Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the
Speaker 2: very worst people in all of history, and this week
Speaker 2: we are telling the story of a fake bomb detector
Speaker 2: that we're not getting a shitload of people killed thanks
Speaker 2: to the IDEO motor effect, and how that's weirdly relevant
Speaker 2: to our current moment in American culture. AI all this
Speaker 2: good stuff to talk with me about that. Ed zitron Ed,
Speaker 2: welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me now.
Speaker 2: Ed you're the host of the Better Offline podcast and
Speaker 2: how are you feeling about the IDEO motor effect and
Speaker 2: people being able to know what's real?
Speaker 3: I'm amazed by Clever Hans. I think Clever Hans is
Speaker 3: a hero who was unfairly eaten my German soldiers.
Speaker 2: I'm it was just desperation and not a punishment, but
Speaker 2: it does in the articles read a little bit like
Speaker 2: because they found out he wasn't really smartness sent him
Speaker 2: off to die.
Speaker 3: You were, Hans.
Speaker 2: Oh Man. So we ended last episode by introducing the Gopher,
Speaker 2: a gag gift that claimed to help you locate lost
Speaker 2: golf balls, using the magic of the IDEO motor effect
Speaker 2: into tricking people into thinking it was not an empty
Speaker 2: plastic box with an antenna. If you read the fine
Speaker 2: print at the end of those magazine ads that Sovie
Speaker 2: displayed last episode, you'll see that the manufacturer bragg that
Speaker 2: the Gopher was totally shock proof with solid state construction
Speaker 2: and no moving parts, because again it's empty, there's nothing
Speaker 2: in the body.
Speaker 3: Was shock proof something that was going to be a
Speaker 3: Is that a common problem with You can still.
Speaker 1: Get one of those on eBay, by the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's like if you drop it, it
Speaker 2: won't get disrupted because again there's nothing to disrupt. It's
Speaker 2: not a pro.
Speaker 1: Brn real for thirty four ninety nine, folks.
Speaker 2: That's a bargain at any price, Sophie.
Speaker 1: You can get one on either Eve or Poshmark not sponsored.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: You could have all the balls you need, you know, listeners.
Speaker 2: If you if you've been feeling listeners like you don't
Speaker 2: have enough balls, you know the good ballfinder people can
Speaker 2: help you have all the balls. Anyway, I'm gonna start
Speaker 2: saying balls now. One of the chief executives of the
Speaker 2: Quadro Corporation who gave us the Gopher, and the evident
Speaker 2: designer of the Gopher itself, although this is a little
Speaker 2: unclear to me, but I think the designer was a
Speaker 2: man named Wade L. Quaddlebaum, which I I just m
Speaker 2: that's a good name.
Speaker 3: That's a good name episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great names in here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wade quadle Bam was a former used car salesman from
Speaker 2: South Carolina, Yes, who founded the Quadro Corporation alongside an
Speaker 2: American businessman name Malcolm stig Row. Yeah, the mess. Malcolm
Speaker 2: stig Row, Wade quaddle Bomb. Great names left and right,
Speaker 2: come and at you. It's awesome. So I have not
Speaker 2: found much about either man's early life, which is tragic
Speaker 2: because you know, with two titans like this, they both
Speaker 2: had been doing cons their whole lives. I just I
Speaker 2: don't know what Wade Quaddlebaum was doing when he was fifteen,
Speaker 2: and that will haunt me the rest of him.
Speaker 3: Getting the shit beaten out of him for his second name, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's just the absolute crap. Just his house and every
Speaker 3: punch made him like I'm gonna call the fuck out at.
Speaker 2: Least every business meeting with Malcolm stig Roe. Malcolm just
Speaker 2: found himself punching quadle Bomb by the end of his ohit,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, man, I'm sorry. I don't know what came
Speaker 2: over me. It's okay, it happens to everybody I found. Again,
Speaker 2: not much about either man. But when Quadro first started
Speaker 2: making and selling the Gopher, they initially put it out
Speaker 2: in a couple of small southern states and it performs. Okay,
Speaker 2: it's like a reasonably successful gag gift for like Father's Day.
Speaker 2: You know, if you don't like your dad too much
Speaker 2: and he golfs, maybe you get him a gopher because
Speaker 2: they cost like twelve bucks. You know, at the time,
Speaker 2: they're not that expensive.
Speaker 3: Probably because the cogs are like two cents.
Speaker 2: Yes exactly. It costs like a dollar to make this
Speaker 2: fucking thing. So this was not exactly the kind of
Speaker 2: business that was ever going to take the world by storm.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You might be able to make some money off a
Speaker 2: thing like the Gopher, but you're not gonna get rich
Speaker 2: off of it. So Malcolm started looking at the world
Speaker 2: around him in this new post Cold war era, because
Speaker 2: it's the early nineties, and one of the things he
Speaker 2: notices is he's thinking, where else could I apply what
Speaker 2: we've got in the Gopher? Is there any way to
Speaker 2: make more money off of this idea? He notices something
Speaker 2: which is that when he turns on the TV, when
Speaker 2: he watches the news, you know, he sees a bunch
Speaker 2: of special reports on the crack epidemic and the war
Speaker 2: on drugs and all the dangerous things drug dealers are doing,
Speaker 2: how drugs are getting smuggled in the country. And when
Speaker 2: he's just watching like bullshit TV, every cartoon show, every
Speaker 2: like popular sitcom has like a very special anti drug episode.
Speaker 2: And so he puts all this together, Malcolm does, and
Speaker 2: he's like, I bet there's money if you could convince
Speaker 2: police departments and schools that you can help them find drugs,
Speaker 2: right like I because like the canine units are expensive.
Speaker 2: You know, dogs can work. I don't think he doesn't
Speaker 2: realize what a calm the dogs often are too. But
Speaker 2: they're expensive and there's not that many. I got out
Speaker 2: of a dog search once, which was bogus. I had
Speaker 2: nothing on me. I just don't ever let the police
Speaker 2: search my cars. But they tried to bring a dog out.
Speaker 2: This is like three in the morning in Brady, Texas,
Speaker 2: and they couldn't wake the dogs up. That was the
Speaker 2: excuse I got forre. I was free to go. It
Speaker 2: was like, we can't wake them up. We were going
Speaker 2: to have them search your car, but they're too sleepy.
Speaker 2: So again, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got that once, so Malcolm,
Speaker 2: and that's that's to Malcolm, that's evidence. Stuff like that
Speaker 2: is evidence of the market. Right, there's not enough of
Speaker 2: these dogs. They're way too expensive. If you could convince
Speaker 2: and you don't have to make a real product, if
Speaker 2: you can use the ideo motor effect and convince cops
Speaker 2: and principles that the same thing that helps you find
Speaker 2: golf balls can help you find drugs, then you can
Speaker 2: sell these things, and you can sell them for a
Speaker 2: shitload more. Then you can sell like a gag Father's
Speaker 2: Day gift, but you don't have to spend any more
Speaker 2: to make them. Right. Part of what's going into his
Speaker 2: calculations here is that in the early nineties, more and
Speaker 2: more schools are hiring school resource officers and they're bringing
Speaker 2: their programs into their institutions. And where there's cops in schools,
Speaker 2: you're going to have searches in schools, and actually searching
Speaker 2: for drugs by hand is a pain in the ass, right,
Speaker 2: especially if the school's big and canine units aren't cheap
Speaker 2: and they're often in heavy demand. So maybe you can't
Speaker 2: bring them to a school if there's no reason to
Speaker 2: suspect drugs are there. But if you could put something
Speaker 2: in people's hands and they can just walk them around
Speaker 2: and search whatever kids that were going to search anyway
Speaker 2: for drugs, then you've got a product right now. The
Speaker 2: problem is there's no actual scientific gizmo that can sniff
Speaker 2: out drugs. That doesn't exist today. Really, people keep trying
Speaker 2: to make them, but we haven't figured it out quite right.
Speaker 2: They certainly don't exist in the early nineties, and furthermore,
Speaker 2: neither Malcolm Norwayde have any idea how to make such
Speaker 2: a device. What they do know how to do is
Speaker 2: trick middle aged men into thinking they've developed golf ball finder.
Speaker 2: And since most cops and school principles are middle aged
Speaker 2: men who play golf, well, you can kind of see
Speaker 2: where they're thinking of file ground. So they change the
Speaker 2: name of the Gopher to the quadro tracker, and they
Speaker 2: make some cosmetic modifications to the outside so it looks
Speaker 2: a little more high tech and expensive. They're bigger. Basically,
Speaker 2: he also has paper and plastic computer chips designed and
Speaker 2: installed inside the hollow plastic case. Piace are own powered.
