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Man Accused of Selling Golf Ball Finders As Bomb Detectors 131

CNET reports that a British businessman named Jim McCormick is facing charges now for fraud; McCormick "charged 27,000 pounds (around $41,000) for devices that weren't quite what he said they were." That's putting it mildly; what he was selling as bomb detecting devices were actually souped-up (or souped-down, with non-functional circuitboards and other flim-flammery) golf-ball detectors. The Daily Mail has some enlightening pictures.
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Man Accused of Selling Golf Ball Finders As Bomb Detectors

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  • I guess you could say this con man is gonna get... ...clubbed.
  • Anyway (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @10:44AM (#43263209) Journal

    People are dying in wars because of reliance on these devices. He needs to go to jail...or the gas chamber.

    • Broader context (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CdBee ( 742846 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @11:14AM (#43263361)
      The wars of recent years have been a major money-spinner for shady businesses and shady politics - viz the sale of near-unserviceable ex-soviet weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq by brokers, the tying of government contracts in Iraq to western suppliers of telecomms equipment (Iraq had a fairly functional GSM network and this was nearly ripped out in favour of CDMA), the Westernisation of the oil industry in Iraq..

      the broader fraud in my eyes is the concept that western systems of bid & contract and multi-party democracy can work anywhere. Maybe its true on a long-enough timeline, but we're seeing short-term consequences in terms of bidding that isnt fair, contracts not based on good principles of business and knowledge (above all things capitalism requires good knowledge and assessment of the options), 'multi-party systems' that just formalise existing factions on tribal, cultural and religious lines.

      What this guy did if accurately reported is shameful, criminal and wrong. I hope he'll be made an example of. I don't imagine it will make much difference on a larger scale. All thats unusual is he got caught.
      • by Anonymous Coward
        In any fight or war, there will be people taking whatever financial advantage they can, and these recent wars are no different. That isn't so much the unusual part to me, instead the particular way that some people have done it. There seems to be a whole miniature industry for making fraudulent bomb detectors once someone realized they could BS their way through tests, and that there are enough countries they could do reasonably well at least one tests via luck. While it might be tough to argue that some
      • The wars of recent years have been a major money-spinner for shady businesses and shady politics...

        FTFY: Wars have always been a major money-spinner for shady businesses and shady politics.

      • What this guy did if accurately reported is shameful, criminal and wrong. I hope he'll be made an example of. I don't imagine it will make much difference on a larger scale. All thats unusual is he got caught.

        What's unusual isn't that he got found out, it's that anyone cared enough to take action. As you're pointed out, the Iraq police action has been an absolute goldmine for an army of carpetbaggers who're willing to sell the victims (the Iraqis) anything they want (or at least something claiming to be what they want). The sale of assorted junk that's basically electronic dowsing rods as bomb detectors and similar has been going on for years, and it's reasonably well known to those involved. What's really unus

        • Replying to my own post, should have mentioned that there are experimental techniques that can sort of sometimes detect some of the components used in bombs, lasers to induce Raman scattering in the air above locations of explosives, differential absorption light detection and ranging using backscattering from air, coherent Stokes Raman scattering to find indications of bomb constituents, and so on and so forth. All of them pretty much only work under ideal lab conditions and have awful false positive rate

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        Of course, he shouldn't be alone. There are plenty of management types who happily forked over a metric assload of money for a sack of tiger repelling rocks.

    • Re:Anyway (Score:4, Informative)

      by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @01:50PM (#43264385)
      Anyone who would buy one and send it into a war zone without testing should go to jail.

      (from the submission) The Daily Mail has some enlightening pictures.

      No, they don't. They have more pictures of the area he lived than of the device. Where's a picture of the golf ball finder? Who pays money for a golf ball finder? Does it still work as a golf ball finder? Who bought them? Was it like US body armour, where the friends and family of the soldier would send it too them because the military didn't have enough, or was it an "official" purchase, and he was a military contractor? Did the device still do anything at all?

