Part Two: The Fake Bomb Detector Grift That Killed Hundreds

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the
very worst people in all of history, and this week
we are telling the story of a fake bomb detector
that we're not getting a shitload of people killed thanks
to the IDEO motor effect, and how that's weirdly relevant
to our current moment in American culture. AI all this

(00:26):
good stuff to talk with me about that. Ed zitron Ed,
welcome back to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Thanks for having me now.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Ed you're the host of the Better Offline podcast and
how are you feeling about the IDEO motor effect and
people being able to know what's real?

Speaker 3 (00:42):
I'm amazed by Clever Hans. I think Clever Hans is
a hero who was unfairly eaten my German soldiers.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
I'm it was just desperation and not a punishment, but
it does in the articles read a little bit like
because they found out he wasn't really smartness sent him
off to die.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
You were, Hans.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Oh Man. So we ended last episode by introducing the Gopher,
a gag gift that claimed to help you locate lost
golf balls, using the magic of the IDEO motor effect
into tricking people into thinking it was not an empty
plastic box with an antenna. If you read the fine

(01:30):
print at the end of those magazine ads that Sovie
displayed last episode, you'll see that the manufacturer bragg that
the Gopher was totally shock proof with solid state construction
and no moving parts, because again it's empty, there's nothing
in the body.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Was shock proof something that was going to be a
Is that a common problem with You can still.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Get one of those on eBay, by the way.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, I think it's like if you drop it, it
won't get disrupted because again there's nothing to disrupt. It's
not a pro.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Brn real for thirty four ninety nine, folks.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
That's a bargain at any price, Sophie.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
You can get one on either Eve or Poshmark not sponsored.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
You could have all the balls you need, you know, listeners.
If you if you've been feeling listeners like you don't
have enough balls, you know the good ballfinder people can
help you have all the balls. Anyway, I'm gonna start
saying balls now. One of the chief executives of the
Quadro Corporation who gave us the Gopher, and the evident
designer of the Gopher itself, although this is a little
unclear to me, but I think the designer was a

(02:31):
man named Wade L. Quaddlebaum, which I I just m
that's a good name.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
That's a good name episode.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, great names in here.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Wade quadle Bam was a former used car salesman from
South Carolina, Yes, who founded the Quadro Corporation alongside an
American businessman name Malcolm stig Row. Yeah, the mess. Malcolm
stig Row, Wade quaddle Bomb. Great names left and right,
come and at you. It's awesome. So I have not
found much about either man's early life, which is tragic

(03:03):
because you know, with two titans like this, they both
had been doing cons their whole lives. I just I
don't know what Wade Quaddlebaum was doing when he was fifteen,
and that will haunt me the rest of him.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Getting the shit beaten out of him for his second name, Yeah,
that's just the absolute crap. Just his house and every
punch made him like I'm gonna call the fuck out at.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Least every business meeting with Malcolm stig Roe. Malcolm just
found himself punching quadle Bomb by the end of his ohit,
I'm sorry, man, I'm sorry. I don't know what came
over me. It's okay, it happens to everybody I found. Again,
not much about either man. But when Quadro first started
making and selling the Gopher, they initially put it out
in a couple of small southern states and it performs. Okay,

(03:45):
it's like a reasonably successful gag gift for like Father's Day.
You know, if you don't like your dad too much
and he golfs, maybe you get him a gopher because
they cost like twelve bucks. You know, at the time,
they're not that expensive.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Probably because the cogs are like two cents.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Yes exactly. It costs like a dollar to make this
fucking thing. So this was not exactly the kind of
business that was ever going to take the world by storm.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
Right.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
You might be able to make some money off a
thing like the Gopher, but you're not gonna get rich
off of it. So Malcolm started looking at the world
around him in this new post Cold war era, because
it's the early nineties, and one of the things he
notices is he's thinking, where else could I apply what
we've got in the Gopher? Is there any way to
make more money off of this idea? He notices something
which is that when he turns on the TV, when

(04:30):
he watches the news, you know, he sees a bunch
of special reports on the crack epidemic and the war
on drugs and all the dangerous things drug dealers are doing,
how drugs are getting smuggled in the country. And when
he's just watching like bullshit TV, every cartoon show, every
like popular sitcom has like a very special anti drug episode.
And so he puts all this together, Malcolm does, and

(04:51):
he's like, I bet there's money if you could convince
police departments and schools that you can help them find drugs,
right like I because like the canine units are expensive.
You know, dogs can work. I don't think he doesn't
realize what a calm the dogs often are too. But
they're expensive and there's not that many. I got out
of a dog search once, which was bogus. I had

(05:13):
nothing on me. I just don't ever let the police
search my cars. But they tried to bring a dog out.
This is like three in the morning in Brady, Texas,
and they couldn't wake the dogs up. That was the
excuse I got forre. I was free to go. It
was like, we can't wake them up. We were going
to have them search your car, but they're too sleepy.
So again, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got that once, so Malcolm,

(05:33):
and that's that's to Malcolm, that's evidence. Stuff like that
is evidence of the market. Right, there's not enough of
these dogs. They're way too expensive. If you could convince
and you don't have to make a real product, if
you can use the ideo motor effect and convince cops
and principles that the same thing that helps you find
golf balls can help you find drugs, then you can
sell these things, and you can sell them for a

(05:54):
shitload more. Then you can sell like a gag Father's
Day gift, but you don't have to spend any more
to make them. Right. Part of what's going into his
calculations here is that in the early nineties, more and
more schools are hiring school resource officers and they're bringing
their programs into their institutions. And where there's cops in schools,
you're going to have searches in schools, and actually searching

(06:17):
for drugs by hand is a pain in the ass, right,
especially if the school's big and canine units aren't cheap
and they're often in heavy demand. So maybe you can't
bring them to a school if there's no reason to
suspect drugs are there. But if you could put something
in people's hands and they can just walk them around
and search whatever kids that were going to search anyway
for drugs, then you've got a product right now. The

(06:39):
problem is there's no actual scientific gizmo that can sniff
out drugs. That doesn't exist today. Really, people keep trying
to make them, but we haven't figured it out quite right.
They certainly don't exist in the early nineties, and furthermore,
neither Malcolm Norwayde have any idea how to make such
a device. What they do know how to do is
trick middle aged men into thinking they've developed golf ball finder.

