Fraudster who sold fake bomb detectors in war zones advised by UK officials

Whistleblower warned business department in 2008 about Jim McCormick's fake detectors, saying lives were being put at risk

Read the whistleblower's emails

The Guardian, Robert Booth and Meirion Jones, Tuesday 23 April 2013

James McCormick leaving the Old Bailey after being convicted of selling
bogus bomb-detection kits based on novelty golf gadgets. Photograph:
Gavin Rodgers/Pixel

A businessman who was found guilty of selling fake bomb detectors was given advice by British government officials on how to market his products to United Nations agencies, it has emerged.

Jim McCormick, 57, who was convicted at the Old Bailey on Tuesday of three counts of fraud, was trained at a "how to sell to the UN" seminar organised by UK Trade and Industry in March 2008. He also held meetings with officials at UK Trade & Investment, the export-promotion arm of the Department for Business.

McCormick faces up to 10 years in jail for a crime that detectives said "showed a complete disregard for the safety of those that used and relied upon the device for their own security and protection".

The devices were compared to dowsing rods and magic wands by people who used them, although their sales in Iraq and other war zones helped make McCormick a £55m fortune, and allowed him to buy a £3.5m mansion in Bath formerly owned by the actor Nicolas Cage.

There is no evidence that the business department knew the devices were useless. But it also emerged that the same department ignored a warning in 2008 about the dangers of the fake detectors from a whistleblower, who said they put lives at risk.

Ian Pearson, the Labour minister who oversaw export controls at the time, was emailed a detailed dossier about McCormick entitled "Dowsing rods endanger lives" in November of that year but his ministerial office did not reply.

The document concluded that McCormick's fake detectors could have potentially lethal consequences: "Somebody is going to be seriously hurt or killed using or relying on these devices to detect explosives, if they haven't already".

It took over a year for the business department to place limited export bans to Afghanistan and Iraq in January 2010 on the trade after officials were warned by the whistleblower that the detectors, which sold for as much as £10,000 but were based on a £15 device, were not capable of detecting anything.

The whistleblower also wrote to the chairman of the Commons defence select committee, James Arbuthnot, in January 2009 that "these devices put lives at serious risk since they cannot detect explosives". Arbuthnot passed on the complaint to Quentin Davies, the then minister for defence equipment.

Patrick Mercer MP, a former army officer, said: "It seems extraordinary that once the government knew about the nonsense of these devices that a blanket export ban was not put on the products rather than these specific ones to Iraq and Afghanistan. The government seems to have been tardy about the whole thing."

Police warned that the bogus devices were still being used in Iraq and elsewhere. Following conviction at the end of McCormick's six-week trial, Detective Inspector Ed Heath, of Avon and Somerset police said: "Both civilians and armed forces personnel were put at significant risk in relying upon this equipment. That device has been used and is still being used on checkpoints. People using that device believe it works. It does not."

It is also alleged by an Iraqi whistleblower that McCormick paid millions of pounds in bribes to senior Iraqis to secure the deals. General Jihad al-Jabiri, who ran the Baghdad bomb squad, is in prison on corruption charges relating to the contracts. Some Iraqis still believe the detectors work, while others are angry they have cost lives. Inspector general Aqil al-Turehi, of the Iraqi interior ministry, told a BBC Newsnight investigation: "This gang of Jim McCormick and the Iraqis working with him killed my people in cold blood."

A former colleague of McCormick told the BBC that he saw him set up accounts in false names for 15 Iraqi officials. He said they "don't care if people live or die"; the only thing they care about is "how much am I going to get back – cashback".

McCormick claimed the gadgets could detect explosives at long range, deep underground, through lead-lined rooms and multiple buildings. In fact, their antennae, which appeared to be like car radio aerials, were not connected to any electronics and had no power source. McCormick's ADE-101, was in fact a rebadged golf ball finder that was described by its US maker as "a great novelty item that you should have fun with". The antenna was "no more a radio antenna than a nine-inch nail", according to one scientist.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Business said on Tuesday that no controls were placed on the export of the fake devices until 2010 because there was "no concrete evidence about the effectiveness or otherwise of these devices. The concerns raised in the letters did not provide a sufficient basis to impose controls."

However, the Old Bailey jury heard that by 2009 British and American soldiers in Basra and Baghdad were already expressing "real concern" about the devices after x-raying them and finding no working parts inside. "I was extremely surprised by the lack of government action at the time and apparent lack of investigation," the whistleblower told the Guardian on Tuesday. "Clearly people were dying as a result of the use of this product."

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