      • by quenda ( 644621 )

        Anyone who would buy one and send it into a war zone without testing should go to jail.

        Oh please, there is no chance even of the mass-murdering politicians who started the wars going to jail.
        This guy will probably be head-hunted as an executive for Northrop Grumann or Halliburton.

    • by anagama ( 611277 )

      People are dying in wars because of reliance on these devices. He needs to go to jail...or the gas chamber.

      This guy is small potatoes compared to real war criminals like Cheney, GWB, Obama, etc. And he obviously didn't study Haliburton's business methods in any depth.

    • Sooo,

      Surely some boffin should've spent 5 minutes with one of these devices in a munitions locker to test if the damn thing worked?

      Here we have stories of the Chinese setting up buildings full of hackers to thwart the western forces, when all they have to do is put 'this is rock repels rockets' stickers on rocks and get this guy to sell them to the UK and US military for $40,000 a pop.

      Like lemmings off a freakin cliff.
    • Re:Anyway (Score:4, Insightful)

      by quenda ( 644621 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @09:37PM (#43267077)

      He sold a divining rod. Is it really any different to people selling alternative medicine, or prayer?

      • He sold a divining rod.

        Could you please expand upon this? I'm curious what makes this bomb detector a divining rod. Is it because he knew the thing would not work, or because you believe that it is impossible to build a bomb detecting device, or something else?

        • by quenda ( 644621 )

          He sold a divining rod.

          Could you please expand upon this? I'm curious what makes this bomb detector a divining rod.

          Ah .. I was not making a metaphor. It literally is a divining rod - a stick that points, controlled by the users hand. That's why it needs no battery.

          • Ahh, I didn't realize divining rod could be used for more than just "a stick which can find water". I thought you meant strictly from a functional stand-point, that this "bomb detector" was as useful for finding bombs, as a divining rod is for finding water. I also did not know if you meant that just this particular device was a divining rod, or that all bomb detectors are divining rods. But it sounds like you just meant this particular device.
    • Yes I would say he should be held accountable for manslaughter if faulty equipment sold under false pretenses caused anyone's death. Not Murder 1 sure, but it fits: by your actions someone died, your actions weren't intended to cause death but could have those consequences, your actions were illegal and harmful and malicious, therefor you are responsible for death.
  • by pellik ( 193063 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @10:50AM (#43263237)
    Travelling Golfers should be aware that the TSA (or UK equivalent) may not take kindly to the presence of Golf Balls in your luggage.
  • His mistake (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Well, has happened before. [wikipedia.org]. I guess his mistake was that the units didn't produce enough positive hits - regardless of their accuracy.

  • by TheMMaster ( 527904 ) <`xc.mmt' `ta' `ph'> on Sunday March 24, 2013 @10:51AM (#43263247)

    The man was selling dousing rods which were labeled as golfball finders as bombdetectors.

    They were equally successful at either task. They weren't golfball detectors any more than they were bomb detectors. The con was the dousing rod aspect of it, not the 'golf ball finder' stuff. The problem is people believing in magic, not a mislabeled golfbal detector.

    • by ChrisKnight ( 16039 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @11:26AM (#43263441) Homepage

      This was not a case of people believing in magick. This was a case of someone taking a fake product, slapping fake certification labels on the outside, fake circuit boards on the inside, adding bogus 'smart cards', and selling it as a high-tech piece of hardware. It was a scam, but in this case there was active deceit that didn't need to rely on people's belief in 'dousing'; he relied on people's faith in technology and their unwillingness to crack open the case. This would have never fooled a person with the Maker Mentality. :)

      • by tlambert ( 566799 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @12:10PM (#43263701)

        This was not a case of people believing in magick. This was a case of someone taking a fake product, slapping fake certification labels on the outside, fake circuit boards on the inside, adding bogus 'smart cards', and selling it as a high-tech piece of hardware. It was a scam, but in this case there was active deceit that didn't need to rely on people's belief in 'dousing'; he relied on people's faith in technology and their unwillingness to crack open the case. This would have never fooled a person with the Maker Mentality. :)

        I would agree with you in principle, were in not for the fact that the only bomb-detection equipment I could find on the web which did not require some form of direct contact with the bomb was a dog.