(07:01):
And since most cops and school principles are middle aged
men who play golf, well, you can kind of see
where they're thinking of file ground. So they change the
name of the Gopher to the quadro tracker, and they
make some cosmetic modifications to the outside so it looks
a little more high tech and expensive. They're bigger. Basically,

(07:22):
he also has paper and plastic computer chips designed and
installed inside the hollow plastic case. Piace are own powered.
They're like paper. They just like paper and plastic computer chips,
and they're unpowered. The only purpose is to like convince
idiots into thinking it's real if they open it for
some reason. Right, So, Malcolm Stigroe and Quadlebaum and their

(07:45):
partners at Quadro market this new drug detector to schools
and police departments at first in the South and Southwest
districts in Texas, Kansas, and Florida, so south southeast to
say yes, please, and they sign up to buy some
of these things, right as soon as he's like, I've
got a drug detector that you can carry it. You
don't need to train it, you don't need to have
a dog, and it'll tell you, you know, basically, it'll give

(08:06):
you an excuse to start exactly what you want to
hear it, right, Yeah, it'll tell you what you want
to hear. Right. So police departments in school start buying.
And I found an article in the Kansas City Star
from nineteen ninety five, this is before these were, you know,
proven to be complete bullshit. That gives you an idea
of how the media covered the Quadro tracker when it
first starts being sold to schools and police departments. See

(08:29):
if you can identify anything that seems incredibly fake from
the text of this news article.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
Okay, okay, I'm ready.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Three Missouri schools will soon be using a new drug
detection device that some critics are calling a modern day
divining rod. The Quadro Tracker is a small three and
a half ounce black box with an antenna. It comes
with a number of insertion cards that its developers say
will detect marijuana, gunpowder, and cocaine. Quadri Corporation Vice president
Malcolm Rowe, who is an electrical engineer, said the Quadro

(08:57):
Tracker works by sensing the unique wavelet produced by the
molecules and controlled substances or gunpowder. Because it supposedly works
through magnetism, it needs no batteries. The unit's chronology has
not been patented because the company does not want to
reveal how the drug detection cards work.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
Just a quick question, said the wavelengths, Yeah, yeah, that
came off the molecules.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, the wave links off the molecules, yeah, just in
controlled substances.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
It this is straight up just this is how every
AI company raises money. Yeah, yeah, just like well we
have he's he's an electrical engineer, he's elect Demis Hassabis
who's the head of Deep Mind, and was like his
a no bell in chemistry. Yep, he wouldn't possibly just
say a bunch of shit. He made up history. It's like,

(09:42):
what true detective will repeat this because if time is
a flat circle, it.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Is and it thinking about hearing that, I couldn't help
but think like hearing this guy be like, yeah, that
we haven't patented it, but like it works through you
know that explanation. I couldn't help but think of the
the open AI or not opening id the anthropic co
founder who spoke at that Vatican event and was like, oh, well,
we don't even understand the mysteries of how AI thinks.
You know it It confuses and surprises even its designers

(10:10):
because it really is as miraculous as the human mind,
you know, like it's the same sort of bs WU.
Obviously there is a real product with AI.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
But yes, except they specifically made it do the things.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
The mystery. Yeah, yeah, this is much more bullshit, right
because there's not even like a product of any kind. Dear, really, yeah,
but you do see how some of the marketing bullshit
is the same. And yeah, I do find it very funny,
like the idea that you're basing probable cause for searches
on the device, where the designers are like, we can't

(10:44):
tell you how it works because then someone might know
how it works.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
Then they'll start changing the molecules.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, they chang molecules on us. I'll switch it up.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
The molecules will be different. The drug dealers making the
drugs will change the molecules to give off a different
wife length.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
I hate it when drug dealers do that, always moving
the molecules around.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
What are we gonna do? Then they'll then they'll do
molecule science on us.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
Yeah, yeah, then what fun We can't we can't have
to have drugs once they figure out the molecules were screwed.
So three schools in Johnson County, Missouri, are said to
have bought trackers for nine hundred and fifty five dollars each.
So they're selling these things originally for like eight to
twelve bucks. Now you're getting nine to fifty five for
the ones you're selling to fucking Missouri. Other sources show
that trackers were sometimes sold for as much as eight

(11:30):
thousand dollars, especially the law enforcement agencies. BJ Hodges, director
of safety and Security at Shawnee Mission School District was
quoted as saying, if it does what they say they do,
then it's going to be a tremendous asset not only
to school districts but to law enforcement. And yeah, if
it did what it said it did, it would have
been but it doesn't. It's the fharanhose thing, right. This

(11:52):
is very much a thedose thing where they're like, well,
if you could really do all those paris, yeah, off
of a drop of blood?

Speaker 3 (11:59):
You know, did they bother to do any fake detections
or did.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
They oh yes, oh yes, they've got fake detections, yes,
oh yeah, oh yeah, they didn't know where the drugs
are or whatever. You know, it's very easy to trick
people with this shit. As we've talked about. We just
went through all the different ways people were tricked in
the past by this. It's the same ones in the future,
you know, or the nineties. Quadro's marketing pitch included claims
that their tracker could find narcotics behind brick walls and

(12:25):
at distances of up to half a block away. It
could even what is my favorite what yeah, yeah, it
could even this is my favorite part if you want
to think back to uh, just what we were talking
about a little earlier. They even were like, it can
identify places where pot was smoked in the past, right,

(12:46):
which it gives you. It's the same thing with the
dogs where they're like, if it alerts and then there's
no drugs, they're like, oh, he had pot.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
But that doesn't make any sense because if it's where
the drugs were and it was the fumes coming off
the drugs, that means the drug molecules is not giving
off the wavelength.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Right right, right, It doesn't make sense based on your
bullshit science.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
Yeah, I mean I was with you until the drug
molecule wavelength that was right, but now that's proved.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
This is nonsense. But it's also just like you're saying that, like,
if this will alert anywhere people have smoked weed, isn't
that everywhere?

Speaker 3 (13:21):
Right? You're detecting several thousand streets in every city.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
If your device that you're using to search kids cars
in the school parking lot can go off just because
people smoked pot in the area in the past, then
you can never use it in a school parking lot
because you know what's happened in every school parking lot
in the entire country, kids have smoked weed, you know, like.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
Common sense, I fear.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, So I'm glad I found that old article because
they do prove. These old articles do prove that at
the time, people didn't universally believe this crap. Both they
give you the explanations of people saying why they are
paying all this money for nonsense because they're idiots. But
you get their explanations, which is interesting. But you also
see evidence of the skeptics, right, And that's not when
I first started reading articles about these, and I was like,

(14:08):
how are people buying these? The skeptics were never brought up,
so it just seems like, oh, maybe everyone thought this
was real, and that's not the truth. When the Quadro
trackers starts being sold in like nineteen ninety five, famed
skeptic and magician James Randy finds out about it and
he issues a challenge to Quadro, offering five hundred and
seven thousand dollars to anyone who can pass a double

(14:29):
blind test of the device. And first off, we love you, James.
And second after that comes a paragraph I did not
expect to read, and this is about James Randy he
conducted a test with Missouri Seminole County school district director
of Security Wolfgang Halbig, who was considering buying one of
the units with a known sample of marijuana. Randy asked
Halbig to find the card for marijuana from a number

(14:51):
of unidentified cards in a series of tests. Halbig did
not get one correct. Now, that just sounds like a
deblunking right now, then sketchy about and there isn't about
the debunking. Do you know who Wolfgang Halbig is today?

