Legal Consequences and Ongoing Grifts

So media 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 wn't getting a shitload of people killed thanks to the idiom motor effect and how that's weirdly relevant to our current moment in American culture, AI, all this good stuff Talk with me about that Ed Zitron. Ed, welcome back to the show Thanks for having me Ed, you're the host of the Bet Offline podcast. And how are you feeling about the Idio Motor effect and people being able to know what's real I'm amazed by clever handans I think Clever Hunts is a hero who was unfairly eaten My German soldier everyone was been murdered and thir clever hands. I just I'mest h. 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 smart and they sent him off to die. You were a fraud, hunt Oh man This is an IiHart podcast Guaranteed human Is Jenny Garth from I Choose Me with Jenny Garth History is full of mysteries. likeike how people ever survive before modern laundry detergent? Luckily, TideE's here with boosted stain fighting for cleaner, whiter, brighter, and fresher laundry versus tide simply. No wonder it was America's number one detergent in sales last year. If it's got to be clean, it's got to be tide. TideD is a proud sponsor of the Eltten Joh Impact Awards honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and competive passionate world with their artistry, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to equality. You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast available on june first on the IHart Radio app and everyverywhere podcasts are heard Are your kids bored with the same old sports? Try fencing, the Olympic and paralympic sport that mixes speed, strategy, and fun. It's like chess meets cardio. Quick feet, quick decisions, and a satisfying beep when you score a point. Kids, teens, and adults can start any timee. Fencing is one of the fastest growing NCAA sports, with new colleges adding programs every year Many clubs have loner gear. Coaches teach fundamentals and safety from day one. Find a beginner class near you at tryfencing. org. That's tryfencing. org The mornings at my house would be impossible without Air Tasker. Two kids can't find their shoes and the sink decides it's leaking So I posted on Air Tasker to get help with the to do list Next thing I know, the sink's fixed and a tasker installs a robot litter box, my cat hates Which means I'm spending less time juggling chores and back to juggling my kids Go to airtasker. com or download the app. Air Tasker, G anything done And When it comes to looking your best, Beachbum tanning does it better. Beeachbum delivers advanced sun and spray tanning, luxury skincare, and an elevated salon experience designed around you. It's why so many guests trust Beachbum for flawless color and real confidence. And now Beachbum is expanding wellness services to many locations, with red light therapy and infrared sauna, with more on the way, recharge your body, refresh your skin, reset your day. Beachbum isn't just tanning. It's full spectrum wellness. Visit beachbum dot com to find a location near you So We ended last episode by introducing the Gpher, a gag gift that claimed to help you locate lost golf balls using the magic of the Idiomotor effect into tricking people into thinking it was not an empty plastic box with an antenna. If you read the fine print, at the end of those magazine ads that Sovie displayed last episode, you'll see that the manufacturer bragged that the goher Totally shock proof, with solid state construction and no moving parts Beause again, it's empty. There's nothing in the b. Was shock proof something that was going to be a Is that a common problem with You can still get one of those on eBay, by the way Yeah, I think it's that like if you drop it, it won't get disrupted because again, there's nothing to disrupt. It's not a product. It's not real. For thirty four doars ninety nine cents folks That's a bargain at any price, Sophie. You can get one on either eBay or poshmark, notot sponsored. Thank you so much. You could have all the balls you need, you know, listeners. If 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 startop saying balls now.lease One of the chief executives of the Quadro cororporation who gave us the Gpher, and the evident designer of the Gpher itself, although this is a little unclear to me, but I think the designer was a man named Wade L. Quadlbaum Which I just that's good name. That's a good name. Bing a episode for n.. Great names in here. Yeah. Wade Quadlebaum was a former used car salesman from South Carolina. Yes, who founded the Quadro Corporation alongside an American businessman namalo Stig Re. Yeah The mess, Malcolm Stig Row, Wade, Quadlebum, G names. lefteft and right coming at youa. It's awesome I have not found much about either man's early life, which is tragic 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 Quadlbaum was doing when he was fifteen. and that will haunt me the rest ofting the shit beaten out of him for a second night Yeah, that's just right absolute crap. J pers and every punch made him like, I'm gonna con the fuck out of all these people E everyvery business meeting with Malcolm Stig Row, Malcolm just found himself punching Quala bomb by the end of his. Oh, 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. 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 golf, maybe you get him a gopher because they cost like twelve bucks you know, at the time. They're not that expensive probablyroably because the cogs are like w cents. Yes, exactly. It costs like a dollar to make this fuck.. So this was not exactly the kind of business that was ever going to take the world by storm R You might be able to make some money off a thing like the gopher, but you're not going to 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 Gphers. Is there any way to make more money off of this idea he notices something, which is that If you when he turns on the TV, when 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 into 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 he's like I bet there's money. if you could convince police departments and schools that you can help them find drugs Rightike because like the canine units are expensive. you know, dogs can work. I don't think he doesn't realize what a con 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 nothing on me. I just don't ever let the police search my cars. but they tried to bring a dog out. this like three in the morning in Brady, Texas and they couldn't wake the dogs up. That was the excuse I got for why I was free to go. It was like we can't wake them up We were gonna have them search your car, but they're too sleepy. Again W. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got that once So oh Malcolm Ands 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 yout have to make a real product if you can use the Iidiomotor effect and convince cops and principals 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 shitload more than 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 for drugs by hand is a pain in the ass, right? Eespecially 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 somethingum in people's hands and they can just walk them around and search whatever kids they were gonna to search anyway for drugs, then you've got a product Right R. Now the 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 nor Wade 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 a golf ballfinder. And since most cops and school principals are middle aged men who play golf, You can kind of see. Where they're thinkingle ground So They change the name of the Gpher to the quQadrro trracker and they make some cosmetic modifications to the outside. So it looks a little more high tech and expensive. They're bigger basically He also has paper and plastic computer chips designed and installed inside the hollow plastic case are unpowered. They're like paper. They're 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 Stig Rowe and Quadlebaum and their 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 southeast to, say yes, please. and they sign up to buy some of these things, right? So as soon as he's like, I've got a drug detector that you can carry 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 you an excuse to search exactly what you want to hear, right? Yeah, it'll tell you what you want to hear, right? Police departments in schools start buying. I found an article in the Kansas City star from nineteen ninety five. This is before these were 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 if you can identify anything that seems incredibly fake from the text of this news article Okay, okay,m I'm ready. Three Missouri schools will soon be using a new drug detection device that some critics are calling a modern day divining rod. The Quadro trracker 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. Quadro Corporation Vice President Malcolm Roe, who is an electrical engineer, said the Quadro trracker works by sensing the unique wavelengths produced by the molecules in controlled substances or gunpowder Because it supposedly works through magnetism, it needs no batteries. The unit'sology has not been patented because the company does not want to reveal how the drug detection cards work Just quick question said the wavelengths? Yeah, yeah. that came off the molecules. Yeah. The wavelengths off the molecules. Yeah J just in controlled substances This is straight up just, this is how every AI company raises money Just like, well, we have he's an electrical engineer He's Demmi Hasabz, who's the head of Deep Mind. And's like, hereere's noobel in chemistry Mhm ep, he wouldn't possibly just say a bunch of shit he made up history it's like what? True detective We' repeat the circleles T's a flat circle. It is. and thinking about hearing that, I couldn't help but think, like hearing this guy be like, ye, we haven't patented it, but like it works through you know, that explanation, I couldn't help but think of the open AI or not open A the anthropic cofounder who spoke at that Vatican event and was like, Well we don't even understand the mysteries of how AI thinks, you know It confuses and surprises even its designers because it really is as miraculous as the human mind, you know? Like it's the same sort of BS woo. Obviously, there is a real product with AI, but yes. Ecept they specifically made it do the things, the mystery Yeah ye This is much more bullshit, right? Because there's not even like a product of any kind here really? Yeah. But you do see how some of the marketing bullshit is the same Um And yeah, I do find it very funny. like the idea that you're basing probable cause for searches on a device where the designers are like, we can't tell you how it works because then someone might know how it works Th then they'll start changing the molecules. Yeah, they changing molecules on us I'll switch it up. The molecules will be different. The drug dealers making the drugs will change the molecules to give off a different wavelength. I hate it when drug dealers do that, always moving the molecules around What are we going to do? thenen they'll do molecule science on that Yeah Theyen we' fuck. We can't everyone 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 and fifty fiveents for the ones you're selling to fuckking Missouri Other sources show that trackers were sometimes sold for as much as eight thousand dollars, especially to 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 Theranose thing, right? This is very much a Theranose thing where they're like Well, if you could really do all aeronon. Yeah, off of a drop of blood, you know But did they bother to do any fake detections or did theyes. Oh yes. They've got fake detections. Yeah Yes. