{"id":19965,"date":"2013-04-23T11:01:28","date_gmt":"2013-04-23T16:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19965"},"modified":"2013-04-23T11:02:49","modified_gmt":"2013-04-23T16:02:49","slug":"seller-of-fake-bomb-detectors-found-guilty-of-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/04\/23\/seller-of-fake-bomb-detectors-found-guilty-of-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"Seller of fake bomb detectors found guilty of fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 2010, I said “There should be a special hell for this scam artist<\/a>” who mocked up bomb detector kits and sold them for thousands of dollars in Iraq and other areas with a real need for protection against IEDs. It’s taken more than three years, but he’s finally been found guilty<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A Somerset-based businessman has been convicted of three counts of fraud over the sale of bogus bomb detectors after his operation was exposed in a BBC Newsnight investigation in 2010.<\/p>\n

This was a scam of global dimensions. James McCormick marketed his fake bomb detectors around the world, selling them in Georgia, Romania, Niger, Thailand, Saudi Arabia and beyond.<\/p>\n

But his main market was Iraq, where lives depended on bomb detection and where the bogus devices were, and still are, used at virtually every checkpoint in the capital.<\/p>\n

Between 2008 and 2009 alone, more than 1,000 Iraqis were killed in explosions in Baghdad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"ADE-651<\/p>\n

How the device was meant to work:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A small amount of the substance the user wished to detect — such as explosives — was put in a Kilner jar along with a sticker that was intended to absorb the “vapours” of the substance<\/li>\n
  2. The sticker was then placed on a credit-card sized card, which was read by a card reader and inserted into the device<\/li>\n
  3. The user would then hold the device, which had no working electronics, and the swivelling antenna was meant to indicate the location of the sought substance<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    In other words, a magical dowsing stick that depended on the user to “detect” whatever the device was supposedly seeking. This wasn’t a case of a device that didn’t do what it was designed to do: it was a deliberate fraud with just enough “technological” mumbo-jumbo to appear to be a solution to a real problem: <\/p>\n

    The court heard that McCormick began his business by buying a batch of novelty “golf ball detectors” from the USA for less than $20 each. In fact they were simply radio aerials, attached by a hinge to a handle. He put the labels of his company, ATSC, on them and sold them as bomb detectors for $5,000 each.<\/p>\n

    He then made a more advanced-looking version which he was to sell for up to $55,000. The ADE-651 came with cards which he claimed were “programmed” to detect everything from explosives to ivory and even $100 bills. Police say the only genuine part of the kit — and the most expensive — was the carrying case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    To their credit, the police moved to investigate the same day the BBC’s original story broke<\/a>. Strategy Page<\/em> explained why the scam had been so easy to sell<\/a>. Later it was reported that British civil servants and military personnel<\/a> had been implicated in the fraud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Back in 2010, I said “There should be a special hell for this scam artist” who mocked up bomb detector kits and sold them for thousands of dollars in Iraq and other areas with a real need for protection against IEDs. It’s taken more than three years, but he’s finally been found guilty: A Somerset-based […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,370,15],"tags":[194,333,39,267,101],"class_list":["post-19965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-law","category-middle-east","category-technology","tag-fraud","tag-iraq","tag-junkscience","tag-justice","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5c1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19965"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19968,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19965\/revisions\/19968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}