Speaker 3 (15:05):
Ed?

Speaker 2 (15:05):
No, this has nothing to do with James Randy. It's
just crazy that he shows up in this. Wolfgang Halbig
was indeed the district director of security for Seminole County
back then. In more modern days, because of his experience
as a school director of security, he became a Sandy
Hook shooting denier and a regular guest on Info Wars

(15:26):
back when Alex Jones still ran it. He was a
major part of the Sandy Hook to Now, that's Wolfgang Halbig.
That is not the story. He's actually on a good
side here because he is, like with James Randy, he
is busting the fact that this thing isn't nonsense. It's
just funny that it's Wolfgang Halbig.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah, very funny.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
It's also funny that he would have fallen for the tracker.
He definitely would have thought this was real if James
Randy hadn't saved his ass. I do love that too.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
It's so cool seeing how history is just full of
dulluds waiting to be canned.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
It really is.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
I love it. So.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
Police departments in Illinois and Georgia made purchases of the
Tracker despite this public debunking. Between nineteen ninety three and
nineteen ninety six, Quadro sold roughly one thousand units around
the United States. This paragraph from the article I've been
quoting from should provide some explanation as to why it
comes right after they describe Randy and how big testing
the tracker, tests and demonstrations in three other school systems, however,

(16:24):
convinced administrators to buy the units. They are still drawing
up guidelines about how to deal with searches of students, lockers, cars,
and belongings that the tracker hits. And we know now
because of the lawsuits, these weren't real tests and demos
and these other school systems they were cons But you
see how the problem like, this is a really perfect

(16:45):
encapsulation of the issue that goes right back to what
was happening with those scientists who got tricked by the
table readings and whatever, right, which is, you've got this
actual test that proves the device is bullshit. But then
the news coverage is like, but other school tests showed
it works. Those aren't real tests. They don't detail the tests,
They don't say what happened, They don't analyze those tests.

(17:07):
They don't ask are those tests real? Where they conducted
by anyone but the Quadro corporation where they double blind.
They just report three other tests say it's real. Right,
And that's how shit like this winds up spreading everywhere
and keep spreading.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
They keep doing this today. This is the AI industry.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yep, yep, she's a fuckulazy journalism even when you had
all the ingredients to do decent journalism. Now, Rowan Quadlebaum
had other allies in their quest to push the tracker
into every school and cop shop they could find. Guy
Lee Womack, an assistant US attorney, used his office illegally
to market the Quadro tracker after he paid Quadro nearly
fourteen thousand dollars for the distribution rights in Alabama, Arkansas,

(17:45):
New Mexico, and Wyoming. So initially it seems like this
thing might be taken off. Right. You've got corrupt members
of the government who are like literally selling this thing
and using their position to conmitce law enforcement agencies to
buy it. Maybe this could work. You know, it's never
been a real product, but you might be able to
keep it going for a while. As Jeffrey Stern wrote
in a twenty fifteen piece for Vanity Fair summarizing what

(18:07):
came next as Quadro Corporation grew, Row attended security conferences.
At one of them, he met Sam and Joan Tree,
a British couple with a modest and legitimate business selling
evidence bags, fingerprint powder, and other supplies to police departments
in England. Meanwhile, Rose Device had attracted the attention of
the FBI, which tested one, determined it was worthless, and
sent out a teletype warning to law enforcement agencies. Wrote

(18:29):
a camp to England and moved in with the Trees.
It didn't take long before a new version of Rose
Device with a new name was being pitched to law
enforcement agencies in England. So that all happens in ninety six,
the FBI debunks the tracker and proves its bullshit. He
flees the country with the trees to start up a
new grift, and that same year a US District court

(18:51):
in Texas. Here's the lawsuit USA versus the Quadri Corporation,
which listed Raymond Fisk, Wade Quaddlebaum, and Malcolm Roe as
representatives per an article in the nineteen ninety six issue
of News Briefs. According to the indictment, the company marketed
the Quadro Positive Molecular Locator as a detection device that
used a chip to sense molecular emissions of anything from
illicit drugs to explosives. Scientific analysis revealed that the device

(19:14):
is simply a hollow box with the radio antenna attached,
and the chip is a piece of paper between two
pieces of plastics. Quadro has sold about a thousand of
the devices at prices for between three hundred and ninety
five dollars to eight thousand dollars to school district's law
enforcement and airports.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
Great, I know how this works. So you were you
were completely correct that this is the gopher. It is
the same thing.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
It's the same thing, the same thing.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
They were small and they gave a gun handle.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yes, you gotta have a gun hand.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
Ground handle it real like whole monitors can go around being.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
Like yeah, yeah, get me pull blah, gotta have a
holster for it.

Speaker 3 (19:50):
This shit. This was pre blo though.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
Yeah, I wonder if any cops shot someone while reaching
for the Quadra tracker. I mean probably gotta be one
or at least a locker. So by this point, Quadro
has expanded the number of cards they've offered, and they've
added explosives to the mix, which really gives an idea
like this piece of snake oil the potential to kill

(20:12):
a lot of people. Once they're like it's a bomb
detector too, you know you've escalated the human harm because
if a drug detector fails in a high school, I'm
not gonna say obviously kids in high school with drugs
sometimes it ends tragically. But nine times out of ten,
if some kid is holding at school, nine times out
of ten it's like a joint or something, right, And

(20:33):
if they don't get charged for possession, nothing catastrophic is
going to happen. But nine times out of ten, if
a bomb detector fucks up, you've got a much worse
Like scenario.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
Here, statistically speaking, is it worse? But if it's a
false positive or a false negative.

Speaker 2 (20:55):
Right, well, I mean that I guess that is true
that Like I guess both of both are bad. Actually
both are really bad because false positive with drugs means
you're going to get fucked up and in trouble and
possibly if your life ruined over not having drugs or
having drugs either equally bad to me honestly, or with
the bomb, false positive means people are gonna think you

(21:15):
have a bomb, and maybe something really bad happens to
you or it.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
Doesn't notice a bomb and then you get blown up.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
Right as the biggest story. A false negative on drugs
not a big deal. A false negative on a bomb,
big deal, right, huge deal?