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. hid 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 The nineties Quadro's marketing pitch included claims that their tracker could find narcotics behind brick walls and at distances of up to half a block away. It could even wh f. What? Yeah, ye It could even this is my favorite part. if you want to think back to just what we werere talking about a little earlier, they even were like, it can identify places where pot was smoked in the past Right Which 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. But that doesn't make any sense because if it's where the drugs were and the fumes coming off the drugs, that means the drug molecules are not giving off the wavelengths. Right, right, right. It doesn't make sense based on your bullshit science. Yeah I mean, I was with you until the drug molecule wavelength. That was right. but now I' quest pro This 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 Everywhere Right detecting several thousand streets in every city. If your device that you're using to search kids' cars in a 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. becausecause you know what's happened in every school parking lot in the entire country Kids have smoked weed You know? likeike U Common sense, I fear 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, how were 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 tracker 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 seven thousand dollars to anyone who can pass a double 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's Seminole County School District Director of seecurity, 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 of unidentified cards. In a series of tests, Halbig did not get one correct Now, that just sounds like a debunking, right Nothing sketchy about that. And there isn't about the debunking Do you know who Wolf Gang Hal bigig? is today, Ed No This has nothing to do with James Randy. It's just crazy that he shows up in this. Wolfging Halbig was indeed the district director of security for Seminole County Um 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 infoWars back when Alex Jones still ran it. He was a major part of the Sandy Hookan now. That's Wolf Gang Halbig. That has nothing to 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 is nonsense.ar. It's just funny that it's Wolf Gang Hal big. Yeah. Ver funny 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 It's so cool seeing how history is just full of dullards waing to be conned. It really is. I love it So police departments in Illinois and Georgia made purchases of the tracker despite this public debunking between nineteen ninety three and nineteen ninety six Quadrro sold roughly a 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 Howbig testing the tracker Tests and demonstrations in three other school systems, however, 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 in these other school systems. They were cons You see how the problem like This is a really perfect 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 We'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. They don't ask, are those tests real? Were they conducted by anyone but the Quadro cororporation? Were 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. They keep doing this today. This is the AI industry journalism, evenven when you had all the ingredients to do decent journalism Roe and Quadlbaum had other allies in their quest to push the tracker into every school and cop shop they could find. Guy Lee Womack, an assistant U.S 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, 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 convince law enforcement agencies to buy it Mbe 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 came next As Quadriro Corporation grew, Roe 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, Roe's device had attracted the attention of the FBI, which tested one, determined it was worthless, and sent out a teletyype warning to law enforcement agencies Roe a camped to England and moved in with the trees. It didn't take long before a new version of Re's 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 it's bullshit. He flees the country with the trees to start up a new grift. and that same year, a US district court in Texas hears the lawsuit, USA versus the Quadro Corporation, which listed Raymond Fisk, Wade Quadlbaum, and Malcolm Roa's representatives For an article in the nineteen ninety six issue of newews 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 is simply a hollow box with a radio antenna attached, and the chip is a piece of paper between two pieces of plastic. Quadro has sold about a thousand of the devices at prices from between three hundred ninety five dollars to eight thousand dollars to school districts, law enforcement, and airports Great. I know how this works. So you were you were completely correct that this is the Gpher. It is the same thing. It's the same thing. same thing. They were smart and they gave it a gun handle Yes, you've got to have a gun hand. You got to have on handle so real like haall monitors can go around being like ye ye Yeah Yeah me, Pa blah. Gota have a holster for it. This shit, right? This was pre blur though. Yeah, I wonder if any cops shot someone while reaching for the quQadrro tracker? I mean probably It' gotta be one or at least a locker By this point Quadrro has expanded the number of cards they've offered and they added explosives to the mix, which really gives an idea like this piece of snake oil the potential to kill a lot of people. Once they're like, it's a bomb detector too, you know, you've escalated the human harm. If a drug detector fails in a high school, I'm not going to 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 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, R right. You've got a much worst like scenario here So statistically speaking, is it worth bit if it's a false positive or a false negative? Right. mean that I guess that is true that like I guess both very Both are bad actually. Both are really bad 'cause false positive with drugs means you're gonna get fucked up and in trouble and possibly have your life ruined over not having drugs U or having drugs either equally bad to me, honestly or with the bomb false positive means people are going to think you have a bomb and maybe something really bad happens to you. O it doesn't notice a bomb and then you get blown up As big as worry A false negative on drugs, not a big deal. A false negative on a bomb. Big deal Right? Huge deal, notot great. Yeah potentially like world changing deal, depending on where the bomb is. Um So the Qadro did play a big role in at least one tragedy, thankfully, not 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 a quadro 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' And that's evil becausecause 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'm like taking it really seriously and being like Yeahah, we'll find your kid. Let me use this box with nothing in it, a bit ofail coming out of it. Fuck up. It's got a gun handle, though. it's very serious. Got a gun handle It's like ghostbusters, But your son isn't a ghost, we promise. Yeah. yeah. Or maybe he is, you know, the quQadro will figure it out. Yes You know who didn't lose their sons tragically? I hope Maybe no way to know really Here's ads This is Dr. Joy from Therapy for Black Girls If you could enjoy a spotless space without so much scrubbing, wouldn't you Of course you would. 