes to firms in the egg supply sector between June 2004 and May 2006.
Officials estimate that as many as 100 million eggs were falsely labelled.
The court heard he sold battery and “industrial” eggs imported from France and Ireland to suppliers.
They were told the eggs were British, free range, organic or that they met the RSPCA’s Freedom Food welfare standards.
This joker seems to have been trusted by everyone. Why?
Judge Hooper said Owen’s business had made very substantial profits at the expense of consumers who believed they were buying free-range eggs.
He paid as little as 35p per dozen and sold the same eggs on to suppliers and supermarkets for more than twice that amount.
He said: “Imprisonment there must be, because the offences are plainly so serious that only a sentence of imprisonment will suffice.
“This was all a carefully-planned and executed fraud by false accounting.
It is nice to see that some judges take crime seriously.
“By greed, you have corrupted and destroyed the once-legitimate business which you have known all your life.”
Looks like he has killed the hen that laid the golden egg.
After Owen was jailed, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which brought the prosecution, urged consumers to report any concerns they had about free-range eggs and promised to weed out unscrupulous suppliers.
Tell the supermarkets to check their supply chain and the RSPCA to investigate the claims of suppliers.
Oh dear,
I’m afraid we will have to part company on this one, Stewart.
That a man should sell battery eggs as free range eggs is fraud, and it needs to be punished.
That he should be threatened with a near 10 year sentence if he doesn’t pay millions of pounds to the powers that be is extortion.
How can a Labour Lord receive less than 10 days in prison an a £0.00 fine for reckless driving that resulted in the death of an innocent man, but selling battery eggs as free-range warrants a 10 year imprisonment and a 3.25 million quid fine?
Looks to me that the only thing the HM Gov were worried about was their missing taxes.
Please punish this man for lying and fraud, by all means. Please don’t do the Gov’s dirty work for them in the process.
You know that Thomson and Venables did 7 years, and paid not one penny, don’t you?
PS,
The RSPCA are a little more than a Labour Party mouth-piece, who have contributed literally millions of pounds of funds that the public have donated (in the vain thought that it would be spent on bunny rabbits and pussy cats) to the Labour Party.
They wouldn’t know the hind leg of a donkey from a dog with two tails.
Those who doubt can check the charity commissions website.
There are 646 thieving bastards in one house in Westminster and none of them are doing time, oh and scores next door like Uddin.
Kinda puts this lot, indeed all crime, into perspective.
paulo
English,
Everyone seems to be comparing this with Lord Whatshisname. Owen is a major crook. I wonder how many legitimate farms went to the wall because they couldn’t compete with him. No, I think he deserves a severe punishment for this.
Paulo,
Their biggest crime is treason. They have thieved our sovereignty and freedoms and sold them to foreigners. If I had the money, I would take them to court myself.
Stewart,
I agree, punish him, fine him, imprison him. But 10 years, or 3 million?
PS, If you think that organic anything is anything other than exactly the same as everything else, except it still has poo on it and costs twice as much, you might need to think again. The only food I am sure of is that that I have grown and processed myself.
Put his head on a spike as a warning to others!