Speaker 3 (21:30):
Not great?

Speaker 2 (21:31):
Yeah, potentially like world changing deal depending on where the
bomb is. So the Quadroe did play a bit role
in at least one tragedy, thankfully, not like what we
were talking about. In nineteen ninety six, the Texas Department
of Public Safety called a search for the body of
a seven year old murder victim, Carlin Smith. They used

(21:52):
a Quadroe tracker, presumably with a little Boy corpse card
to locate him. I don't know what card they put
in there. It didn't find anything because it couldn't. And
that's evil because they're giving you know, the family hope.
It's just gross to get involved with your snake oil
in a search for a murdered seven year old. I
think I think that's evil and.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
Like take it, taking it really seriously and being like, yeah,
we'll find your kid. Let me use this box with
nothing in it, bit of now coming out of it,
bucked up. It's got a gun handle. That was very serious.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
Got a gun handle.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Yeah, a lot of ghostbusters. But your son isn't a
ghost we promise.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah, yeah, or maybe he is. You know, the quadro
will figure it out. Yes, But you know who didn't
lose their sons tragically? I hope maybe no way to
not really. Here's ads M and we're back. So the

(22:51):
good news is the tracker was exposed and forbidden from
being sold in the United States under court order before
anyone got provably killed due to this piece of shit.
And even though the FBI and the subsequent court case
both proved beyond any doubt that the tracker was worthless,
some users still believed. This is a quote from that
news brief article. I haven't given up on the device,

(23:13):
said John Beltzer, the campus officer at Blue Valley Northwest
High School in Beaumont, Texas, which paid about nine hundred
and fifty dollars for the device. I don't believe the skeptics,
the scientists, or the FBI. It may not work on
the exact principles that the company says it does, but
it still has some merits, added belt Betzer. Mike Thomas,
safety coordinator at Blue Valley, uses the device as at

(23:34):
a turrent for students and remains convinced it effectively uncovers
drugs and gunpowder. I did it myself, said Thomas. I
found hidden shotgun shells. Wow, great guys, hidden by whom,
hidden by whom. Well. Also, like this is just you
think that you're a good cop and that like you

(23:54):
couldn't be tricked, and so you wind up defending this
bullshit device because you're defending your own ego. That's the
brilliance of any time you can sell shit like this
to serious people.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
You know, my job is almost as if the more
wrong you get, the more you double down.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Right. Interesting, Yeah, it's this thing of most people who
are quote unquote searching for drugs or bombs. To be honest,
aren't really don't have a real job that actually helps anyone, right,
not that you know, especially finding bombs. That job is important.
But most people who can say that's my job are

(24:31):
just a cop who took like a class to get
certified to get a little extra pay. They're not like
an actual expert on drugs or on bombs or any
of that. There's a lot of that fraudulent stuff, and
like police training, that's a big part of while so
not again, not that there aren't actual police explosives experts,
but look at how the LAPD, for example, handled high
explosives not too long ago. There's some fun stories of

(24:53):
that in the recent past. And I think that's what's
happening here is some cops who like, well, I did
the training on drugs, I did the training bombs. I
have to know what a real thing is. If I
think this device is real, it can't just me being
dumb and getting tricked by this idio motor effect. It
has to work because I'm a professional.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
You know. And it goes the whole way round to
being like I know better than everyone else, better than
the Feds, yea, than these troublesome scientists with their fact finding.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
That's right, that's right.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
Uh, these woke scientists.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
Fucking wokey scientists. And one of my favorite fun little
side facts here is that one of the school districts
who kept using this device even after it was banned
was the McKinney Independent School District in Texas, where my
mom used to teach. They kept using this thing again
after the FBI said don't use it. They keep using
this because it's a deterrent. Right. This is a from

(25:48):
one school official. We're not looking to nail a particular kid.
We're looking to send a message. Likewise, a Louisiana principal said,
I heard that there had been some trouble with it,
but I tell you what, I'm impressed with it. And
this is not necessarily going to be used to catch
kids with drugs. If my having this thing keeps kids
from bringing drugs on campus, it's worth its weight in gold. Right,

(26:09):
it'll just scare them off, you know that need to
be real. That's a really bad attitude to have towards
your job, presumably finding deadly substances on kids.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
If that's yeah, something you actually take Seriously, if you
have this thing in your head about how the dangers
of drugs know, would you not worry about not finding drugs.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah, concern that they can't find the things that's supposed
to find, that they just discourage kids is really frustrating.
So guy Leewomac was ultimately forced to confess that he'd
used his office to sell snake oil, and he winds
up having to quit the state attorney, and I think
he pays like a five grand fine. The men behind Quadro,

(26:54):
including Roe, were acquitted by a jury, though, and found
not guilty on three counts of mail fraud and one
count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. And I think
the main reason why is that their lawyers convinced the
jury that they didn't think that they were committing a fraud, right,
as long as they think it's real. And because all
these cops are going off on the stand and being like, well,
I think it works. How could you know that the

(27:15):
executives are lying, Well, these cops are saying they think
it's real. Even if it's not real, these people probably
believed it was, and so it's not fraud. Right. So
if you want to know who is to blame for
what happened next, because the fact that these guys don't
get convicted gets a lot of people killed, mostly in Iraq.
And the response is on the cops, because the cops

(27:35):
stopped these people from getting arrested, because they gave them
a way out of this court case of the fraud
finding right Jesus Christ. Now I should note, though I
did find exactly one cop at the time who identified
correctly what was going on with this thing. The commander
of a Jefferson County, Texas drug task force told the

(27:55):
Providence Journal we played with it in the office and
got mixed results. Sometimes we'd find something, sometimes not. Our
rate of success was about half. I think it was
either blind luck or a wiji board effect. It's not
nearly as consistent as drug sniffing dogs, but there are
no vet bills. So again he's like, well, this is
a wija board thing, but hey, it's cheap, great.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
Cheap, and it's not as good as dogs, which are
also kind of a wija board thing.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah, yeah, it's not just wija boards all the way down.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
Just wija boarding through our lives. Yeah, please tell me
it's not the same fucking people who do the bomb stuff,
is it?