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Post your task, set your budget, and choose a tasker to help, fromr carpet cleaning to finally tackling the junk drawer. Go to airTasker. com or download the app. Air Tasker. G anything done And we're back So The 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, 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 Betzer. Mike Thomas, safety coordinator at Blue Valley, uses the device as a deterrent 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 home. And also like this is just you think that you're a good cop and that like you 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, you know, My job almost as if The more wrong you get. The more you couble down Right. Interesting. yeah It's this thing of mostost people who are quote unquote searching for drugs or bombs, to be honest. '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 parent important who can say that's my job are 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 in like police training. that's a big part of while. So 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 Um There's some fun stories of 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 on 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, you know. And it goes the whole way around to being like, I know better than everyone else, you know better than F know these troublesome scientists with their fact finding. That's right, that's right. these woke scientists. 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 schoolchool District in Texas, where my mom used to teach U They kept using this thing. againg, after the FBI said, donon't use it. They keep using this because it's a deterrent Right This is a 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 gonna 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 It'll just scare them off. You know, doesn't need to be real That's a really bad attitude to have towards your job presumably finding deadly substances on kids if that's somethinghing you actually take seriously if you have this thing in your head about how the dangers of drugs and all Would you not worry about not finding drugs Yeah Ohama Brian concern that they can't find the things it's supposed to find, that they just discourage kids is really frustrating Guy Lee Womack 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, 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 convince 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 up on the stand and being like, well, I think it works How could you know that the 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 stopp these people from getting arrested because they gave them a way out of this court case of the fraud finding, right A Jesus Christ 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 D drug task force told the 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 Ouija board effect. It's not nearly as consistent as drug sniffing dogs, but there are no vet bills So againain, he's like, well, this is a Ouija board thing, but hey it's cheap. Great T and police work. and it's not as good as dogs Which are also kind of a ouija board thing. Yeah. yeah It's all just ouija boards all the way down. It's just yeah, we're just Ouija boarding in our lives Yeah Please tell me it's not the same fucking people who do the bomb stuff, is it? You'd hope, but it is actually, Ed It definitely is So While all this is going on, Roe 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 There's a little more opacity here as to who made which new version of this device when. but from what I can tell Ro and the Trees produced a new version of the tracker that they called the mole, MOLE 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 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 are attached to the defense industry to say it's real. And the best people is like the rooyal engineers have this like 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? R nineteen ninety nine, he submits one of the moles to the Royal Engineers support team and he as them to repare a report on it per 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 rooyal 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 raided, Bolton's home gets raided because of the crimes he's about to commit. Police find two letters of support from the Royal Engineers in Mr. Bolton's offices. and he'd used 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 papers from them saying that it worked, even though they're supposed to have said that it didn't One article I found on corruption trracker claims that Bolton doctored the letters But that's not necessarily true becausecause Bolton remains involved with the rooyal engineers directly for some period of time after they test the mole and find its's bullshit. And in fact, after that test, they will help him actively sell the mole. So I don't know that he did doctor those certificates The first thing offer the mole U 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 McCormack enough that McCormack offers to help them sell the thing in Africa, Asia, and Latin America Now at this point, Bolton has started to get greedy, and so has everyone else. because especially, I think this guy McCormackot comes in and says we could sell tens of millions of dollars of these. So all of the guys who've 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 amid rankcrous charges and counter charges. All of them went on to sell versions of the tracker. But it was McCormack who had the greatest ambition. By two thousand four, he was going around England with a functioning 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 six, he had found a manufacturer willing to sign on. McCormack was no longer a distributor. Now he was a producer too. So That's what happens with the all of these guys. There's going be so many different versions with different names