Tesco bomb campaign

From August 2000 to February 2001, a blackmailer identified by the pseudonym "Sally" threatened the British supermarket chain Tesco with bombing and harming customers if their demands were not met. The blackmailer demanded that Clubcards, modified to allow the withdrawal of cash from ATMs, be left in local newspapers. The attempted extortion started in Bournemouth, England, and led to one of the largest and most secretive operations ever undertaken by Dorset Police.

Several months after the threat first came to light, "Sally" sent out several letter bombs, one of which was received and exploded in the face of the recipient, causing her minor injuries. The Royal Mail intercepted several other letter bombs, which had been held up because insufficient stamps had been put on them. In October 2000, "Sally" threatened to use pipe bombs against Tesco customers and the threat was taken seriously enough that Tesco began the production of the modified Clubcards, but were unable to produce the required number before the deadline set by the blackmailer. In November, "Sally" claimed to have placed a pipe bomb in a garden in the Ferndown area of Dorset, but no bomb was found.

Police eventually mounted a surveillance operation on the postbox to which several of the extortion letters had been traced and identified "Sally" as Robert Edward Dyer. Dyer was arrested in February 2001, more than six months after the extortion attempt began, and was charged with several offences, including nine counts of blackmail and one of common assault; he was found guilty in May 2001. He was sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment on 12 June 2001, later reduced to 12 years on appeal.