Speaker 2 (28:34):
You'd a hope, but it is actually ed. It definitely is.
So while all this is going on, Row and the Trees,
that's that husband and wife couple who are selling stuff
to cops in England. They're back in the UK repackaging
the Quadro, which had been the Gopher, into a new form.
Now there's a little more opacity here as to like
who made which new version of this device win, But

(28:57):
from what I can tell, Row in the Trees produce
a new version of the track or that they called
the mole mol e all in caps, I think it
stood for something, and contracted a salesman named Gary Bolton
to sell the mole right, which they're billing as a
bomb detector. It'll find bodies, it'll find guns, it'll find drugs,
whatever you need. Right. Bolton was a longtime friend of

(29:19):
the Trees, and together they all formed a new corporation
called Global Technical to sell the mole. At first they're
all friends, but because the mole was meant for sale
in the UK and Europe, Bolton decides like, well, if
I want to really get this thing moving, I need
to get a legitimate group of people who were attached
to the defense industry to say it's real. And the

(29:41):
best people is like, the Royal Engineers have this team
of guys who like test stuff to see if it works. Right.
So if you can get the Royal Engineers to say
this thing works, then you can sell it pretty much anywhere,
because the Royal Engineers are very much professionals. Right For
nineteen ninety nine, he submits one of the moles to
the engineer's support team and he asked them to repair

(30:02):
a report on it for the BBC. They found it
was accurate only about thirty percent of the time and
could not be relied on. Now that should have been
the end of it, right, Well, the Royal Engineers found
it doesn't work. But despite that, the same article notes
that several years later, like four or five years later,
when his house gets rated, Bolton's helm gets rated because

(30:22):
of the crimes he's about to commit. Police find two
letters of support from the Royal Engineers in mister Bolton's offices,
and he'd use these letters to pitch governments and law
enforcement agencies around the world on the mole by saying, look,
the Royal Engineers said it works, even though they didn't,
and he definitely had the papers from them saying that
it worked, even though they're supposed to have said that

(30:43):
it didn't. One article I found on the on corruption
Tracker claims that Bolton doctored the letters, But that's not
necessarily true because Bolten remains involved with the Royal Engineers
directly for some period of time after they test the
mole and find it's bullshit, and in fact, after that
test they will help him actively sell the mole, So

(31:06):
I don't know that he did doctor those certificates. The
first big raw for the mole, yeah, it's interesting. We'll
cover that more in a little bit. The first big
hurrah for the mole and for Global Technical was a
home demo that Bolton carried out. This impressed a businessman
named Jim McCormick enough that McCormick offers to help them
sell the thing in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Now

(31:29):
at this point, Bolton has started to get greedy, and
so has everyone else, because especially I think this guy
McCormick comes in and says, we could sell tens of
millions of dollars of these. So all of the guys
who'd been working together start planning on how to go
to business on their own right. They don't want to
share the profits with the others. As Jeffrey Stern wrote
for Vanity fair Quote, the group would soon fall out

(31:50):
amid rancoris charges and counter charges. All of them went
on the cell versions of the tracker, But it was
McCormick who had the greatest ambition. By two thousand and four,
he was going around England with a function prototype, trying
to find a company to manufacture a heavier model with
a more premium feel. A series of awkward encounters ensued
in which he tried to persuade factories to build something
they knew wasn't going to work. But by two thousand

(32:11):
and six he had found a manufacturer willing to sign on.
McCormick was no longer a distributor now he was a
producer too. So that's what happens with all of these guys.
There's going to be so many different versions with different
names of bomb detectors that are all the gopher.

Speaker 3 (32:27):
There's four or five literally the same tag, all.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
The same sold to twenty something countries around the world,
thousands of them, all the same thing under different names. Right,
it's wild. Now we'll talk a bit about some of
these other grift mold devices. But I want to say now,
regardless of all the different things these names are sold under, again,
this is just the Gopher McCormick's variant. Like most used cards,

(32:54):
you're supposed to load a card with the scent or
essence of what everything you want to find. But that's
not the only way grifters tried to pretend these things worked.
Here's a quote from a different BBC article. Samuel Tree
claimed the detectors could track down missing people if a
photograph of them was placed inside a technique. He said
he used to search for Madeleine McCann, who went missing
as a toddler in two thousand and seven, and two

(33:16):
other children. No, no, it's vile.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
Yeah, oh, just if you're an American listener. Mattie mccamber's
Galho went missing in Portugal, I believe. Yeah, No, one
really knows what happens. There's tons of conjuncture. Horrible, some
dickhead with like a fucking goat, like just a metal
stick in a box where Yeah, I'll find Maddie McCann. Yeah, yeah,
because it's alarmingly close to the A power in JoJo's

(33:42):
bizarre adventure. I don't like any of this at all.
Use a photo to find the missing this is firm
purpose unbelievable, really is.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
So Again, Madeline is still missing tragically, so his's none
of this worked right, But the fact that Tree made
the news trying to find her is really bleak right,
and he's doing it because it was the biggest story
in the UK for a while.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
This is this girl goings the most British thing I've
ever heard.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
Some connaughts, Yeah, And he uses the pr from this
to sell The version that the Trees make is called
the Alpha six and they sell it to the Egyptian government,
to the Thai government and to Mexico for about three
two hundred and thirteen dollars per gadget, although it varies
depending on who they're selling it to. Their highest value

(34:29):
sale was twenty four thousand dollars and over a few years.
They're only doing this for like four or five years.
They make two million dollars at least selling these things,
and for the BBC. They do it all while working
from home. The Bedfordshire couple bought cheap plastic parts from
China and assemble the devices in a shed in their
back garden. These things cost like two dollars to put together.

(34:50):
They're just snapping in together and then selling them like
the Thai government for four thousand dollars or whatever. It's nuts,
you love it, good stuff.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
It explains how every con happens. It's just if enough
people believe something, everyone just goes eh, fuck it.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
And if enough people who have the right job titles
say this is real, you'll actually kind of find offensive
that someone should test it exactly. Yeah. So Bolton's device,
after the mole, the one that he starts coming up
with when everyone breaks off on their own, is the
g T two hundred, and this is going to be
the most famous of these Gopher descended bullshit detectors. Bolton

(35:32):
lucks out by the fact that after everyone else split
up to make their own you know, drug Detectors nine
to eleven happens, right, that's like right after they all
go into business for themselves. And Bolton has connections to
the US government, and he has connections all over the world.
He's a very well connected guy. So he realizes as
soon as this happens, everyone's going to be way more
scared about terrorism now because of what just happened, and

(35:56):
no one's going to be thinking because people are not
thinking in the wake of nine to eleven. I can
sell these fucking things like hotcakes. I can sell these
everywhere and people won't even double check to see if
they work because they right. Yep, yep, it's the It's
taken money from a fucking baby. The BBC describes as
sales methods. Sales demonstrations would be rigged to succeed. Anyone

(36:19):
skeptical of the devices would be publicly humiliated, and users
were instructed not to open the equipment to avoid damaging
the sensitive technology inside. We can't look inside. It's sensitive.

