The 57-year-old former policeman James McCormick claims to have designed a bomb detector. He has made huge sums of money by selling more than $40 million of devices to the Iraqi government while bombing attacks were claiming hundreds of lives throughout Iraq.
How many people died in Iraq after being tricked into a false sense of security by the bomb detectors? We don’t really know but Iraqi officials have been known to have bought 6000 of the so-called bomb detectors. The only problem is that these bomb detectors are fake. Iraq government is now faced with the task of tracking down more than 6,000 bogus detectors bought between 2008 and 2010.
On one occasion, an insurgent drove a truck laden with explosives through 23 checkpoints in Baghdad where the ‘detectors’ were being used. Three Iraqi officials have since been jailed for corruption for taking part in the fraud.
Military and police forces from Niger, Georgia, Egypt, Thailand, Libya, and other countries also bought devices that experts described as “completely ineffectual as a piece of detection equipment”. The devices, which were supposed to keep people safe from bombers, were actually based on a golf ball finder that could be purchased in the US for less than $20. James McCormick used glossy brochures, fake demonstrations, and bribes to tout his devices as suitable for use at checkpoints, military bases, and other sensitive installations.
In fact, experts found that the aerial supposed to detect suspicious substances was unconnected and that there were no actual sensors inside the “detector”. A former business partner of James McCormick cited by the BBC said that the millionaire conman was fully aware that the detectors didn’t work.
He recalled confronting him after becoming suspicious about the bomb detectors’ effectiveness. James McCormick bluntly replied: “It does exactly what it’s designed to do: it makes money”