of bomb detectors that are all the goher. There's four or five They're literally the same tech. The all the same sold to twenty something countries around the world, thousands of them All the same thing under different names Right? It's wild Um We'll talk a bit about some of these other Grift mole devices, but I want to say now, regardless of all the different things these names are sold under, again, this is just the gopher. McCormack's variant, like most, used cards. You're supposed to load a card with the scent or essence of whatever 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 Madeeline McCann, who went missing as a toddler in two thousand seven. two other children. No no McCann. V. No, It's vile Yeah. Oh, just if you're an American listener, Mataddie McCab's girly went missing in Portugal, I believe. Yeah no one really knows what happens. There's tons of conjecture rible course course someickad with like a fucking goat like just a metal stick and a box where yeah, I'll find Maddie McCann. Yeah. ye. This is alarmingly close to a power in Jo Joe's bizarre adventure. I don't like any of this at all. Use a photo to find missing. This is fmit purple. It's unbelievable. That really is Um So again, Madeline is still missing tragically. So none of this worked, right? But the fact that Sam Tree made the news trying to find her is really bleak, right? And he's doing it ' it was the biggest story in the UK for a while. this girl going m.s the most British thing I've ever heard, some con artist Yeah H 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 thousand two hundred thirteen dollars per gadget, although it varies, depending on who they're selling it to Their highest value 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 per the BBC, they do it all while working from home. anfhire 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. They're just snaabbing them together and then selling them to like the Thai government for four thousand dollars or whatever If nuts You love it Good stuff It's wor my brain It explains how every con happens. It's just if enough people believe something Everyone just goes, Eh fuck it And if enough people who have the right job titles say this is real, You'll actually kind of find a offensive that someone should test it . Exactly. Yeah Bolton's device, after the mole, the one that he starts coming up with when everyone breaks off on their own, is the GT two hundred. And this is going to be the most famous of these gopher descended bullshit detectors Bolton lucks out by the fact that after everyone else split up to make their own, you know drug detectors, nine hundred and 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 no one's going to be thinking because people are not thinking in the wake of nine hundred eleven, I can sell these fucking things like hotcakakes. I can sell these everywhere. And people won't even double check to see if they work because they paranoia back R Yep Yep It's the it's taken money from a fucking baby The BBC describes his sales methods Sales demonstrations would be rigged to succeed. Anone 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. You might break it. You might break. And how would we find the Bom molecule wavelength? Yeah the bomb will escape. w't know what to look. Every bomb gives off a distinct wavelength from the molecules it's made of It's so that's how we find them So some of the devices came with detector cards, as I've said, which were programmed. The fraudsters claimed 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 uniformed members of the Royal Engineer Corps were paid to help sell The GT two hundred Right? If you want again The claim is that he falsified those things, but after they after they give this thing a like say this is bullshit, the royal engineers take money to sell it for him. They're like at trade shows 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 I don't know. prerecisely what happened here. I don't know if they just didn't know that the GT two hundred 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 in promoting this is very embarrassing and awkward Yes, it is. And the rooyal engineers weren't the only ones. The British embassies in Mexico City and Manila were convinced to back the GT two hundred basically help sell them to those governments by saying, yep, it's real U Sobody's going to show you, this is what this thing looks like, the GT 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 holster. What are the stickers for 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. Great question though. What are the stick? Because there's sheets of stickers and like a jar that you're supposed to put the stickers in and like a substance in order to charge them so that it can search for that substance basically. And the brass card reader of course, I assume brass is the best molecules? Of course. Molecules love brass. everyverybody knows that. Right, right, right. yeah. Yeah. so not long after this point from the United States invaded Iraq Bolton starts working with another international salesman, James McCormack, because McCormack has better connections to industrial manufacturers Now in two thousand three or four by that year Vversions of 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 just walk around with it. We have to explain how they can charge it because they're not going they're they're going to 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 in all in like Iraq and in Thailand all these like soldiers who are just like shuffling around and they're with this thing to charge it up before they go out on shift Eone do a little shuffle before they go and use the thing that kills them. Yeah. So you shuffle around and then you go walk past like a line of cars. And if the antenna 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 or they'd blame user error. orr the weather. Right. You know, You've got a lot of excuses. Oh, the weather was bad. Oh was that humid? Well, that can't work in that exact humidity. you know, You guys didn't know that, right In two thousand six, McCormack inks a deal with a major manufacturing company to produce a much larger, more military feeling premium version of his device, the AD E six fif one This was directly manufactured for the new market that had opened up and