Speaker 2: They're like paper. They just like paper and plastic computer chips,
Speaker 2: and they're unpowered. The only purpose is to like convince
Speaker 2: idiots into thinking it's real if they open it for
Speaker 2: some reason. Right, So, Malcolm Stigroe and Quadlebaum and their
Speaker 2: partners at Quadro market this new drug detector to schools
Speaker 2: and police departments at first in the South and Southwest
Speaker 2: districts in Texas, Kansas, and Florida, so south southeast to
Speaker 2: say yes, please, and they sign up to buy some
Speaker 2: of these things, right as soon as he's like, I've
Speaker 2: got a drug detector that you can carry it. You
Speaker 2: don't need to train it, you don't need to have
Speaker 2: a dog, and it'll tell you, you know, basically, it'll give
Speaker 2: you an excuse to start exactly what you want to
Speaker 2: hear it, right, Yeah, it'll tell you what you want
Speaker 2: to hear. Right. So police departments in school start buying.
Speaker 2: And I found an article in the Kansas City Star
Speaker 2: from nineteen ninety five, this is before these were, you know,
Speaker 2: proven to be complete bullshit. That gives you an idea
Speaker 2: of how the media covered the Quadro tracker when it
Speaker 2: first starts being sold to schools and police departments. See
Speaker 2: if you can identify anything that seems incredibly fake from
Speaker 2: the text of this news article.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 2: Three Missouri schools will soon be using a new drug
Speaker 2: detection device that some critics are calling a modern day
Speaker 2: divining rod. The Quadro Tracker is a small three and
Speaker 2: a half ounce black box with an antenna. It comes
Speaker 2: with a number of insertion cards that its developers say
Speaker 2: will detect marijuana, gunpowder, and cocaine. Quadri Corporation Vice president
Speaker 2: Malcolm Rowe, who is an electrical engineer, said the Quadro
Speaker 2: Tracker works by sensing the unique wavelet produced by the
Speaker 2: molecules and controlled substances or gunpowder. Because it supposedly works
Speaker 2: through magnetism, it needs no batteries. The unit's chronology has
Speaker 2: not been patented because the company does not want to
Speaker 2: reveal how the drug detection cards work.
Speaker 3: Just a quick question, said the wavelengths, Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 3: came off the molecules.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the wave links off the molecules, yeah, just in
Speaker 2: controlled substances.
Speaker 3: It this is straight up just this is how every
Speaker 3: AI company raises money. Yeah, yeah, just like well we
Speaker 3: have he's he's an electrical engineer, he's elect Demis Hassabis
Speaker 3: who's the head of Deep Mind, and was like his
Speaker 3: a no bell in chemistry. Yep, he wouldn't possibly just
Speaker 3: say a bunch of shit. He made up history. It's like,
Speaker 3: what true detective will repeat this because if time is
Speaker 3: a flat circle, it.
Speaker 2: Is and it thinking about hearing that, I couldn't help
Speaker 2: but think like hearing this guy be like, yeah, that
Speaker 2: we haven't patented it, but like it works through you
Speaker 2: know that explanation. I couldn't help but think of the
Speaker 2: the open AI or not opening id the anthropic co
Speaker 2: founder who spoke at that Vatican event and was like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: we don't even understand the mysteries of how AI thinks.
Speaker 2: You know it It confuses and surprises even its designers
Speaker 2: because it really is as miraculous as the human mind,
Speaker 2: you know, like it's the same sort of bs WU.
Speaker 2: Obviously there is a real product with AI.
Speaker 3: But yes, except they specifically made it do the things.
Speaker 2: The mystery. Yeah, yeah, this is much more bullshit, right
Speaker 2: because there's not even like a product of any kind. Dear, really, yeah,
Speaker 2: but you do see how some of the marketing bullshit
Speaker 2: is the same. And yeah, I do find it very funny,
Speaker 2: like the idea that you're basing probable cause for searches
Speaker 2: on the device, where the designers are like, we can't
Speaker 2: tell you how it works because then someone might know
Speaker 2: how it works.
Speaker 3: Then they'll start changing the molecules.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they chang molecules on us. I'll switch it up.
Speaker 3: The molecules will be different. The drug dealers making the
Speaker 3: drugs will change the molecules to give off a different
Speaker 3: wife length.
Speaker 2: I hate it when drug dealers do that, always moving
Speaker 2: the molecules around.
Speaker 3: What are we gonna do? Then they'll then they'll do
Speaker 3: molecule science on us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, then what fun We can't we can't have
Speaker 2: to have drugs once they figure out the molecules were screwed.
Speaker 2: So three schools in Johnson County, Missouri, are said to
Speaker 2: have bought trackers for nine hundred and fifty five dollars each.
Speaker 2: So they're selling these things originally for like eight to
Speaker 2: twelve bucks. Now you're getting nine to fifty five for
Speaker 2: the ones you're selling to fucking Missouri. Other sources show
Speaker 2: that trackers were sometimes sold for as much as eight
Speaker 2: thousand dollars, especially the law enforcement agencies. BJ Hodges, director
Speaker 2: of safety and Security at Shawnee Mission School District was
Speaker 2: quoted as saying, if it does what they say they do,
Speaker 2: then it's going to be a tremendous asset not only
Speaker 2: to school districts but to law enforcement. And yeah, if
Speaker 2: it did what it said it did, it would have
Speaker 2: been but it doesn't. It's the fharanhose thing, right. This
Speaker 2: is very much a thedose thing where they're like, well,
Speaker 2: if you could really do all those paris, yeah, off
Speaker 2: of a drop of blood?
Speaker 3: You know, did they bother to do any fake detections
Speaker 3: or did.
Speaker 2: They oh yes, oh yes, they've got fake detections, yes,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, oh yeah, they didn't know where the drugs
Speaker 2: are or whatever. You know, it's very easy to trick
Speaker 2: people with this shit. As we've talked about. We just
Speaker 2: went through all the different ways people were tricked in
Speaker 2: the past by this. It's the same ones in the future,
Speaker 2: you know, or the nineties. Quadro's marketing pitch included claims
Speaker 2: that their tracker could find narcotics behind brick walls and
Speaker 2: at distances of up to half a block away. It
Speaker 2: could even what is my favorite what yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 2: could even this is my favorite part if you want
Speaker 2: to think back to uh, just what we were talking
Speaker 2: about a little earlier. They even were like, it can
Speaker 2: identify places where pot was smoked in the past, right,
Speaker 2: which it gives you. It's the same thing with the
Speaker 2: dogs where they're like, if it alerts and then there's
Speaker 2: no drugs, they're like, oh, he had pot.
Speaker 3: But that doesn't make any sense because if it's where
Speaker 3: the drugs were and it was the fumes coming off
Speaker 3: the drugs, that means the drug molecules is not giving
Speaker 3: off the wavelength.
Speaker 2: Right right, right, It doesn't make sense based on your
Speaker 2: bullshit science.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I was with you until the drug
Speaker 3: molecule wavelength that was right, but now that's proved.
Speaker 2: This is nonsense. But it's also just like you're saying that, like,
Speaker 2: if this will alert anywhere people have smoked weed, isn't
Speaker 2: that everywhere?
Speaker 3: Right? You're detecting several thousand streets in every city.
Speaker 2: If your device that you're using to search kids cars
Speaker 2: in the school parking lot can go off just because
Speaker 2: people smoked pot in the area in the past, then
Speaker 2: you can never use it in a school parking lot
Speaker 2: because you know what's happened in every school parking lot
Speaker 2: in the entire country, kids have smoked weed, you know, like.
Speaker 1: Common sense, I fear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I'm glad I found that old article because
Speaker 2: they do prove. These old articles do prove that at
Speaker 2: the time, people didn't universally believe this crap. Both they
Speaker 2: give you the explanations of people saying why they are
Speaker 2: paying all this money for nonsense because they're idiots. But
Speaker 2: you get their explanations, which is interesting. But you also
Speaker 2: see evidence of the skeptics, right, And that's not when
Speaker 2: I first started reading articles about these, and I was like,
Speaker 2: how are people buying these? The skeptics were never brought up,
Speaker 2: so it just seems like, oh, maybe everyone thought this
Speaker 2: was real, and that's not the truth. When the Quadro
Speaker 2: trackers starts being sold in like nineteen ninety five, famed
Speaker 2: skeptic and magician James Randy finds out about it and
Speaker 2: he issues a challenge to Quadro, offering five hundred and
Speaker 2: seven thousand dollars to anyone who can pass a double
Speaker 2: blind test of the device. And first off, we love you, James.