Speaker 3 (36:30):
You might break in. How we find the bomb molecule wavelength?

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, yeah, it'll have the bomb molecular will escape.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
Every bomb gives off a distinct wavelength from the molecules
it's made of. It's so not how we find them. Yep.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
So some of the devices came with detector cards, as
I've said, which were programmed. The fraudsters claim to detect
everything from explosives to human beings and even dollar bills
through concrete, water and from great distances. Fraudster Gary Bolton
even charged the Royal Engineers thousands of pounds for useless
cards that went missing from a trade fair in which

(37:08):
uniformed members of the Royal Engineer Corps were paid to
help sell the g T two hundred right if you
went again. So the claim is that he falsified those things.
But after they prove, after they give this thing up,
like say this is bullshit, the Royal Engineers take money
to sell it for him. They're like at trade shows

(37:29):
shilling this and handing it legitimacy, even though they know
it doesn't work. I wonder why. I wonder who got
money right. I've never seen that looked into enough. But
it's very fucking sketchy that the Royal Engineers are involved
with this product as long as they are now. I
don't know precisely what happened here. I don't know if
they just didn't know that the g T two hundred

(37:50):
was different from the mole, which is the device they tested.
Home Office scientist Tim Sheldon addressed this sorta in a
twenty fourteen BBC interview after the scandal around this all
came out, and said the involvement of UK government agencies
and promoting this is very embarrassing and awkward. Yes, it is,
and the Royal Engineers weren't the only ones. The British
embassies in Mexico City and Manila were convinced to back

(38:13):
the g T two hundred and basically helped sell them
to those governments by saying, Yep, it's real. Zobe's going
to show you this is what this thing looks like,
the g T two hundred, this fake bomb detector. It's
got a pistol grip, it's got this antenna thing that
swivels around on the top, and it's got a whole stack.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
What are the stickers for?

Speaker 2 (38:32):
The stickers are so you can make your own detection cards,
so you just put we'll talk about how that works
in a second. Actually, ed one great question though, what
are the sticks Because there's sheets of stickers and like
a jar that you're supposed to sticker to put the
stickers in, and like a substance in order to charge
them so that it can search for that substance basically.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
And the Bross card reader, of course, I assume Bros
is the best.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
The molecules, of course, molecules love brass. Everybody knows that, right, right, right, yeah, yeah.
So not long after this point, the United States invaded Iraq,
Bolton starts working with another international salesman, James McCormick, because
McCormick has better connections to industrial manufacturers. Now in two
thousand and three or four, By that year, versions of

(39:16):
these devices are in use in something like twenty countries
worldwide by enough people that the makers had been forced
to devise new methods for tricking their customers in order
to make sure they didn't catch on. Users were instructed.
This is my favorite part. They start telling people when
they start selling these for thousands or tens of thousands
to militaries, They're like, we can't just tell them to
just walk around with it. We have to explain how

(39:37):
they can charge it, because they're not gonna they're gonna
they're gonna think it's sketchy if there's no power. So
they tell them, all you need is static electricity. So
if you just before you start your shift, each new guard,
you grab it and you just sort of shuffle around
with it to build up enough static charge to power it,
and that makes it work. So you've got all in

(39:57):
like Iraq, and then tail it all these like soul
mangers who were just like shuffling around in their socks
with this thing to charge it up before they go
out on shift.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
Anyone did little shuffle before they go and use the
thing that kills them.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
Yeah, so you shuffle around and then you go walk
past like a line of cars, and if the antended dips,
that means that that car has explosives or whatever in it. Right,
it's a positive alert, you know. Now, obviously these give
a lot of false positives, and when they give a
false positive, as they often did, the company representatives would
either say, oh, there must have been a bomb there earlier,

(40:32):
or they'd blame user error or the weather. Right, you know,
you've got a lot of excuses. Oh, the weather was bad.
Oh it was that humid. Well, that can't work in
that exact humidity. You know, you guys didn't know that, right.
In two thousand and six, McCormick inks a deal with
a major manufacturing company to produce a much larger and
more military feeling premium version of his device, the Ade six'

(40:54):
five to. One this was directly manufactured for the new
market that had opened up and Liberated, rock which now
faced daily roadside bombings and suicide, bombings and had a
real need for an accurate bomb. Detector very few places
have ever needed one more than A rac. Does in
two thousand and, six.

Speaker 4 (41:10):
Question is there a reason it's CALLED ade six five?

Speaker 1 (41:15):
One does?

Speaker 2 (41:15):
That it sounds as eighty stand for?

Speaker 1 (41:18):
Anything why are they what are they?

Speaker 2 (41:20):
Doing automatic detection equipment or. Something i'm gonna, guess but
it's likely. Too it's just it sounds more.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
Military i'm just wondering what an upgraded version looks. Like, yeah,
yeah well what's upgraded about? It does it have a
second thing that lies to?

Speaker 2 (41:33):
YOU i think it's. Heavier it's. Heavier oh the second
thing that lies, now just the?

Speaker 3 (41:41):
One how did they not sell like fifty SKUs of this?
Thing just like like they got this in pink for
your female. SOLDIERS i think.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
That's how when they sell one for like thirty, grand
they probably just make a bigger one and say, like,
oh this will detect, plutonium like hell, yeah but it's
a little. UNCLEAR i did find how they like the
instruction manual claimed it. Worked so this is THE bbc
kind of summarizing the instructions you got with this. Thing
if you're some fucking soldier in The Iraqi. Army number

(42:12):
ONE a small amount of the substance the user wished to,
detect such as, explosives was put in a clip top
jar along with a sticker that was intended to absorb
the vapors of the. Substance the sticker was then placed
on a credit card sized, card which was read by
a card reader and inserted into the. Device the user
would then a hold the, device which had no working,
electronics and the swiveling antenna was meant to indicate the

(42:33):
position of the. Substance so, again these things cost about
two pounds sterling to, make but they could be sold
for five thousand pounds or so on up to like
twenty something thousand and one even sells one of these
cells for half a million. Dollars that has to he
has to put it in like a big ass, box,
Right and so.

Speaker 3 (42:52):
You put the, sticker, yeah by a bit of bomb, residue,
Right and they are in the, jar of, course because
how else would the vapors be kept.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
And the sticker soaks it.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
Up how would the vapors be stopped from escaping before
you put them in the.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
JOB i don't know how the vapors are supposed to,
work And i'm not really sure how the vapors are
supposed to be functioning. HERE i don't think they.

