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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 $41,000) for devices that weren't quite what he said they were." That's putting it mildly; what he was selling as bomb detecting devices were actually souped-up (or souped-down, with non-functional circuitboards and other flim-flammery) golf-ball detectors. The Daily Mail has some enlightening pictures.
Well, has happened before.. I guess his mistake was that the units didn't produce enough positive hits - regardless of their accuracy.
The man was selling dousing rods which were labeled as golfball finders as bombdetectors.
They were equally successful at either task. They weren't golfball detectors any more than they were bomb detectors. The con was the dousing rod aspect of it, not the 'golf ball finder' stuff. The problem is people believing in magic, not a mislabeled golfbal detector.
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They are dowsing rod using the idea motor effect to fool you into thinking it detects anything. Dowsing rode do not work. When properly tested for say, finding metal and water, in double blind, the dowser never find stuff above chance. it is pure flim flam. So even as a 13$ gold ball finder , it is a scam.
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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.
You're supposed to look at the nice pictures running to the right side of the 'article'.
R the FA, indeed.
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(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?
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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
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
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