Speaker 2: And second after that comes a paragraph I did not
Speaker 2: expect to read, and this is about James Randy he
Speaker 2: conducted a test with Missouri Seminole County school district director
Speaker 2: of Security Wolfgang Halbig, who was considering buying one of
Speaker 2: the units with a known sample of marijuana. Randy asked
Speaker 2: Halbig to find the card for marijuana from a number
Speaker 2: of unidentified cards in a series of tests. Halbig did
Speaker 2: not get one correct. Now, that just sounds like a
Speaker 2: deblunking right now, then sketchy about and there isn't about
Speaker 2: the debunking. Do you know who Wolfgang Halbig is today?
Speaker 3: Ed?
Speaker 2: No, this has nothing to do with James Randy. It's
Speaker 2: just crazy that he shows up in this. Wolfgang Halbig
Speaker 2: was indeed the district director of security for Seminole County
Speaker 2: back then. In more modern days, because of his experience
Speaker 2: as a school director of security, he became a Sandy
Speaker 2: Hook shooting denier and a regular guest on Info Wars
Speaker 2: back when Alex Jones still ran it. He was a
Speaker 2: major part of the Sandy Hook to Now, that's Wolfgang Halbig.
Speaker 2: That is not the story. He's actually on a good
Speaker 2: side here because he is, like with James Randy, he
Speaker 2: is busting the fact that this thing isn't nonsense. It's
Speaker 2: just funny that it's Wolfgang Halbig.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very funny.
Speaker 2: It's also funny that he would have fallen for the tracker.
Speaker 2: He definitely would have thought this was real if James
Speaker 2: Randy hadn't saved his ass. I do love that too.
Speaker 3: It's so cool seeing how history is just full of
Speaker 3: dulluds waiting to be canned.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 3: I love it. So.
Speaker 2: Police departments in Illinois and Georgia made purchases of the
Speaker 2: Tracker despite this public debunking. Between nineteen ninety three and
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six, Quadro sold roughly one thousand units around
Speaker 2: the United States. This paragraph from the article I've been
Speaker 2: quoting from should provide some explanation as to why it
Speaker 2: comes right after they describe Randy and how big testing
Speaker 2: the tracker, tests and demonstrations in three other school systems, however,
Speaker 2: convinced administrators to buy the units. They are still drawing
Speaker 2: up guidelines about how to deal with searches of students, lockers, cars,
Speaker 2: and belongings that the tracker hits. And we know now
Speaker 2: because of the lawsuits, these weren't real tests and demos
Speaker 2: and these other school systems they were cons But you
Speaker 2: see how the problem like, this is a really perfect
Speaker 2: encapsulation of the issue that goes right back to what
Speaker 2: was happening with those scientists who got tricked by the
Speaker 2: table readings and whatever, right, which is, you've got this
Speaker 2: actual test that proves the device is bullshit. But then
Speaker 2: the news coverage is like, but other school tests showed
Speaker 2: it works. Those aren't real tests. They don't detail the tests,
Speaker 2: They don't say what happened, They don't analyze those tests.
Speaker 2: They don't ask are those tests real? Where they conducted
Speaker 2: by anyone but the Quadro corporation where they double blind.
Speaker 2: They just report three other tests say it's real. Right,
Speaker 2: And that's how shit like this winds up spreading everywhere
Speaker 2: and keep spreading.
Speaker 3: They keep doing this today. This is the AI industry.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, she's a fuckulazy journalism even when you had
Speaker 2: all the ingredients to do decent journalism. Now, Rowan Quadlebaum
Speaker 2: had other allies in their quest to push the tracker
Speaker 2: into every school and cop shop they could find. Guy
Speaker 2: Lee Womack, an assistant US attorney, used his office illegally
Speaker 2: to market the Quadro tracker after he paid Quadro nearly
Speaker 2: fourteen thousand dollars for the distribution rights in Alabama, Arkansas,
Speaker 2: New Mexico, and Wyoming. So initially it seems like this
Speaker 2: thing might be taken off. Right. You've got corrupt members
Speaker 2: of the government who are like literally selling this thing
Speaker 2: and using their position to conmitce law enforcement agencies to
Speaker 2: buy it. Maybe this could work. You know, it's never
Speaker 2: been a real product, but you might be able to
Speaker 2: keep it going for a while. As Jeffrey Stern wrote
Speaker 2: in a twenty fifteen piece for Vanity Fair summarizing what
Speaker 2: came next as Quadro Corporation grew, Row attended security conferences.
Speaker 2: At one of them, he met Sam and Joan Tree,
Speaker 2: a British couple with a modest and legitimate business selling
Speaker 2: evidence bags, fingerprint powder, and other supplies to police departments
Speaker 2: in England. Meanwhile, Rose Device had attracted the attention of
Speaker 2: the FBI, which tested one, determined it was worthless, and
Speaker 2: sent out a teletype warning to law enforcement agencies. Wrote
Speaker 2: a camp to England and moved in with the Trees.
Speaker 2: It didn't take long before a new version of Rose
Speaker 2: Device with a new name was being pitched to law
Speaker 2: enforcement agencies in England. So that all happens in ninety six,
Speaker 2: the FBI debunks the tracker and proves its bullshit. He
Speaker 2: flees the country with the trees to start up a
Speaker 2: new grift, and that same year a US District court
Speaker 2: in Texas. Here's the lawsuit USA versus the Quadri Corporation,
Speaker 2: which listed Raymond Fisk, Wade Quaddlebaum, and Malcolm Roe as
Speaker 2: representatives per an article in the nineteen ninety six issue
Speaker 2: of News Briefs. According to the indictment, the company marketed
Speaker 2: the Quadro Positive Molecular Locator as a detection device that
Speaker 2: used a chip to sense molecular emissions of anything from
Speaker 2: illicit drugs to explosives. Scientific analysis revealed that the device
Speaker 2: is simply a hollow box with the radio antenna attached,
Speaker 2: and the chip is a piece of paper between two
Speaker 2: pieces of plastics. Quadro has sold about a thousand of
Speaker 2: the devices at prices for between three hundred and ninety
Speaker 2: five dollars to eight thousand dollars to school district's law
Speaker 2: enforcement and airports.
Speaker 3: Great, I know how this works. So you were you
Speaker 3: were completely correct that this is the gopher. It is
Speaker 3: the same thing.
Speaker 2: It's the same thing, the same thing.
Speaker 3: They were small and they gave a gun handle.
Speaker 2: Yes, you gotta have a gun hand.
Speaker 3: Ground handle it real like whole monitors can go around being.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, yeah, get me pull blah, gotta have a
Speaker 2: holster for it.
Speaker 3: This shit. This was pre blo though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder if any cops shot someone while reaching
Speaker 2: for the Quadra tracker. I mean probably gotta be one
Speaker 2: or at least a locker. So by this point, Quadro
Speaker 2: has expanded the number of cards they've offered, and they've
Speaker 2: added explosives to the mix, which really gives an idea
Speaker 2: like this piece of snake oil the potential to kill
Speaker 2: a lot of people. Once they're like it's a bomb
Speaker 2: detector too, you know you've escalated the human harm because
Speaker 2: if a drug detector fails in a high school, I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna say obviously kids in high school with drugs
Speaker 2: sometimes it ends tragically. But nine times out of ten,
Speaker 2: if some kid is holding at school, nine times out
Speaker 2: of ten it's like a joint or something, right, And
Speaker 2: if they don't get charged for possession, nothing catastrophic is
Speaker 2: going to happen. But nine times out of ten, if
Speaker 2: a bomb detector fucks up, you've got a much worse
Speaker 2: Like scenario.
Speaker 3: Here, statistically speaking, is it worse? But if it's a
Speaker 3: false positive or a false negative.
Speaker 2: Right, well, I mean that I guess that is true
Speaker 2: that Like I guess both of both are bad. Actually
Speaker 2: both are really bad because false positive with drugs means
Speaker 2: you're going to get fucked up and in trouble and
Speaker 2: possibly if your life ruined over not having drugs or
Speaker 2: having drugs either equally bad to me honestly, or with
Speaker 2: the bomb, false positive means people are gonna think you
Speaker 2: have a bomb, and maybe something really bad happens to
Speaker 2: you or it.