        So yes, this was the agencies who purchased the detectors believing in "magick" [SIC].

        • I would agree with you in principle, were in not for the fact that the only bomb-detection equipment I could find on the web which did not require some form of direct contact with the bomb was a dog.

          So yes, this was the agencies who purchased the detectors believing in "magick" [SIC].

          They may have had some minor effect though. Not by actually detecting anything, but when dogs or anything that the searchee believes might find something is present the searchee tends to give themselves away. There are always minor 'tells' when someone is searched or questioned. They tend to glance at the location of a bomb or act fidgety or nervous. Of course it would have been far cheaper for the Iragi military to buy the golf ball detectors (which didn't work for that either) and rebadge the devices

          • by Anonymous Coward

            Actually, no, it's the exact opposite. The dogs react to the 'tells' of their *handler*, not the suspect.

            Google it.

            AC

        • by Jawnn ( 445279 )

          So yes, this was the agencies who purchased the detectors believing in "magick" [SIC].

          It is also a fabulous example of how the misguided tools who think that they are libertarians should wake the hell up and realize that the mythical free market does not "magically" take care of shit like this. It was, literally, "snake oil" and the unfounded claims about it that brought "teh gubamint" into the business of regulating food and drugs. The consumers in a mass market can not be expected to be fully informed about everything in that market that they might want to purchase. And the "free market" a

          • I have to disagree with your conclusion, as well.

            So yes, this was the agencies who purchased the detectors believing in "magick" [SIC].

            It is also a fabulous example of how the misguided tools who think that they are libertarians should wake the hell up and realize that the mythical free market does not "magically" take care of shit like this. It was, literally, "snake oil" and the unfounded claims about it that brought "teh gubamint" into the business of regulating food and drugs. The consumers in a mass market can not be expected to be fully informed about everything in that market that they might want to purchase. And the "free market" assumes that such a state (fully informed consumer) exists.

            Now, in this case, I'll stipulate that it would not have take much effort to become informed enough to know that this $41,000 do-hickey was snake oil. Then again, the government keeps buying the equivalent of the fabled "$400 toilet seat" from vendors like Haliburton, so we're probably buggered either way.

            Your conclusion is flawed here.

            The "consumers" in this case were government agencies, and a free market would have required them to obtain competing bids for the equipment from two different vendors. Since the equipment doesn't exist, they would be forced to do what's called a "sole source justification", which has a higher bar in terms of due diligence to allow the justification as valid.

            If they had followed the legally required process, they would not have

          • It was, literally, "snake oil"

            http://xkcd.com/725/ [xkcd.com]

      • This would have never fooled a person with the Maker Mentality. :)

        You cynics! This device is so sensitive that "in real-world situations, detection levels are in the pictogram range and below":

        http://cominfosystems.com/Documents/Cominfo_ATSC_Brochure.pdf [cominfosystems.com]

    • by colfer ( 619105 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @12:13PM (#43263719)

      Story broke in 2008 (Randi), NYT (2009), and then in 2010 the BBC did more work on it.
      http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8471187.stm [bbc.co.uk]
      Here's the original WIkipedia page, from 2009, with the links to NYT and Randi:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ADE_651&oldid=323934632 [wikipedia.org]

    • by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @12:53PM (#43263899) Homepage Journal

      Dousing is pouring liquid over something.
      The word you're looking for is dowsing.

    • by Derleth ( 197102 )

      Dowsing rods are indeed crap, but this was more about straight-up fraud.

    • Probably read Joseph Smith's [rationalwiki.org] book on marketing and rube finding.
    • The man was selling dousing rods which were labeled as golfball finders as bombdetectors.

