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Man Accused of Selling Golf Ball Finders As Bomb Detectors
CNET reports that a British businessman named Jim McCormick is facing charges now for fraud; McCormick "charged 27,000 pounds (around $41,000) for devices that weren't quite what he said they were." That's putting it mildly; what he was selling as bomb detecting devices were actually souped-up (or souped-down, with non-functional circuitboards and other flim-flammery) golf-ball detectors. The Daily Mail has some enlightening pictures.
I guess you could say this con man is gonna get... ...clubbed.
People are dying in wars because of reliance on these devices. He needs to go to jail...or the gas chamber.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Travelling Golfers should be aware that the TSA (or UK equivalent) may not take kindly to the presence of Golf Balls in your luggage.
I guess it's hard to find someone's balls after a explosion.
Well, has happened before.. I guess his mistake was that the units didn't produce enough positive hits - regardless of their accuracy.
The man was selling dousing rods which were labeled as golfball finders as bombdetectors.
They were equally successful at either task. They weren't golfball detectors any more than they were bomb detectors. The con was the dousing rod aspect of it, not the 'golf ball finder' stuff. The problem is people believing in magic, not a mislabeled golfbal detector.
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
wtf is the Daily Mail doing here? It is a tabloid.
The "article" had more information about his stupid home than anything about his shady business practices or how no one noticed anything wrong with these devices.
They are dowsing rod using the idea motor effect to fool you into thinking it detects anything. Dowsing rode do not work. When properly tested for say, finding metal and water, in double blind, the dowser never find stuff above chance. it is pure flim flam. So even as a 13$ gold ball finder , it is a scam.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
should of called them geiger counters
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
They finally started listening to him it seems
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.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
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.
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.
People are stupid.
Alot of those people are in charge of important stuff like your tax money.
There are no bigger cunts on Earth than war profiteers, or the evil rightwing scum, like Dick Cheney, who gorged themselves on the blood shed in Iraq.
There's a special place in hell for these people.
Vice has a report from Iraq titled In Saddam's shadow, 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...
Dvorak on Doomtech
...that a military unit purchased bomb detectors never having tested their validity?
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.
What I want to see is the article:
"Man accused of buying golf ball finders as bomb detectors."
I think that trial is way more important.
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
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.
[End Of Line]
You've all seen (I hope) the video of TSA agents grabbing drinks from the hands of people in airports, so they can dip their 'explosive detecting' swab into the beverage? This is exactly the same thing as the concept within this article.
Years ago we had the identical process used to send multiple Irish people to prison in the UK on false claims that they were bombers for the IRA. And by 'identical process' I mean a fake test used by the security services working for a police state, so that targets of the state could be harassed, imprisoned, and possibly convicted in court. In the case of the innocent 'IRA bombers', it was a 'chemical' swap of the hands- a charade designed to make betas think that forensic science was being done.
The technique actually goes back thousands of years, and actually predates formal science. In those early days, agents of the state would say they had a 'magical' religious item that would divine the guilt or innocence of types of people currently targeted by the state. Today, pseudo-science is used so betas, with their high-school 'education', can be convinced of the validity of the tests by propaganda articles in the mainstream press.
I have a memory greater than a goldfish, so I actually recall the promotion of McCormick's devices in the press back when he was successfully selling them to governments. Articles were written backing the 'science' behind the bomb detectors. You had to go to what Slashdot editors love to call the 'tinfoil hat' forums to find people expressing outrage that such devices were widely in use in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
But here's the point. Team Obama, and Team Bush LOVED to deploy devices like this. Why? Because as I said at the top, they allowed the uniformed thugs to harass and/or take-out anyone they so desired on the basis of 'positive' results for bomb signs. Most of those arrested would be found later by their loved ones dead, with signs of extensive torture- usually by power drill. Even you betas can read (at the BBC and in the Guardian) how the USA was murdering 3000 people a month in this way in Iraq to exterminate all effective opposition to the invasion.
Essentially if you were a male and expressed opposition (in any form) to the US genocide in Iraq, you would be tested with one of these devices, declared a potential 'terrorist' and taken to one of America's torture sites. Here, Iraqi allies of the Americans (Ironically people aligned with Iran), would torture you to extract names of future victims, and then murder you. McCormick's little boxes (and similar products from other sources) played a key part.
Today, the same Yanks that love to see their uniformed goons wage aggressive wars (the supreme crime against Humanity) are subject to identical treatment by the TSA. Pre-crime 'intent' detecting cameras. Chemical swabs. Commands to 'freeze'. Goons that use 'attitude' or big breast as an excuse to give a traveler 'special' attention. Alphas tell curious and dubious betas that it is 'security theatre'. The truth, ie., that Americans are getting the same treatment they dished out to Iraqi and Afghan civilians for the exact same reason, must never be said.
Morons here will dribble about the 'accuracy' of McCormick's devices (and mention the name of establishment shill, Randi) as if that were the point. When your rights can be stepped on when police state goons have 'reasonable' suspicion, the state will ensure said goons have the mechanism to rustle up 'reasonable' suspicion whenever they need it.
One last thought. Everyone who raped, tortured and murdered in the name of 'invasion' was given full and complete immunity against all prosecution by the UN. Of course, some armies still imposed 'military discipline' for certain crimes, when they became public, but every private mercenary was completely above the law, and not one was EVER punished for crimes in Iraq or Afghanistan.
He's got off very lightly for someone responsible for the deaths of soldiers in southern Thailand who have been blown up when the devices failed to detect bombs planted by "insurgents".
More amazingly, the Thai army continues to use these devices to this day, despite their total inefficacy
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/302383/use-of-gt200-will-continue
It's "dowsing", Mr. +5 Informative. FFS.
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.
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 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 been bamboozled, so they are still at fault for falling for the con.
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 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.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
What's more the free market does not work in the specific case, it is a general principle and in the larger sense it always works.
Furthermore there is no perfect "free market" and I don't know anyone serious who says there is or should be. There always has to be some degree of limitation and regulation. When market based legitimate and prudent regulations exist that are applied equally in every case lead to a genuine free market conditions, the consumer taken in the large sense is always the beneficiary.
Current economic conditions bear this out perfectly.
This scam has at least netted MX$350,000,000 for these bastards. The worst part is that one of the main culprits in this corruption scheme, the former chief of mexican Federal Police, Genaro García Luna is enjoying his impunity in USA while ordering the murder of reporters that have documented his corruption, meanwhile, this crappy devices have landed many innocent people in jail and $deity only knows how many innocents have been killed in Mexico and in the rest of the world. This is not only fraud, it is a well oiled corruption scheme. McCormick and his accomplices are of the few people that really deserve to be hanged in public.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
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 countries but also in the ones that allow the operation of the companies that sell this devices.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
I doubt they really believed that.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3577793&cid=43272025
The ones that purchased this are simply corrupt officers getting a cut from this purchases. The "scam" is only a red herring for the public to avoid prosecution.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!