Speaker 3: Doesn't notice a bomb and then you get blown up.
Speaker 2: Right as the biggest story. A false negative on drugs
Speaker 2: not a big deal. A false negative on a bomb,
Speaker 2: big deal, right, huge deal?
Speaker 3: Not great?
Speaker 2: Yeah, potentially like world changing deal depending on where the
Speaker 2: bomb is. So the Quadroe did play a bit role
Speaker 2: in at least one tragedy, thankfully, not like what we
Speaker 2: were talking about. In nineteen ninety six, the Texas Department
Speaker 2: of Public Safety called a search for the body of
Speaker 2: a seven year old murder victim, Carlin Smith. They used
Speaker 2: a Quadroe tracker, presumably with a little Boy corpse card
Speaker 2: to locate him. I don't know what card they put
Speaker 2: in there. It didn't find anything because it couldn't. And
Speaker 2: that's evil because they're giving you know, the family hope.
Speaker 2: It's just gross to get involved with your snake oil
Speaker 2: in a search for a murdered seven year old. I
Speaker 2: think I think that's evil and.
Speaker 3: Like take it, taking it really seriously and being like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we'll find your kid. Let me use this box with
Speaker 3: nothing in it, bit of now coming out of it,
Speaker 3: bucked up. It's got a gun handle. That was very serious.
Speaker 2: Got a gun handle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of ghostbusters. But your son isn't a
Speaker 3: ghost we promise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, or maybe he is. You know, the quadro
Speaker 2: will figure it out. Yes, But you know who didn't
Speaker 2: lose their sons tragically? I hope maybe no way to
Speaker 2: not really. Here's ads M and we're back. So the
Speaker 2: good news is the tracker was exposed and forbidden from
Speaker 2: being sold in the United States under court order before
Speaker 2: anyone got provably killed due to this piece of shit.
Speaker 2: And even though the FBI and the subsequent court case
Speaker 2: both proved beyond any doubt that the tracker was worthless,
Speaker 2: some users still believed. This is a quote from that
Speaker 2: news brief article. I haven't given up on the device,
Speaker 2: said John Beltzer, the campus officer at Blue Valley Northwest
Speaker 2: High School in Beaumont, Texas, which paid about nine hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty dollars for the device. I don't believe the skeptics,
Speaker 2: the scientists, or the FBI. It may not work on
Speaker 2: the exact principles that the company says it does, but
Speaker 2: it still has some merits, added belt Betzer. Mike Thomas,
Speaker 2: safety coordinator at Blue Valley, uses the device as at
Speaker 2: a turrent for students and remains convinced it effectively uncovers
Speaker 2: drugs and gunpowder. I did it myself, said Thomas. I
Speaker 2: found hidden shotgun shells. Wow, great guys, hidden by whom,
Speaker 2: hidden by whom. Well. Also, like this is just you
Speaker 2: think that you're a good cop and that like you
Speaker 2: couldn't be tricked, and so you wind up defending this
Speaker 2: bullshit device because you're defending your own ego. That's the
Speaker 2: brilliance of any time you can sell shit like this
Speaker 2: to serious people.
Speaker 3: You know, my job is almost as if the more
Speaker 3: wrong you get, the more you double down.
Speaker 2: Right. Interesting, Yeah, it's this thing of most people who
Speaker 2: are quote unquote searching for drugs or bombs. To be honest,
Speaker 2: aren't really don't have a real job that actually helps anyone, right,
Speaker 2: not that you know, especially finding bombs. That job is important.
Speaker 2: But most people who can say that's my job are
Speaker 2: just a cop who took like a class to get
Speaker 2: certified to get a little extra pay. They're not like
Speaker 2: an actual expert on drugs or on bombs or any
Speaker 2: of that. There's a lot of that fraudulent stuff, and
Speaker 2: like police training, that's a big part of while so
Speaker 2: not again, not that there aren't actual police explosives experts,
Speaker 2: but look at how the LAPD, for example, handled high
Speaker 2: explosives not too long ago. There's some fun stories of
Speaker 2: that in the recent past. And I think that's what's
Speaker 2: happening here is some cops who like, well, I did
Speaker 2: the training on drugs, I did the training bombs. I
Speaker 2: have to know what a real thing is. If I
Speaker 2: think this device is real, it can't just me being
Speaker 2: dumb and getting tricked by this idio motor effect. It
Speaker 2: has to work because I'm a professional.
Speaker 3: You know. And it goes the whole way round to
Speaker 3: being like I know better than everyone else, better than
Speaker 3: the Feds, yea, than these troublesome scientists with their fact finding.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3: Uh, these woke scientists.
Speaker 2: Fucking wokey scientists. And one of my favorite fun little
Speaker 2: side facts here is that one of the school districts
Speaker 2: who kept using this device even after it was banned
Speaker 2: was the McKinney Independent School District in Texas, where my
Speaker 2: mom used to teach. They kept using this thing again
Speaker 2: after the FBI said don't use it. They keep using
Speaker 2: this because it's a deterrent. Right. This is a from
Speaker 2: one school official. We're not looking to nail a particular kid.
Speaker 2: We're looking to send a message. Likewise, a Louisiana principal said,
Speaker 2: I heard that there had been some trouble with it,
Speaker 2: but I tell you what, I'm impressed with it. And
Speaker 2: this is not necessarily going to be used to catch
Speaker 2: kids with drugs. If my having this thing keeps kids
Speaker 2: from bringing drugs on campus, it's worth its weight in gold. Right,
Speaker 2: it'll just scare them off, you know that need to
Speaker 2: be real. That's a really bad attitude to have towards
Speaker 2: your job, presumably finding deadly substances on kids.
Speaker 3: If that's yeah, something you actually take Seriously, if you
Speaker 3: have this thing in your head about how the dangers
Speaker 3: of drugs know, would you not worry about not finding drugs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, concern that they can't find the things that's supposed
Speaker 2: to find, that they just discourage kids is really frustrating.
Speaker 2: So guy Leewomac was ultimately forced to confess that he'd
Speaker 2: used his office to sell snake oil, and he winds
Speaker 2: up having to quit the state attorney, and I think
Speaker 2: he pays like a five grand fine. The men behind Quadro,
Speaker 2: including Roe, were acquitted by a jury, though, and found
Speaker 2: not guilty on three counts of mail fraud and one
Speaker 2: count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. And I think
Speaker 2: the main reason why is that their lawyers convinced the
Speaker 2: jury that they didn't think that they were committing a fraud, right,
Speaker 2: as long as they think it's real. And because all
Speaker 2: these cops are going off on the stand and being like, well,
Speaker 2: I think it works. How could you know that the
Speaker 2: executives are lying, Well, these cops are saying they think
Speaker 2: it's real. Even if it's not real, these people probably
Speaker 2: believed it was, and so it's not fraud. Right. So
Speaker 2: if you want to know who is to blame for
Speaker 2: what happened next, because the fact that these guys don't
Speaker 2: get convicted gets a lot of people killed, mostly in Iraq.
Speaker 2: And the response is on the cops, because the cops
Speaker 2: stopped these people from getting arrested, because they gave them
Speaker 2: a way out of this court case of the fraud
Speaker 2: finding right Jesus Christ. Now I should note, though I
Speaker 2: did find exactly one cop at the time who identified
Speaker 2: correctly what was going on with this thing. The commander
Speaker 2: of a Jefferson County, Texas drug task force told the
Speaker 2: Providence Journal we played with it in the office and
Speaker 2: got mixed results. Sometimes we'd find something, sometimes not. Our
Speaker 2: rate of success was about half. I think it was
Speaker 2: either blind luck or a wiji board effect. It's not
Speaker 2: nearly as consistent as drug sniffing dogs, but there are
Speaker 2: no vet bills. So again he's like, well, this is
Speaker 2: a wija board thing, but hey, it's cheap, great.
Speaker 3: Cheap, and it's not as good as dogs, which are
Speaker 3: also kind of a wija board thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's not just wija boards all the way down.
Speaker 3: Just wija boarding through our lives. Yeah, please tell me
Speaker 3: it's not the same fucking people who do the bomb stuff,
Speaker 3: is it?
Speaker 2: You'd a hope, but it is actually ed. It definitely is.