Speaker 3 (43:16):
KNOW i don't think they makes me think that anyone
could scam most. GOVERNMENTS i THINK i.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
COULD i THINK i. Could, yeah absolutely need to go
we need to go back to JUST i THINK i
could just sell THE Us army water and claim that
LIKE i prayed to, it and it'll stop. Bullets you
don't need vests. Anymore just drink the special.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
Water you.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
KNOW i only got to sell a few of. Them
at the prices The army is going to pay.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
Superior hydration, mechanisms, yeah for advanced, warfighters and it's just.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
Water yeah, yeah, yeah war, water war water. Water so
the fact that these things now look is expensive as
military grade gear made them sell like. It that's why
they're getting more money and the New iraqi government goes

(44:09):
gaga for these. Devices one of the gross things initially
in like early, reporting is like the news will write
about this as if, oh they just are too, dumb
they didn't know that it was, fake because like they got.
Tricked they're not. Tricked The iraqi government doesn't buy these
because The iraqi government is. Tricked The iraqi government buys
a bunch of these because they're. Bribed all of the

(44:32):
people buying anything for The iraqi military are, corrupt because
every Single iraqi government official in this period is hideously
and horribly. Corrupt and that's basically still true. Today these
are not being bought because they really think they're. Real
McCormick And bolton are saying, like, hey it's your job
to buy these for The iraqi. Army here's several million,

(44:54):
dollars and then they'll buy a, bunch, right that's what's.
Happening they're not, Idiot they're, corrupt right. Right iraq becomes
the number one buyer worldwide for fake bomb detectors in
the space of a few, years spending more than fifty
three million pounds on no less than five thousand of these,
devices making the worldwide sales value of the ade sixty

(45:17):
five to one in similar models at least tens of
millions of dollars over just three to four, years potentially
as much as one hundred million. Dollars we know that
McCormick falls in love with selling To, iraq who would
buy versions of the eighty six y five to one
for as much as forty thousand dollars Per Vanity. Fair
McCormick was also giving volume discounts and paying, kickbacks according to,
investigators who have also suggested that he was diverting money

(45:39):
into offshore. Accounts but whatever the precise, number McCormick was flying,
high even by the lofty standards of defense. Contracting when
combined with sales and a dozen, others McCormick's income over
five years approached eighty million. Dollars so he does very
well off.

Speaker 3 (45:54):
Of this in like any we haven't even got to
all the people that. Died, no, no we're.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
Getting, there very. Good, yeah we're getting. There and like
any guy who, buys you, know gets suddenly, rich he's
gonna have splurge on some rich guy. Purchases he buys
a five gillion dollar house In bath with an indoor sound.
System heywhere? Else, well but he bought this one From Nicholas.
Cage this Was Nicholas cage's former. House you can only

(46:21):
buy one of. Those, WELL i guess you probably could buy.
More but he does Buy Nicholas cage's old house In.
Bath he gets a vacation home In. Cyphrus he buys a,
yacht but he rarely uses. Either, instead his main hobby
is pitching and selling this thing to new. Marks, now
when you're using a bomb detector to find bombs and
the bomb detector doesn't, work it's not going to take

(46:43):
long before people start. Dying, sure we don't know exactly
how many people get killed by, this, because among other,
things in the early, days whenever an eighty six five
to one is clearly responsible for like a failure in
a bomb getting through, again the government is full of
crup people getting kicked. Backs so they just pretend that didn't. Happen,

(47:04):
Right it's very. Easy this is also this is The Iraqi.
Army it's super easy for the company to be, like,
well they're just not very good at using. It it's user.
Right they fucked up because they are The Iraqi army
was not very well. Trained, still during one massive wave
of bombings that his detectors failed to detect in two

(47:24):
thousand and, eight he scheduled McCormick scheduled a press conference
From baghdad in which he stood with the head Of
iraq's bomb squad and pitched his detector seemingly without. Shame
what makes this all infuriating is that the G p
two hundred and the other precursor devices had by this
point been repeatedly tested and demonstrated as fraudulent in THE

(47:45):
uk and The United, states where they were manufactured Per
Corruption tracker. Quote despite the fact that the devices were
tested again in two thousand and, one this time BY
Uk Home office scientists and again found to be, fake
the companies continue to operate and sell, them and received
promotional support from various branches of THE uk, government including
The embassy In, MEXICO Uk trade And industry who provided

(48:07):
support for displaying the equipment at trade, fairs and members
of the military who exhibited the. Devices predecessor devices had
been tested and found useless by The United states The
San Dia National laboratories in two thousand and two and
by THE Us Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technology division in
two thousand and. Five SO us And british soldiers In
iraq are not using these, things and part of what

(48:28):
eventually causes a problem for these guys is that the
SMART us And british soldiers In iraq realized their bullshit and, realized,
like wait a, second our lives are on the line
by guys using these to look for. Bombs whoa somebody's
got to do something about. This they start pushing in
two thousand and nine to remove these things from fucking.
Checkpoints the BBC's newsnight focused a special report on the,

(48:52):
matter and regulators in law enforcement In england started gathering
evidence and carrying out the early stages of an. Investigation
and that's still this, time everyone's still using. Them maybe
actually ed that year they Rated james McCormick's home and
took a bunch of, Evidence so you'd, think, well they're
probably not still selling them at that, point, right, Right,

(49:12):
yeah because you'd think, so that's the. POINT a detective
constable In, London Joanne law does attempt to stop these
things from being sold anymore because they're, fake and she
runs Into England's Export Control, law which only gives the
government the ability to ban military hardware and security equipment that's.

(49:33):
Electronic and since there's no electronics in these, things they
can't initially be. Banned the fact that their fake protects,
them like that's the. Original they can't immediately be banned
because they're not. Electronics that's. Unbelievable hell, yeah it's so.
Funny this part's not. Funny all this comes to a

(49:54):
hideous climax in the fall of two thousand and nine
when a twenty and this is in Like, october a
twenty six seat bus filled with a full ton of
explosives rams into The Iraqi ministry Of justice In. Baghdad,
now what happens here is a few things coming. Together
you've got in two thousand and. Nine the surge has just,
happened the awakening has. Happened this is actually a relatively

(50:15):
peaceful period of time In, iraq, right and so there's
a drop in the number of, bombings and that Convinces
Prime minister and future subject of this, Podcast we'll get,
Him nori Al maliki to take down security measures And
bagdad including blast, walls because things have gotten safer and
that would look good for his. Administration so there's not walls,
up which is part of why this is so. Bad

(50:36):
but the bombs get directly to this fucking justice building
and go off and one hundred and fifty five people
are killed at, LEAST i, mean it is a, massive hideous,
bombing hundreds more. Injured it is hard to exaggerate how
like the one of the worst single bombings In iraqs,
history like that gets carried out, here and a subsequent
investigation finds that Per The New York, times the bomb

