Fake explosive detectors. Photographs courtesy of Avon & Somerset Police
Millionaire businessman James McCormick faces 10 years in jail after being convicted of selling fake bomb detectors to military, police forces, and governments around the world.
McCormick earned an estimated £50 million from selling the ADE-651 detectors for up to £27,000 each, which were modelled on a cheap golfball finder tool which could be purchased for £13 with no electronic parts. He sold the detectors to a wide array of countries around the world, including making sales worth around £38 million to Iraq, with other sales to organisations such as the UN.
There is no evidence that McCormick sold the devices to the Ministry of Defence or to UK police forces, but he did show them demonstrations.
When selling the devices, McCormick made fantastical claims about their functions including that they could detect substances from planes, underwater, underground and through walls, bypassing “all forms of concealment”.
McCormick used the International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators’ logo without authorisation on the devices in an attempt to give legitimacy to these fantastical claims.
Prosecutor Richard Whittam QC told the court that when testing one of the devices, experts found that it
“lacks any grounding in science, nor does it work in accordance with the known laws of physics… completely ineffectual as a piece of detection equipment”
Sentencing McCormick to ten years in jail for the fraud, Judge Richard Hone said:
“You are the driving force and sole director behind [the fraud]…The device was useless, the profit outrageous, and your culpability as a fraudster has to be considered to be of the highest order.”