Speaker 2: So while all this is going on, Row and the Trees,
Speaker 2: that's that husband and wife couple who are selling stuff
Speaker 2: to cops in England. They're back in the UK repackaging
Speaker 2: the Quadro, which had been the Gopher, into a new form.
Speaker 2: Now there's a little more opacity here as to like
Speaker 2: who made which new version of this device win, But
Speaker 2: from what I can tell, Row in the Trees produce
Speaker 2: a new version of the track or that they called
Speaker 2: the mole mol e all in caps, I think it
Speaker 2: stood for something, and contracted a salesman named Gary Bolton
Speaker 2: to sell the mole right, which they're billing as a
Speaker 2: bomb detector. It'll find bodies, it'll find guns, it'll find drugs,
Speaker 2: whatever you need. Right. Bolton was a longtime friend of
Speaker 2: the Trees, and together they all formed a new corporation
Speaker 2: called Global Technical to sell the mole. At first they're
Speaker 2: all friends, but because the mole was meant for sale
Speaker 2: in the UK and Europe, Bolton decides like, well, if
Speaker 2: I want to really get this thing moving, I need
Speaker 2: to get a legitimate group of people who were attached
Speaker 2: to the defense industry to say it's real. And the
Speaker 2: best people is like, the Royal Engineers have this team
Speaker 2: of guys who like test stuff to see if it works. Right.
Speaker 2: So if you can get the Royal Engineers to say
Speaker 2: this thing works, then you can sell it pretty much anywhere,
Speaker 2: because the Royal Engineers are very much professionals. Right For
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine, he submits one of the moles to
Speaker 2: the engineer's support team and he asked them to repair
Speaker 2: a report on it for the BBC. They found it
Speaker 2: was accurate only about thirty percent of the time and
Speaker 2: could not be relied on. Now that should have been
Speaker 2: the end of it, right, Well, the Royal Engineers found
Speaker 2: it doesn't work. But despite that, the same article notes
Speaker 2: that several years later, like four or five years later,
Speaker 2: when his house gets rated, Bolton's helm gets rated because
Speaker 2: of the crimes he's about to commit. Police find two
Speaker 2: letters of support from the Royal Engineers in mister Bolton's offices,
Speaker 2: and he'd use these letters to pitch governments and law
Speaker 2: enforcement agencies around the world on the mole by saying, look,
Speaker 2: the Royal Engineers said it works, even though they didn't,
Speaker 2: and he definitely had the papers from them saying that
Speaker 2: it worked, even though they're supposed to have said that
Speaker 2: it didn't. One article I found on the on corruption
Speaker 2: Tracker claims that Bolton doctored the letters, But that's not
Speaker 2: necessarily true because Bolten remains involved with the Royal Engineers
Speaker 2: directly for some period of time after they test the
Speaker 2: mole and find it's bullshit, and in fact, after that
Speaker 2: test they will help him actively sell the mole, So
Speaker 2: I don't know that he did doctor those certificates. The
Speaker 2: first big raw for the mole, yeah, it's interesting. We'll
Speaker 2: cover that more in a little bit. The first big
Speaker 2: hurrah for the mole and for Global Technical was a
Speaker 2: home demo that Bolton carried out. This impressed a businessman
Speaker 2: named Jim McCormick enough that McCormick offers to help them
Speaker 2: sell the thing in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Now
Speaker 2: at this point, Bolton has started to get greedy, and
Speaker 2: so has everyone else, because especially I think this guy
Speaker 2: McCormick comes in and says, we could sell tens of
Speaker 2: millions of dollars of these. So all of the guys
Speaker 2: who'd been working together start planning on how to go
Speaker 2: to business on their own right. They don't want to
Speaker 2: share the profits with the others. As Jeffrey Stern wrote
Speaker 2: for Vanity fair Quote, the group would soon fall out
Speaker 2: amid rancoris charges and counter charges. All of them went
Speaker 2: on the cell versions of the tracker, But it was
Speaker 2: McCormick who had the greatest ambition. By two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: he was going around England with a function prototype, trying
Speaker 2: to find a company to manufacture a heavier model with
Speaker 2: a more premium feel. A series of awkward encounters ensued
Speaker 2: in which he tried to persuade factories to build something
Speaker 2: they knew wasn't going to work. But by two thousand
Speaker 2: and six he had found a manufacturer willing to sign on.
Speaker 2: McCormick was no longer a distributor now he was a
Speaker 2: producer too. So that's what happens with all of these guys.
Speaker 2: There's going to be so many different versions with different
Speaker 2: names of bomb detectors that are all the gopher.
Speaker 3: There's four or five literally the same tag, all.
Speaker 2: The same sold to twenty something countries around the world,
Speaker 2: thousands of them, all the same thing under different names. Right,
Speaker 2: it's wild. Now we'll talk a bit about some of
Speaker 2: these other grift mold devices. But I want to say now,
Speaker 2: regardless of all the different things these names are sold under, again,
Speaker 2: this is just the Gopher McCormick's variant. Like most used cards,
Speaker 2: you're supposed to load a card with the scent or
Speaker 2: essence of what everything you want to find. But that's
Speaker 2: not the only way grifters tried to pretend these things worked.
Speaker 2: Here's a quote from a different BBC article. Samuel Tree
Speaker 2: claimed the detectors could track down missing people if a
Speaker 2: photograph of them was placed inside a technique. He said
Speaker 2: he used to search for Madeleine McCann, who went missing
Speaker 2: as a toddler in two thousand and seven, and two
Speaker 2: other children. No, no, it's vile.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh, just if you're an American listener. Mattie mccamber's
Speaker 3: Galho went missing in Portugal, I believe. Yeah, No, one
Speaker 3: really knows what happens. There's tons of conjuncture. Horrible, some
Speaker 3: dickhead with like a fucking goat, like just a metal
Speaker 3: stick in a box where Yeah, I'll find Maddie McCann. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: because it's alarmingly close to the A power in JoJo's
Speaker 3: bizarre adventure. I don't like any of this at all.
Speaker 3: Use a photo to find the missing this is firm
Speaker 3: purpose unbelievable, really is.
Speaker 2: So Again, Madeline is still missing tragically, so his's none
Speaker 2: of this worked right, But the fact that Tree made
Speaker 2: the news trying to find her is really bleak right,
Speaker 2: and he's doing it because it was the biggest story
Speaker 2: in the UK for a while.
Speaker 3: This is this girl goings the most British thing I've
Speaker 3: ever heard.
Speaker 2: Some connaughts, Yeah, And he uses the pr from this
Speaker 2: to sell The version that the Trees make is called
Speaker 2: the Alpha six and they sell it to the Egyptian government,
Speaker 2: to the Thai government and to Mexico for about three
Speaker 2: two hundred and thirteen dollars per gadget, although it varies
Speaker 2: depending on who they're selling it to. Their highest value
Speaker 2: sale was twenty four thousand dollars and over a few years.
Speaker 2: They're only doing this for like four or five years.
Speaker 2: They make two million dollars at least selling these things,
Speaker 2: and for the BBC. They do it all while working
Speaker 2: from home. The Bedfordshire couple bought cheap plastic parts from
Speaker 2: China and assemble the devices in a shed in their
Speaker 2: back garden. These things cost like two dollars to put together.
Speaker 2: They're just snapping in together and then selling them like
Speaker 2: the Thai government for four thousand dollars or whatever. It's nuts,
Speaker 2: you love it, good stuff.
Speaker 3: It explains how every con happens. It's just if enough
Speaker 3: people believe something, everyone just goes eh, fuck it.
Speaker 2: And if enough people who have the right job titles
Speaker 2: say this is real, you'll actually kind of find offensive
Speaker 2: that someone should test it exactly. Yeah. So Bolton's device,
Speaker 2: after the mole, the one that he starts coming up
Speaker 2: with when everyone breaks off on their own, is the
Speaker 2: g T two hundred, and this is going to be
Speaker 2: the most famous of these Gopher descended bullshit detectors. Bolton
Speaker 2: lucks out by the fact that after everyone else split
Speaker 2: up to make their own you know, drug Detectors nine
Speaker 2: to eleven happens, right, that's like right after they all
Speaker 2: go into business for themselves. And Bolton has connections to
Speaker 2: the US government, and he has connections all over the world.