liberated Iraq, 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 Iraq does in two thousand six. Q Question, is there a reason it's called ADE six fifty one? Do that A stand for anything? Why are they What are they doing? Automatic detection equipment or something, I'm gonna guess. But it's slly too logical it sounds more military. I'm just wondering what an upgraded version looks like. What's upgraded about it? Does it have a second thing that lies to you? I think it's heavier It's heavy. Um They have a second thing that lies here. No, just the one Did they not sell like fifty SKUs of this thing? Just like like they got this in pink for your female soldiers I think 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 he 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 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 wouldint hold the device, which had no working electronics, and the swiveling antenna was meant to indicate the position of the SwT substance So again, these things cost about two pounds sterling to make But they could be sold for five thousand pounds or so. O up to like twenty something thousand and one even sells. one of these sells for half a million dollars. That has to he has to put that in like a big ass box. right? And so you put the sticker Yeah, By a bit of bomb residue. Right and In the jar, of course, because how else would the vapors be kept? And the sticker soaks it up How would the vapors be stopped from escaping before you put them in the jar? 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. Don't think they know. I don't think they makes me think that anyone could scam most governments. I think I could. I think I could one hundred percent. Yeaholutely. need to go We need to go back to just, I think I could just sell the U.S 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 water You know? I only got to sell a few of them at the prices the Army's gonna pay Superior hydration mechanisms for for advanced war fighters and it's just water Yeah, yeah, war water. War water. 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And the new Iraqi government goes 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 the 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. McCormack and Bolton are saying like, hey, it's your job to buy these for the Iraqi army Here's several million dollars, and then they'll buy a bunch Right? That's what's happening They're not idiots. Corrupt Right Right Iraq becomes the number one buyer worldwide for fake bomb detectors in the space of a 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 six hundred fifty one in similar models at least tens of millions of dollars over just three to four years, potentially as much as a hundred million dollars We know that McCormack falls in love with selling to Iraq, who would buy versions of the eightyE six hundred fivety one for as much as forty thousand dollars. Per Vanity Fair McCormack was also giving volume discounts and paying kickbacks according to investigators who have also suggested that he was diverting money into offshore accounts. But whatever the precise number, McCormack was flying high even by the lofty standards of defense contracting. When combined with sales and a dozen others, McCormack's income over five years approached eighty million dollars. So he does Very well off of this Um And like any we haven't even got to all the people that died. No no, no, we're getting there. Very good. Yeah We're getting there And like any guy who buys, you know, gets suddenly rich, he's gonna splurge on some rich guy purchases. He buys a five billion dollars house and bath with an indoor of a fancy sound system. He literally anywhere else, Well, but he bought this one from Nicolas Cage. This was Nicholas Cage's former house. You could only buy one of those Boying is you probably could buy more he does byy Nicolas Cage's old house in bath U He gets a vacation home in Cyprus, 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 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 Ay E six fivety one is clearly responsible for like a failure and a bomb getting through. againg The government is full of corrupt people getting kickbacks So they just pretend that didn't happen Right U Right. It's very easy. This is also this is the Iraqi army It's super easy for the company to be like, Well that they're just not very good using it It's user. 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 thousand eight, he scheduled McCormackick 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 GP two hundred and the other precursor devices had by this point been repeatedly tested and demonstrated as fraudulent in the UK and the United States where they were manufactured. perer corruption tracker, quote Despite the fact that the devices were tested again in two thousand one, this time by UK homeome offffice scientists, and again found to be fake, the companies continued to operate and sell them, and received promotional support from various branches of the UK government, including the emmbassy in Mexico, UK trade and industry, who provided 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's Sanda National Laboratories in two thousand two and by the US Navy Explosive Ordinance Dposal Technology Division in two thousand five So U S. and British soldiers In Iraq are not using these things And part of what eventually causes a problem for these guys is that the smart U. S. and British soldiers in Iraq realize their're bullshit and realize like, wait a second, our lives are on the line by guys using these to look for bombs Whoa! someomebody's gonna do something about this We' start pushing in two thousand nine to remove these things from fucking checkpoints The BBC's newews night focused a special report on the matter, and regulators and law enforcement in England started gathering evidence and carrying out the early stages of an investigation. And they're still being used them this time. Everyone's still using them. Baybe, actually, Ed That year, they raided James McCormack'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? Yeah He had f That's the last 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 electronic. And since there's no electronics in these things, they can't initially be banned. The fact that they're fake protects them