British Man Defrauds Iraq For Millions | Tales From the Bottle

i've been running this youtube channel for nearly four years now over which time i've produced just over 100 videos and today i'm going to tell you about a story that i think could be the wildest one i've done to date it's a story with humble beginnings we start off talking about golf balls all right but by the time we're coming to the end we're talking about a british man defrauding the iraqi government for tens of millions of dollars this is a serious story folks strap yourselves in i mean it too this is a wild ride like you must be at least this tall kind of stuff please keep your arms inside the ride at all times cuxer is not liable for any damages sustained and if you try to sue me have a little team of lawyers who'll show up to your house and kick in every tude in your head this story is going to show you human stupidity so vast deep and endless that you will hardly be able to comprehend your disbelief your loss of faith in humanity will be monumental this video will forever change your perspective on humankind our place in the universe and our evolutionary destiny so if you're still ready to proceed let's talk about golf balls in the early 1990s a former used car salesman from south carolina wade quattlebaum was trying to invent a device that would help find lost golf balls hey golfers lose golf balls all the time that could be pretty useful right but how would it work put yourself on weight shoes how are you going to find lost golf balls maybe you could coat the golf ball and some sort of paint that was really reflective or could be easily detected with like a uv light or special goggles of course you'll still have the trouble finding golf balls that are hidden in thick overgrowth and the like wade quattlebaum's invention did not have that problem however and an early version of what would later become known as the quadro tracker was born the device consisted of a handle at the end of which was attached a swiveling antenna the user would hold out the device which would detect traces of the materials present in golf balls and then the antenna would swivel and point in the direction of the source leading the user to the golf ball so how did it work well it didn't yeah the quadro tracker didn't contain any working electronics or anything it was powered purely by human suggestion the swiveling antenna was so loosely attached that it would move in response to a user's unconscious movements basically the expectation that the device was going to work causes the user to unconsciously work it it's a psychological phenomenon called the ideo motor effects the same principle behind the perceived effectiveness of dowsing rods and ouija boards where something appears to be moving due to some unseen external force but is actually being moved by you because you're an idiot wade quattro bomb soon realized that if the quadro tracker could be used to not find golf balls it could be used to not find anything and so he formed the quadro corporation and began selling different models of the quadro tracker that with the use of special locator cards were supposed to detect things like precious metals alcohol drugs explosives firearms people etc etc now this thing didn't even have batteries or any power source for that matter it was claimed it was powered by the static electricity produced by the body inhaling and exhaling gases into and out of the lung cavity to charge the free floating neutral electrons of the signature card with the major strength of the signal they also claimed one of the models could locate a target from a picture yet just stick in a polaroid of your car keys and this baby will find them in no time that model cost eight thousand dollars now remember this picture functionality i'm gonna blow your mind later in the video and i'm also to blow your mind right now the quadro tracker was bought by some u.s school districts to detect drugs and ammunition these things were being sold for thousands of dollars per unit and were really being used by schools some of the schools said they were impressed with the results and that's not all some airports and police departments bought this thing now not all of them were convinced by the device some of them did recognize it was a piece of junk after they bought it but some did make use of it reportedly the texas department of public safety tried using one to find the body of a murdered seven-year-old soon the quadro tracker came to the attention of the fbi who had heard of its use in police forces it didn't take long for them to figure out the quadro tracker consisted of little more than a few pieces of cheap plastic the fbi sent a nationwide alert to law enforcement agencies warning them the device was a fraud and to stop using it i would have also sent experts around to the offending agencies to perform mental acuity evaluations if the everyday operations of your job require you to have a toolkit which includes lethal weapons and you add a magic [ __ ] wands to that toolkit someone should probably look into having your access revoked a judge issued an injunction against quadro corporation effectively banning the quadro tracker and the fbi then pursued a criminal investigation against the quadro corporation who had been selling the quadro tracker from 1993 to 1996 and its distributors one of the distributors turned out to be assistant u.s attorney guy womack who later represented us army specialist charles greener in the 2003-2004 abu ghraib prisoner abuse scandal yep that was the guy posing in those pictures of the naked human pyramids quadro corporation ended up in court on mail fraud charges but everyone involved was acquitted by a federal jury the law is a complicated thing and i don't pretend to understand it so let's just move on from that shortly after the quadro corporation secretary moved