      They were equally successful at either task. They weren't golfball detectors any more than they were bomb detectors. The con was the dousing rod aspect of it, not the 'golf ball finder' stuff. The problem is people believing in magic, not a mislabeled golfbal detector.

      And the sad part is that the military bought some and never tested them. Seems unusual given all the rules about explosives and such, that they would not have at least tested them.

      • And the sad part is that the military bought some and never tested them. Seems unusual given all the rules about explosives and such, that they would not have at least tested them.

        Nevermind, just read that it was the Iraqi military that bought them, not a real military.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 24, 2013 @10:57AM (#43263273)

    wtf is the Daily Mail doing here? It is a tabloid.

    The "article" had more information about his stupid home than anything about his shady business practices or how no one noticed anything wrong with these devices.

  • by aepervius ( 535155 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @10:58AM (#43263277)
    They are dowsing rod using the idea motor effect to fool you into thinking it detects anything. Dowsing rode do not work. When properly tested for say, finding metal and water, in double blind, the dowser never find stuff above chance. it is pure flim flam. So even as a 13$ gold ball finder , it is a scam.
    • So the problem isn't so much someone trying to sell a dousing rod as a bomb detector. After all, your dousing rod is worth whatever the market for dousing rods will bear.

      Really the problem is international governments' willingness to buy dousing rods for incredible sums without any testing to see if they're fit for purpose.

      • by arth1 ( 260657 )

        Something that's obviously a dowsing rod doesn't merit testing.
        It doesn't take a lot of common sense and logic to see that it's bullshit of the wishful thinking variety, and even if you lack common sense, as evidenced by being in the military, the method has been thoroughly debunked already.

        P. T. Barnum's law applies, and at some point the desire to be conned and suspense of all common sense is large enough to be the responsibility of the mark, not the con man. I mean, don't sue Penn and Teller for trickin

      • by glsunder ( 241984 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @01:22PM (#43264179)

        Our schools (and parents) do a crappy job of educating people on BS like this. Any _reasonable_ person would know it's a scam. But, I've met a lot of people who think dowsing works. Many believe in ghosts. If we started teaching kids about pseudoscience and the philosophy of science in grade school, there would be a much smaller market for snake oil salesmen.

      • This is corruption scheme. Plain and simple. The "scam" part is only a "get out of jail" card played by the ones involved in this corruption racket. In government you need to do a lot of paperwork to justify the purchase of USD$100 worth of USB sticks; to purchase this stuff at such price levels you need to be in a such level of institutionalized corruption that this should be a marker for corrupt government officers that this by far is the least bad crime they are doing, not only in the purchasing countrie

  • should of called them geiger counters

    • by Shoten ( 260439 )

      should of called them geiger counters

      He probably would have lumped that in as well, except it's a lot easier to test for fraud in such circumstances. Just turning on a geiger counter will get you results, from background radiation. It's a lot harder to get your hands on a bomb to test against.

      • by Lehk228 ( 705449 )
        it's not difficult at all to get a set of explosive compound samples for testing detection equipment, you don't even need enough explosives to be hazardous so security requirements would be minimal.
  • by Cito ( 1725214 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @11:13AM (#43263355)

    James Randi has been really after this guy and others

    it's just a dowsing rod and there are several people making the same device

    Here is a video of James Randi warning others about the bullshit scam of this and others exactly like it in the UK

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruTmqfGJhTI [youtube.com]

    They finally started listening to him it seems

    • That's pretty amazing, James Randi points out their incompetence good and proper, and that video is from 2010!
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        James Randi was calling them out even back in 2008, offering them the million dollar prize if they would demonstrate that it actually worked. The company decided to instead of proving it worked, to instead blame people like James Randi as trying to get people in Iraq killed by depriving them of "needed" tools (also, they were making far more than a million dollars otherwise...).
      • by Shimbo ( 100005 )

        That's pretty amazing, James Randi points out their incompetence good and proper, and that video is from 2010!

        That was just after he (Jim McCormick) was arrested, so that part isn't so amazing. However, Randi was on the case well before then.