Speaker 2: He's a very well connected guy. So he realizes as
Speaker 2: soon as this happens, everyone's going to be way more
Speaker 2: scared about terrorism now because of what just happened, and
Speaker 2: no one's going to be thinking because people are not
Speaker 2: thinking in the wake of nine to eleven. I can
Speaker 2: sell these fucking things like hotcakes. I can sell these
Speaker 2: everywhere and people won't even double check to see if
Speaker 2: they work because they right. Yep, yep, it's the It's
Speaker 2: taken money from a fucking baby. The BBC describes as
Speaker 2: sales methods. Sales demonstrations would be rigged to succeed. Anyone
Speaker 2: skeptical of the devices would be publicly humiliated, and users
Speaker 2: were instructed not to open the equipment to avoid damaging
Speaker 2: the sensitive technology inside. We can't look inside. It's sensitive.
Speaker 3: You might break in. How we find the bomb molecule wavelength?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it'll have the bomb molecular will escape.
Speaker 3: Every bomb gives off a distinct wavelength from the molecules
Speaker 3: it's made of. It's so not how we find them. Yep.
Speaker 2: So some of the devices came with detector cards, as
Speaker 2: I've said, which were programmed. The fraudsters claim to detect
Speaker 2: everything from explosives to human beings and even dollar bills
Speaker 2: through concrete, water and from great distances. Fraudster Gary Bolton
Speaker 2: even charged the Royal Engineers thousands of pounds for useless
Speaker 2: cards that went missing from a trade fair in which
Speaker 2: uniformed members of the Royal Engineer Corps were paid to
Speaker 2: help sell the g T two hundred right if you
Speaker 2: went again. So the claim is that he falsified those things.
Speaker 2: But after they prove, after they give this thing up,
Speaker 2: like say this is bullshit, the Royal Engineers take money
Speaker 2: to sell it for him. They're like at trade shows
Speaker 2: shilling this and handing it legitimacy, even though they know
Speaker 2: it doesn't work. I wonder why. I wonder who got
Speaker 2: money right. I've never seen that looked into enough. But
Speaker 2: it's very fucking sketchy that the Royal Engineers are involved
Speaker 2: with this product as long as they are now. I
Speaker 2: don't know precisely what happened here. I don't know if
Speaker 2: they just didn't know that the g T two hundred
Speaker 2: was different from the mole, which is the device they tested.
Speaker 2: Home Office scientist Tim Sheldon addressed this sorta in a
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen BBC interview after the scandal around this all
Speaker 2: came out, and said the involvement of UK government agencies
Speaker 2: and promoting this is very embarrassing and awkward. Yes, it is,
Speaker 2: and the Royal Engineers weren't the only ones. The British
Speaker 2: embassies in Mexico City and Manila were convinced to back
Speaker 2: the g T two hundred and basically helped sell them
Speaker 2: to those governments by saying, Yep, it's real. Zobe's going
Speaker 2: to show you this is what this thing looks like,
Speaker 2: the g T two hundred, this fake bomb detector. It's
Speaker 2: got a pistol grip, it's got this antenna thing that
Speaker 2: swivels around on the top, and it's got a whole stack.
Speaker 3: What are the stickers for?
Speaker 2: The stickers are so you can make your own detection cards,
Speaker 2: so you just put we'll talk about how that works
Speaker 2: in a second. Actually, ed one great question though, what
Speaker 2: are the sticks Because there's sheets of stickers and like
Speaker 2: a jar that you're supposed to sticker to put the
Speaker 2: stickers in, and like a substance in order to charge
Speaker 2: them so that it can search for that substance basically.
Speaker 3: And the Bross card reader, of course, I assume Bros
Speaker 3: is the best.
Speaker 2: The molecules, of course, molecules love brass. Everybody knows that, right, right, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So not long after this point, the United States invaded Iraq,
Speaker 2: Bolton starts working with another international salesman, James McCormick, because
Speaker 2: McCormick has better connections to industrial manufacturers. Now in two
Speaker 2: thousand and three or four, By that year, versions of
Speaker 2: these devices are in use in something like twenty countries
Speaker 2: worldwide by enough people that the makers had been forced
Speaker 2: to devise new methods for tricking their customers in order
Speaker 2: to make sure they didn't catch on. Users were instructed.
Speaker 2: This is my favorite part. They start telling people when
Speaker 2: they start selling these for thousands or tens of thousands
Speaker 2: to militaries, They're like, we can't just tell them to
Speaker 2: just walk around with it. We have to explain how
Speaker 2: they can charge it, because they're not gonna they're gonna
Speaker 2: they're gonna think it's sketchy if there's no power. So
Speaker 2: they tell them, all you need is static electricity. So
Speaker 2: if you just before you start your shift, each new guard,
Speaker 2: you grab it and you just sort of shuffle around
Speaker 2: with it to build up enough static charge to power it,
Speaker 2: and that makes it work. So you've got all in
Speaker 2: like Iraq, and then tail it all these like soul
Speaker 2: mangers who were just like shuffling around in their socks
Speaker 2: with this thing to charge it up before they go
Speaker 2: out on shift.
Speaker 3: Anyone did little shuffle before they go and use the
Speaker 3: thing that kills them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you shuffle around and then you go walk
Speaker 2: past like a line of cars, and if the antended dips,
Speaker 2: that means that that car has explosives or whatever in it. Right,
Speaker 2: it's a positive alert, you know. Now, obviously these give
Speaker 2: a lot of false positives, and when they give a
Speaker 2: false positive, as they often did, the company representatives would
Speaker 2: either say, oh, there must have been a bomb there earlier,
Speaker 2: or they'd blame user error or the weather. Right, you know,
Speaker 2: you've got a lot of excuses. Oh, the weather was bad.
Speaker 2: Oh it was that humid. Well, that can't work in
Speaker 2: that exact humidity. You know, you guys didn't know that, right.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and six, McCormick inks a deal with
Speaker 2: a major manufacturing company to produce a much larger and
Speaker 2: more military feeling premium version of his device, the Ade six'
Speaker 2: five to. One this was directly manufactured for the new
Speaker 2: market that had opened up and Liberated, rock which now
Speaker 2: faced daily roadside bombings and suicide, bombings and had a
Speaker 2: real need for an accurate bomb. Detector very few places
Speaker 2: have ever needed one more than A rac. Does in
Speaker 2: two thousand and, six.
Speaker 4: Question is there a reason it's CALLED ade six five?
Speaker 1: One does?
Speaker 2: That it sounds as eighty stand for?
Speaker 1: Anything why are they what are they?
Speaker 2: Doing automatic detection equipment or. Something i'm gonna, guess but
Speaker 2: it's likely. Too it's just it sounds more.
Speaker 3: Military i'm just wondering what an upgraded version looks. Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: yeah well what's upgraded about? It does it have a
Speaker 3: second thing that lies to?
Speaker 2: YOU i think it's. Heavier it's. Heavier oh the second
Speaker 2: thing that lies, now just the?
Speaker 3: One how did they not sell like fifty SKUs of this?
Speaker 3: Thing just like like they got this in pink for
Speaker 3: your female. SOLDIERS i think.
Speaker 2: That's how when they sell one for like thirty, grand
Speaker 2: they probably just make a bigger one and say, like,
Speaker 2: oh this will detect, plutonium like hell, yeah but it's
Speaker 2: a little. UNCLEAR i did find how they like the
Speaker 2: instruction manual claimed it. Worked so this is THE bbc
Speaker 2: kind of summarizing the instructions you got with this. Thing
Speaker 2: if you're some fucking soldier in The Iraqi. Army number
Speaker 2: ONE a small amount of the substance the user wished to,
Speaker 2: detect such as, explosives was put in a clip top
Speaker 2: jar along with a sticker that was intended to absorb
Speaker 2: the vapors of the. Substance the sticker was then placed
Speaker 2: on a credit card sized, card which was read by
Speaker 2: a card reader and inserted into the. Device the user
Speaker 2: would then a hold the, device which had no working,
Speaker 2: electronics and the swiveling antenna was meant to indicate the
Speaker 2: position of the. Substance so, again these things cost about
Speaker 2: two pounds sterling to, make but they could be sold
Speaker 2: for five thousand pounds or so on up to like
Speaker 2: twenty something thousand and one even sells one of these
Speaker 2: cells for half a million. Dollars that has to he
Speaker 2: has to put it in like a big ass, box,
Speaker 2: Right and so.
Speaker 3: You put the, sticker, yeah by a bit of bomb, residue,
Speaker 3: Right and they are in the, jar of, course because
Speaker 3: how else would the vapors be kept.
Speaker 2: And the sticker soaks it.
