How a Con Artist Made $80M by Selling Fake Bomb Detectors to the World The Express Tribune
go to original June 28, 2015

In this March 6, 2010 file photo, an Iraqi police commando scans a truck with the ADE 651, a bomb detector that was discovered to be fake - little more than a handle with an antenna attached. PHOTO: AFP

In this March 6, 2010 file photo, an Iraqi police commando scans a truck with the ADE 651, a bomb detector that was discovered to be fake - little more than a handle with an antenna attached. (AFP)

Jim McCormick, born in Liverpool in 1956, sold thousands of fake bomb detectors such as the ADE 650 and ADE 651 to law enforcement agencies across the world including the Iraqi Army, the Mexican Army, Belgium Police and many others before he was caught.

Although the product was sold all across the globe from Mexico in South America, Belgium in Europe, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and China in Asia, its biggest suitor was war-torn Middle Eastern country Iraq, who bought $38 million worth of devices.

Interestingly, the device that earned McCormick a fortune did not even belong to him.

The device was first introduced as “Gopher: The Amazing Golf Ball Finder,” in the US, It was pitched as a device capable of tracking golf balls.

Later, Malcolm Stig Roe and his partner converted “Gopher” into “Quadro Tracker”, a device to track narcotics in 1990s.

Little did they know that the success of their device would by their undoing. So popular was their device that it drew the attention of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who tested the device only to find it was fake.

Read the rest at The Express Tribune

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