  • by jtownatpunk.net ( 245670 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @11:25AM (#43263431)

    On the one hand, he's scum. On the other hand, anyone who believed

    He produced glossy brochures to trick potential investors into believing the devices could detect tiny amounts of explosive from three miles away , the Old Bailey heard.

    shouldn't be in charge of the fry/chip station, let alone be in charge of ordering military equipment.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Expert craftmanship - Been making them since I was a kid...short range version just needs a piece of paper. The longer range versions are rubber band powered and all are invisible on radar. $100k each.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    People are stupid.

    Alot of those people are in charge of important stuff like your tax money.

    • Re:Not news. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @12:57PM (#43263955) Homepage Journal

      Alot of those people are in charge of important stuff like your tax money.

      It's worse. They're in charge of military decisions.
      I believe dowsing works, I believe that family might have explosives, i believe we should call in an air strike.

      Ask yourself this, do you feel safer with the guns in the hands of people who believe in magic?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by geminidomino ( 614729 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @01:11PM (#43264083) Journal

      There's a special place in hell for these people.

      Yeah, on the board.

    • by AK Marc ( 707885 )
      You can't stop the profiteers. They see a need and try to fill it. We have lots of them in the US, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and the rest. What you can stop is the push for the "best equipment" to cover for poor training and lack of proper manpower. Shut down the standing military, and the permanently established ones that lobby for war to boost profits (the real Cheney betrayal) will shut down and move to other industries. Sure, you'll get the startups (Blackwater), but they formed *a
  • by Nichotin ( 794369 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @11:35AM (#43263503)
    Vice has a report from Iraq titled In Saddam's shadow [vice.com], where these devices are shown (and it is pointed out that they are a hoax). This kind of fraud is really one of the worst kinds...
  • by holophrastic ( 221104 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @11:40AM (#43263543)

    ...that a military unit purchased bomb detectors never having tested their validity?

    • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 24, 2013 @11:54AM (#43263611)

      actually, the DoD and NASA and similar organizations buy totally bogus devices all the time, in order to test them. Someone gets someone in Congress excited about their state of the art, super whizbang technology that will "save soldiers lives" (an alternate form of "think of the children"). The folks in DoD already know that the device is a crock (they've seen more non-functional bomb detectors than you can imagine), BUT.. they procure 1 or 10 for testing and evaluation. And eventually write a report that says "nope, don't work at all" so that Congressman who was beating them up in a hearing about "why are you not procuring Acme Corps guaranteed Roadrunner detector to save our soldiers"

      Unfortunately, ACME corp, when they get the order for the test units, sends out press releases and changes their website. "Tested by DoD" (carefully omitting the results of the test) and "DoD procures research, test, and evaluation units of Model XYZ "LifeSaver" unit. Jake Blowhard, CEO, says "This is the first of several planned acquisitions that we hope will save the lives of our sons and daughters in dangerous war zones, as well as providing skilled middle class manufacturing jobs here in East Podunk."

      And so it goes

    • Yes. Because this isn't the first time this scam has been perpetrated on a military.

      The US military bought an asslode of the same kind of dousing rod for something like $60k a unit several years ago. I just hope they were thrown out and never saw the field. A lot of soldiers can end up maimed and killed trusting this untested, poorly evaluated, pseudoscientific garbage.

      • The US military bought an asslode of the same kind of dousing rod for something like $60k a unit several years ago.

        Facts with references, please.

        • Michael Shermer noted that these devices are being sold to high schools for $900 a unit in his TED talk here [ted.com]

          Unfortunately that was the reference I was thinking of, or at least the most prominent one, and it looks like it didn't make claims about military sales.

          Make of it what you will, but I'm pretty sure I read about the US army buy the same kind of junk for preposterous amounts of money. I'll reply again if I find a source on that.

        • Ok, I was a little confused about who bought it.

          The Iraqi military and police have bought 1500 units for a total cost of ~$85 million according to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

          These are ADE 651 Devices desinged to make tons of money off of gullible people, and it appears that their use has replaced physical vehicle searches in some cases, which is just abhorrently stupid and foolish.