Speaker 3: Up how would the vapors be stopped from escaping before
Speaker 3: you put them in the.
Speaker 2: JOB i don't know how the vapors are supposed to,
Speaker 2: work And i'm not really sure how the vapors are
Speaker 2: supposed to be functioning. HERE i don't think they.
Speaker 3: KNOW i don't think they makes me think that anyone
Speaker 3: could scam most. GOVERNMENTS i THINK i.
Speaker 2: COULD i THINK i. Could, yeah absolutely need to go
Speaker 2: we need to go back to JUST i THINK i
Speaker 2: could just sell THE Us army water and claim that
Speaker 2: LIKE i prayed to, it and it'll stop. Bullets you
Speaker 2: don't need vests. Anymore just drink the special.
Speaker 3: Water you.
Speaker 2: KNOW i only got to sell a few of. Them
Speaker 2: at the prices The army is going to pay.
Speaker 3: Superior hydration, mechanisms, yeah for advanced, warfighters and it's just.
Speaker 2: Water yeah, yeah, yeah war, water war water. Water so
Speaker 2: the fact that these things now look is expensive as
Speaker 2: military grade gear made them sell like. It that's why
Speaker 2: they're getting more money and the New iraqi government goes
Speaker 2: gaga for these. Devices one of the gross things initially
Speaker 2: in like early, reporting is like the news will write
Speaker 2: about this as if, oh they just are too, dumb
Speaker 2: they didn't know that it was, fake because like they got.
Speaker 2: Tricked they're not. Tricked The iraqi government doesn't buy these
Speaker 2: because The iraqi government is. Tricked The iraqi government buys
Speaker 2: a bunch of these because they're. Bribed all of the
Speaker 2: people buying anything for The iraqi military are, corrupt because
Speaker 2: every Single iraqi government official in this period is hideously
Speaker 2: and horribly. Corrupt and that's basically still true. Today these
Speaker 2: are not being bought because they really think they're. Real
Speaker 2: McCormick And bolton are saying, like, hey it's your job
Speaker 2: to buy these for The iraqi. Army here's several million,
Speaker 2: dollars and then they'll buy a, bunch, right that's what's.
Speaker 2: Happening they're not, Idiot they're, corrupt right. Right iraq becomes
Speaker 2: the number one buyer worldwide for fake bomb detectors in
Speaker 2: the space of a few, years spending more than fifty
Speaker 2: three million pounds on no less than five thousand of these,
Speaker 2: devices making the worldwide sales value of the ade sixty
Speaker 2: five to one in similar models at least tens of
Speaker 2: millions of dollars over just three to four, years potentially
Speaker 2: as much as one hundred million. Dollars we know that
Speaker 2: McCormick falls in love with selling To, iraq who would
Speaker 2: buy versions of the eighty six y five to one
Speaker 2: for as much as forty thousand dollars Per Vanity. Fair
Speaker 2: McCormick was also giving volume discounts and paying, kickbacks according to,
Speaker 2: investigators who have also suggested that he was diverting money
Speaker 2: into offshore. Accounts but whatever the precise, number McCormick was flying,
Speaker 2: high even by the lofty standards of defense. Contracting when
Speaker 2: combined with sales and a dozen, others McCormick's income over
Speaker 2: five years approached eighty million. Dollars so he does very
Speaker 2: well off.
Speaker 3: Of this in like any we haven't even got to
Speaker 3: all the people that. Died, no, no we're.
Speaker 2: Getting, there very. Good, yeah we're getting. There and like
Speaker 2: any guy who, buys you, know gets suddenly, rich he's
Speaker 2: gonna have splurge on some rich guy. Purchases he buys
Speaker 2: a five gillion dollar house In bath with an indoor sound.
Speaker 2: System heywhere? Else, well but he bought this one From Nicholas.
Speaker 2: Cage this Was Nicholas cage's former. House you can only
Speaker 2: buy one of. Those, WELL i guess you probably could buy.
Speaker 2: More but he does Buy Nicholas cage's old house In.
Speaker 2: Bath he gets a vacation home In. Cyphrus he buys a,
Speaker 2: yacht but he rarely uses. Either, instead his main hobby
Speaker 2: is pitching and selling this thing to new. Marks, now
Speaker 2: when you're using a bomb detector to find bombs and
Speaker 2: the bomb detector doesn't, work it's not going to take
Speaker 2: long before people start. Dying, sure we don't know exactly
Speaker 2: how many people get killed by, this, because among other,
Speaker 2: things in the early, days whenever an eighty six five
Speaker 2: to one is clearly responsible for like a failure in
Speaker 2: a bomb getting through, again the government is full of
Speaker 2: crup people getting kicked. Backs so they just pretend that didn't. Happen,
Speaker 2: Right it's very. Easy this is also this is The Iraqi.
Speaker 2: Army it's super easy for the company to be, like,
Speaker 2: well they're just not very good at using. It it's user.
Speaker 2: Right they fucked up because they are The Iraqi army
Speaker 2: was not very well. Trained, still during one massive wave
Speaker 2: of bombings that his detectors failed to detect in two
Speaker 2: thousand and, eight he scheduled McCormick scheduled a press conference
Speaker 2: From baghdad in which he stood with the head Of
Speaker 2: iraq's bomb squad and pitched his detector seemingly without. Shame
Speaker 2: what makes this all infuriating is that the G p
Speaker 2: two hundred and the other precursor devices had by this
Speaker 2: point been repeatedly tested and demonstrated as fraudulent in THE
Speaker 2: uk and The United, states where they were manufactured Per
Speaker 2: Corruption tracker. Quote despite the fact that the devices were
Speaker 2: tested again in two thousand and, one this time BY
Speaker 2: Uk Home office scientists and again found to be, fake
Speaker 2: the companies continue to operate and sell, them and received
Speaker 2: promotional support from various branches of THE uk, government including
Speaker 2: The embassy In, MEXICO Uk trade And industry who provided
Speaker 2: support for displaying the equipment at trade, fairs and members
Speaker 2: of the military who exhibited the. Devices predecessor devices had
Speaker 2: been tested and found useless by The United states The
Speaker 2: San Dia National laboratories in two thousand and two and
Speaker 2: by THE Us Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technology division in
Speaker 2: two thousand and. Five SO us And british soldiers In
Speaker 2: iraq are not using these, things and part of what
Speaker 2: eventually causes a problem for these guys is that the
Speaker 2: SMART us And british soldiers In iraq realized their bullshit and, realized,
Speaker 2: like wait a, second our lives are on the line
Speaker 2: by guys using these to look for. Bombs whoa somebody's
Speaker 2: got to do something about. This they start pushing in
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine to remove these things from fucking.
Speaker 2: Checkpoints the BBC's newsnight focused a special report on the,
Speaker 2: matter and regulators in law enforcement In england started gathering
Speaker 2: evidence and carrying out the early stages of an. Investigation
Speaker 2: and that's still this, time everyone's still using. Them maybe
Speaker 2: actually ed that year they Rated james McCormick's home and
Speaker 2: took a bunch of, Evidence so you'd, think, well they're
Speaker 2: probably not still selling them at that, point, right, Right,
Speaker 2: yeah because you'd think, so that's the. POINT a detective
Speaker 2: constable In, London Joanne law does attempt to stop these
Speaker 2: things from being sold anymore because they're, fake and she
Speaker 2: runs Into England's Export Control, law which only gives the
Speaker 2: government the ability to ban military hardware and security equipment that's.
Speaker 2: Electronic and since there's no electronics in these, things they
Speaker 2: can't initially be. Banned the fact that their fake protects,
Speaker 2: them like that's the. Original they can't immediately be banned
Speaker 2: because they're not. Electronics that's. Unbelievable hell, yeah it's so.