(50:59):
truck quote had to pass at least one checkpoint where
THE ad six y five to one is typically. Deployed
christ so we know what goes through at least one
checkpoint that should have had one of these, things which
meant it didn't get. Caught that article quotes A us general,
saying obviously these things don't. Work we would use them

(51:19):
if they. Worked, however quote The iraqis believe passionately in,
them whether it's magic or. Scientific WHAT i care about
is it detects, bombs Said Major General jahad Al, jabiri
head of The ministry of The Interiors General directorate For Combating.
EXPLOSIVES i don't care about San dia or The department
Of justice or any of. Them General jabiri, SAID i
know more about this issue than The americans. Do in,

(51:41):
FACT i know more about bombs than anyone in the. World,
amazing amazing. Comments if you have met as Many iraqi
army generals AS i, have you know a couple of.
Things for, one they're all corrupt, liars right And General
aljebieri was no exception to that. Rule shortly after that,

(52:03):
interview The Iraqi ministry of The interior Arrested Major General
algebrai on corruption, charges arguing that he'd taken bribes from. McCormick,
now really the charges were dropped because It's. Iraq but
you shouldn't take that too. Seriously The iraqi government was
then and is now ludicrously. Corrupt harith Al karawi wrote

(52:24):
about this in twenty thirteen for an article in Ale
monitor quote an All monitor. Quote security related ministries have
seen the worst examples of corruption because of their huge budget,
allocations poorly MONITORED us financial, support and the urgent need
to build them from. Scratch there were reports by The Integrity,
committee THE Us General inspector In, iraq and The Parliamentary
security And Defense committee on the hundreds of millions wasted

(52:46):
because of corruption in these. Ministries yet except for a
few mid or low level officials who found no political,
sponsor all partisan senior officials managed to escape punishment or.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
Accountability wild how, SEE i guess the justice system works out.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
For there's it's a great justices in The. Iraqi so
good every gone really? Good she should ask the founder
OF isis what he thinks about The. Iraqi although that
was really THE us justice system In. Iraq, anyway, McCormick the,
trees and everyone else The british government could get their hands,
On we're arrested in twenty. Ten the court cases that
followed found that corruption in the military was often a

(53:24):
reason why these things were. SOLD a report by THE
Us Special Inspector general For Iraqi reconstruction in twenty eleven
estimated that seventy five percent of McCormick's revenue was recycled
to bride military officials and multiple. Countries, right which is
how he's selling all of these that's.

Speaker 3 (53:40):
That is, coal the sales marketing expense, exactly.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
Exactly, yeah we had to bribe them to get them.

Speaker 3 (53:47):
To buy our. Product, yeah how else are you gonna do? It?

Speaker 2 (53:50):
Exactly and the Corruption tracker. Adds In thailand the devices
not only allowed through real, explosives but in the south
of the, country where there is an ongoing conflict with
a separatist rebel, group security forces have used the devices
to justify the false imprisonment of hundreds of, people according
to rights. Groups so it's not just people that they
kill through letting bombs, through they also let governments murder

(54:12):
torture and imprison people by pretending they had. Explosives did
a lot of, THEM a lot of. People you don't
know how, many probably. Thousand again In, thailand people are
getting through, bombs detecting checkpoints with. BOMBS i have no
idea how many people in total. Die iraq continues using
these things at checkpoints for years. Afterwards i'm not convinced

(54:34):
there aren't any in use still right. Now the good
news is that a lot of the bad guys in
this story were sentenced for their. Crimes McCormick received the
maximum sentence for fraud ten, years and he was actually
sentenced to two more after his release because he kept
breaking the. Law his assets were clawed back as much
as as possible by the, state, but As Vanity fair,
noted did not spell an end to the grift. QUOTE

(54:57):
a year after McCormick's, conviction The egyptian military began testing
an apparent adaptation of acormacks device called The, seafast claiming
it can detect BOTH aids and. Encephalitis Last, june thirty
eight people were killed At Jenna International airport In karachi
when attackers with suicide bombs and rocket launchers got past
the airport's security, force which has admitted to relying on

(55:18):
the eighty six five to. One another version of the
device was reportedly being used In. Thailand mexican police looking
for drugs have incorporated the device into their stop and search.
Procedures if they ever acknowledged that the device as a,
fraud the convictions resulting from those searches would be vulnerable to.
Litigation in some, countries sheer corruption keeps the device in
the hands of soldiers and, policemen maybe even up to
the present. Day and that's a beautiful story of a scam.

(55:41):
Device ad how are you.

Speaker 3 (55:42):
FEELING i hate every person involved in, this FUCKING i
hate them so. Much it's also you're, right it hasn't inspired.
People it has totally inspired me because it's like the.
Same it's people WITH ai, especially they are, like, well
so many smart people couldn't be. Wrong actually they could.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
Die it happens quite, often thank.

Speaker 3 (56:04):
You mm, hmm, yeah, Yeah jesus Fucking. Christ.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
Yep it's it's the just yeah loophole. Ism, Right whenever you, think,
well this guy is really, smart he couldn't get. Tricked
smart people get tricked all the. Time, yep you, know, yeah, yeah,
Anyway ed you want to plug anything before we roll?

Speaker 3 (56:21):
Out where's your ed dot at from a, newsletter better offline?
Podcast you can find it on YouTube and where you
find your, Podcast i'm at ZiT. Trump please interact with
my content ON, eed you too.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
Excellent interact With ed's, Content interact with my, content and
interact with yourself by getting to know yourself and loving
yourself the. WAY i probably don't love you Because i've
never met most of, you because that would be really
hard for me to. Do but you, know in, THEORY
i support you loving yourself unless you're a bad. Person
BUT i don't know. That.

Speaker 4 (56:54):
Bye behind The bastard is a production of Cool Zone.
Media for more from Cool Zone, media visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com or check us out on The iHeartRadio,
App Apple, podcasts or wherever you get your. Podcasts full
video episodes That behind The bastards are now streaming On,
netflix dropping Every tuesday And. Thursday kit remind me On

(57:16):
netflix you don't miss an. Episode for clips in our
older episode, catalog continue to subscribe to our YouTube Channel
YouTube dot com slash At behind The. Bastards we love
about forty percent of, you statistically speaking

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Behind the Bastards News

Follow Us On

Host

Robert Evans

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

Hey Jonas!

Crime Junkie

Betrayal Weekly

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part Two: The Fake Bomb Detector Grift That Killed Hundreds