          It looks like the US military doesn't use these devices, but has bought a few to determine whether they're any good. So I've been pleasantly surprised to find the Army wasn't duped in this case

          • The Iraqi military and police have bought 1500 units for a total cost of ~$85 million according to Wikipedia

            Yes, I heard that as well, it was widely reported that the Iraqis actually insisted that they had evidence that it actually worked.

            But, these people don't live in the same reality as you and I.

            • They very well may have evidence that it works. Just low quality evidence that comes from poorly done and non-blinded tests. That's probably good enough for most people, since most people are scientifically illiterate and equate most science and technology with magic.

              Most people are far too credulous, and will accept nonsense explanations for extraordinary claims as long as it sounds either vaguely "sciencey" or you tell them it must've been their god who did it.

              • They very well may have evidence that it works.

                No, I'm sorry, there is no way they had any evidence of any kind that this device detected bombs, because it is simply not possible. The device does not detect bombs. Period.

                • I agree that there's no way that it can detect bombs.

                  What I meant was, if there's a 50/50 chance of a positive result for a test, and someone does 10 tests, and ~5 results are positive, most people have a strong confirmation bias that lets them think that the ~5 negative results don't count as much as the ~5 positive, so they feel it was a success overall and that it really works when in reality it did no better than chance. People tend to rationalize away the failed trials with excuses like "being in the

  • by talexb ( 223672 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @11:52AM (#43263599) Homepage Journal

    It seems stunning that the British military would go ahead with a purchase like this without any field trials, especially for something as critical as a 'bomb sniffer' -- lives depend on this piece of equipment to work properly.

    Madness.

    • by Shoten ( 260439 )

      As someone above just posted, they do acquire them...specifically so that they *can* do field trials. They buy 1 or a few, and then test them...and those tests indicate that they're a hoax. But the company that makes them proudly proclaims that they've been bought by X organization or tested by Y organization, in their marketing materials.

      • Then that's a procurement problem. The units should be bought by the security services who "should" be able to do a decent job of hiding who the buyer actually is, therefore preventing fraudsters like this from saying "Tested by the British Army".

        As an aside, I found it very helpful that the Daily Fail showed pictures of what the bloke's house "could" look like.

        • A simpler way to protect against such fraud is having them to sign an NDA with high punishment for violation, telling them they are not allowed to tell anyone anything about the purchase until and unless testing had a positive result.

  • Ayn Rand (Score:3, Funny)

    by IonOtter ( 629215 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @05:04PM (#43265483) Homepage

    Ayn Rand would be proud of this chap. Caveat emptor is a totally valid business model when dissatisfied customers are likely to be scattered over a 50 meter radius.

    • The only problem with that thought process is that while the dissatisfied customer is unlikely to be able to do anything about it once he discovers that your device does not work, he almost certainly has a large number of now unhappy co-workers, who just happen to be really well trained in, among other things, killing people. In addition the circumstances which resulted in them being unhappy have been observed to leave a small, but significant, portion of the population less than fully in possession of thei
    • by BillX ( 307153 )

      Damnit, there goes my sig.

  • While this guy should be punished, those government officials who arranged for these purchases also deserve some punishment for their gross negligence. That there were no tests or apparent attempts at verification before purchasing such expensive pieces of equipment and sending them into a warzone is unconscionable.

  • I wrote about this last week on Motherboard, and included a video segment about the current detector situation from Vice's latest Iraq documentary: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/iraqs-most-popular-bomb-detection-device-is-useless-video [vice.com] Really just wish this were a metaphor for the war, but it's terribly real.
  • The people who assessed these and bought them for our troops should be in the dock beside him.
  • You have to admire the sheer cheek. Sure, he's a loony and puts people's life at risk. Nonetheless, not even remotely hindered by any kind of empathy, this idiot pushes on. In a different setting his career would have sky rocketed.

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