to the uk and set up companies to start selling well basically the exact same thing some of his distributors got wise to what he was doing and broke away to do the exact same thing so now there were a good few of these dodgy detection devices going around one of these devices fell into the hands of jim mccormick a former police officer and head of advanced tactical security and communications limited a company he founded after paying 10 000 pounds for a device and finding it to be useless mccormack hatched a genius plan he was going to copy the design and do the exact same thing for crisic mccormick marketed his device as a bomb detector though it worked almost identically to the quadro tracker that is to say it didn't he named it the advanced detection equipment or ade and began selling different models throughout the 2000s the most notorious of these models is the ade-651 which was sold on mass around the world it's reportedly been sold to 20 countries in the middle east and asia listen carefully sold to 20 countries not sold in 20 countries yeah that's right governments were buying these things most notably iraq the ade 651 was widely used by the iraqi police service and the iraqi army how widely iraq reportedly spent 53 million pounds on them that's about 85 million dollars they weren't the only ones versions of these things saw use at police checkpoints and airports in afghanistan pakistan mexico thailand and many more sounds pretty funny but the sad reality of it is the police and the army were relying on this [ __ ] to detect bombs if you drove a car packed with explosives through a military checkpoint the only thing standing between you and jihad was a fellow with a useless piece of plastic in his hands events such as the 2009 baghdad bombings served to illustrate the ade-651's ineffectiveness as car bombers killed hundreds after avoiding detection in 2010 the uk banned the export of the detection devices to iraq and afghanistan and arrested jim mccormick in 2013 mccormick was convicted on three counts of fraud having made millions on the sale of the device and was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment revelations that the device was all a fraud sparked outrage in the countries where it saw widespread use although many officials still defend the device's effectiveness it's become clear that corruption was involved in a lot of these purchases and officials have been convicted of taking bribes from mccormick but jim mccormack wasn't the only one selling these things he wasn't even the only one selling them on an international level also caught up in the uk's export ban was the gt200 which claimed to detect drugs and saw use in thailand mexico india and parts of africa yeah i wonder what airport security would do there when they couldn't find the heroine this piece of [ __ ] told them you were definitely smuggling in the owner of the company responsible for selling the gt200 was sentenced to seven years in prison the alpha 6 was another one manufactured by a husband and wife and sold to egypt thailand and mexico at the trial one of the salesmen claimed the device could triangulate the location of missing girl madeleine mccann using a picture of her he really believed this he actually called the hotline to report his findings i told you i'd blow your mind this is insane how does he think this [ __ ] works you put in the picture and the antenna leads the way explain to me how that works there is no logical explanation you cannot tell me how a device would do that without describing [ __ ] magic explain to me how you believe this the husband was given three and a half years behind bars and his wife was ordered to do 300 hours community service yeah i think all of these [ __ ] should have done community service they should have been given one of these detectors and set out to clear up minefields i'm usually amused by scams and con artists but this [ __ ] was probably directly responsible for the debt and injury of hundreds of people maybe more while the bastards that knowingly sold these dodgy products made millions well that's the story and i don't know about you but i'm leaving it with a profound sense that i can never view the world in the same way again i feel hollow like i've witnessed the depths of human stupidity greed corruption and evil and all from a story that really should have been quite silly i mentioned the abu ghraib prisoner abuse and the disappearance of madeleine mccann in a story that should have been about a goofy golf ball scam what the [ __ ] i've done a lot of videos on awful tragedies but a lot of those were pure accidents everything that happened in this video was purposefully calculated and executed by human beings from the scammers to the corrupt politicians to the people who abused their negligence and murdered innocent people that's not misfortune that's cruelty well that's where i'm going to leave it when it comes to human nature you can dwell on it and make yourself miserable or you can embrace the good mankind has to offer i would normally ask you to subscribe here at the end but i can't with a straight face promote my youtube channel directly after a sentence that ends with the good mankind has to offer so i simply ask you to keep your head up and i'll see you next time bills and a card that indicated what the device had found this is the man behind the device james mccormick in this video leading a training session on the ade 651 to police in niger by a live minefield but they don't work

Channel: Qxir

Views: 1,073,487

Keywords: ADE 651, fake bomb detectors, GT200, Alpha 6, jim mccormick, gopher, golf ball, detector, mole, iraq, footage, thailand, mexico, pakistan, afghanistan, scam, hoax, fraud, funny, explained, irish, animated, drawn, qxir

Id: VqR2tM7M_jQ

Length: 12min 5sec (725 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021