Speaker 2: Funny this part's not. Funny all this comes to a
Speaker 2: hideous climax in the fall of two thousand and nine
Speaker 2: when a twenty and this is in Like, october a
Speaker 2: twenty six seat bus filled with a full ton of
Speaker 2: explosives rams into The Iraqi ministry Of justice In. Baghdad,
Speaker 2: now what happens here is a few things coming. Together
Speaker 2: you've got in two thousand and. Nine the surge has just,
Speaker 2: happened the awakening has. Happened this is actually a relatively
Speaker 2: peaceful period of time In, iraq, right and so there's
Speaker 2: a drop in the number of, bombings and that Convinces
Speaker 2: Prime minister and future subject of this, Podcast we'll get,
Speaker 2: Him nori Al maliki to take down security measures And
Speaker 2: bagdad including blast, walls because things have gotten safer and
Speaker 2: that would look good for his. Administration so there's not walls,
Speaker 2: up which is part of why this is so. Bad
Speaker 2: but the bombs get directly to this fucking justice building
Speaker 2: and go off and one hundred and fifty five people
Speaker 2: are killed at, LEAST i, mean it is a, massive hideous,
Speaker 2: bombing hundreds more. Injured it is hard to exaggerate how
Speaker 2: like the one of the worst single bombings In iraqs,
Speaker 2: history like that gets carried out, here and a subsequent
Speaker 2: investigation finds that Per The New York, times the bomb
Speaker 2: truck quote had to pass at least one checkpoint where
Speaker 2: THE ad six y five to one is typically. Deployed
Speaker 2: christ so we know what goes through at least one
Speaker 2: checkpoint that should have had one of these, things which
Speaker 2: meant it didn't get. Caught that article quotes A us general,
Speaker 2: saying obviously these things don't. Work we would use them
Speaker 2: if they. Worked, however quote The iraqis believe passionately in,
Speaker 2: them whether it's magic or. Scientific WHAT i care about
Speaker 2: is it detects, bombs Said Major General jahad Al, jabiri
Speaker 2: head of The ministry of The Interiors General directorate For Combating.
Speaker 2: EXPLOSIVES i don't care about San dia or The department
Speaker 2: Of justice or any of. Them General jabiri, SAID i
Speaker 2: know more about this issue than The americans. Do in,
Speaker 2: FACT i know more about bombs than anyone in the. World,
Speaker 2: amazing amazing. Comments if you have met as Many iraqi
Speaker 2: army generals AS i, have you know a couple of.
Speaker 2: Things for, one they're all corrupt, liars right And General
Speaker 2: aljebieri was no exception to that. Rule shortly after that,
Speaker 2: interview The Iraqi ministry of The interior Arrested Major General
Speaker 2: algebrai on corruption, charges arguing that he'd taken bribes from. McCormick,
Speaker 2: now really the charges were dropped because It's. Iraq but
Speaker 2: you shouldn't take that too. Seriously The iraqi government was
Speaker 2: then and is now ludicrously. Corrupt harith Al karawi wrote
Speaker 2: about this in twenty thirteen for an article in Ale
Speaker 2: monitor quote an All monitor. Quote security related ministries have
Speaker 2: seen the worst examples of corruption because of their huge budget,
Speaker 2: allocations poorly MONITORED us financial, support and the urgent need
Speaker 2: to build them from. Scratch there were reports by The Integrity,
Speaker 2: committee THE Us General inspector In, iraq and The Parliamentary
Speaker 2: security And Defense committee on the hundreds of millions wasted
Speaker 2: because of corruption in these. Ministries yet except for a
Speaker 2: few mid or low level officials who found no political,
Speaker 2: sponsor all partisan senior officials managed to escape punishment or.
Speaker 3: Accountability wild how, SEE i guess the justice system works out.
Speaker 2: For there's it's a great justices in The. Iraqi so
Speaker 2: good every gone really? Good she should ask the founder
Speaker 2: OF isis what he thinks about The. Iraqi although that
Speaker 2: was really THE us justice system In. Iraq, anyway, McCormick the,
Speaker 2: trees and everyone else The british government could get their hands,
Speaker 2: On we're arrested in twenty. Ten the court cases that
Speaker 2: followed found that corruption in the military was often a
Speaker 2: reason why these things were. SOLD a report by THE
Speaker 2: Us Special Inspector general For Iraqi reconstruction in twenty eleven
Speaker 2: estimated that seventy five percent of McCormick's revenue was recycled
Speaker 2: to bride military officials and multiple. Countries, right which is
Speaker 2: how he's selling all of these that's.
Speaker 3: That is, coal the sales marketing expense, exactly.
Speaker 2: Exactly, yeah we had to bribe them to get them.
Speaker 3: To buy our. Product, yeah how else are you gonna do? It?
Speaker 2: Exactly and the Corruption tracker. Adds In thailand the devices
Speaker 2: not only allowed through real, explosives but in the south
Speaker 2: of the, country where there is an ongoing conflict with
Speaker 2: a separatist rebel, group security forces have used the devices
Speaker 2: to justify the false imprisonment of hundreds of, people according
Speaker 2: to rights. Groups so it's not just people that they
Speaker 2: kill through letting bombs, through they also let governments murder
Speaker 2: torture and imprison people by pretending they had. Explosives did
Speaker 2: a lot of, THEM a lot of. People you don't
Speaker 2: know how, many probably. Thousand again In, thailand people are
Speaker 2: getting through, bombs detecting checkpoints with. BOMBS i have no
Speaker 2: idea how many people in total. Die iraq continues using
Speaker 2: these things at checkpoints for years. Afterwards i'm not convinced
Speaker 2: there aren't any in use still right. Now the good
Speaker 2: news is that a lot of the bad guys in
Speaker 2: this story were sentenced for their. Crimes McCormick received the
Speaker 2: maximum sentence for fraud ten, years and he was actually
Speaker 2: sentenced to two more after his release because he kept
Speaker 2: breaking the. Law his assets were clawed back as much
Speaker 2: as as possible by the, state, but As Vanity fair,
Speaker 2: noted did not spell an end to the grift. QUOTE
Speaker 2: a year after McCormick's, conviction The egyptian military began testing
Speaker 2: an apparent adaptation of acormacks device called The, seafast claiming
Speaker 2: it can detect BOTH aids and. Encephalitis Last, june thirty
Speaker 2: eight people were killed At Jenna International airport In karachi
Speaker 2: when attackers with suicide bombs and rocket launchers got past
Speaker 2: the airport's security, force which has admitted to relying on
Speaker 2: the eighty six five to. One another version of the
Speaker 2: device was reportedly being used In. Thailand mexican police looking
Speaker 2: for drugs have incorporated the device into their stop and search.
Speaker 2: Procedures if they ever acknowledged that the device as a,
Speaker 2: fraud the convictions resulting from those searches would be vulnerable to.
Speaker 2: Litigation in some, countries sheer corruption keeps the device in
Speaker 2: the hands of soldiers and, policemen maybe even up to
Speaker 2: the present. Day and that's a beautiful story of a scam.
Speaker 2: Device ad how are you.
Speaker 3: FEELING i hate every person involved in, this FUCKING i
Speaker 3: hate them so. Much it's also you're, right it hasn't inspired.
Speaker 3: People it has totally inspired me because it's like the.
Speaker 3: Same it's people WITH ai, especially they are, like, well
Speaker 3: so many smart people couldn't be. Wrong actually they could.
Speaker 1: Die it happens quite, often thank.
Speaker 3: You mm, hmm, yeah, Yeah jesus Fucking. Christ.
Speaker 2: Yep it's it's the just yeah loophole. Ism, Right whenever you, think,
Speaker 2: well this guy is really, smart he couldn't get. Tricked
Speaker 2: smart people get tricked all the. Time, yep you, know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: Anyway ed you want to plug anything before we roll?
Speaker 3: Out where's your ed dot at from a, newsletter better offline?
Speaker 3: Podcast you can find it on YouTube and where you
Speaker 3: find your, Podcast i'm at ZiT. Trump please interact with
Speaker 3: my content ON, eed you too.
Speaker 2: Excellent interact With ed's, Content interact with my, content and
Speaker 2: interact with yourself by getting to know yourself and loving
Speaker 2: yourself the. WAY i probably don't love you Because i've
Speaker 2: never met most of, you because that would be really
Speaker 2: hard for me to. Do but you, know in, THEORY
Speaker 2: i support you loving yourself unless you're a bad. Person
Speaker 2: BUT i don't know. That.
Speaker 4: Bye behind The bastard is a production of Cool Zone.
Speaker 4: Media for more from Cool Zone, media visit our website
Speaker 4: coolzonmedia dot com or check us out on The iHeartRadio,
Speaker 4: App Apple, podcasts or wherever you get your. Podcasts full
Speaker 4: video episodes That behind The bastards are now streaming On,
Speaker 4: netflix dropping Every tuesday And. Thursday kit remind me On
Speaker 4: netflix you don't miss an. Episode for clips in our
Speaker 4: older episode, catalog continue to subscribe to our YouTube Channel
Speaker 4: YouTube dot com slash At behind The. Bastards we love
Speaker 4: about forty percent of, you statistically speaking