Conman's detector that bombed

James McCormick. Photo / Getty Images

Amid corruption and fraud, explosive finder's failure contributed to loss of tens, if not hundreds, of lives.

The attacks had been well planned and executed with precision, three bombs aimed at hotels in Baghdad, tearing into buildings, spraying shrapnel and broken glass, setting cars on fire. The tally at the end of an afternoon of carnage was 38 people killed and 76 wounded.

The blasts had been at the Sheraton at 3.28; the Babylon at 3.31 and at 3.37, the Hamra; this last one had been hit before, five years previously, when I was among journalists staying there, killing 32 residents of homes nearby. But this time it was meant to be better protected, by checkpoints using sophisticated bomb detectors bought at great expense from a British firm.

However, a week previously James McCormick, the owner of the company, ATSC, had been arrested at his home in Somerset, England.

The "detectors" he had sold to the Iraqi Government for US$85 million ($100 million) were useless, the technology behind them non-existent, based on novelty golf-ball finders.

Grave doubts about the equipment had been persistent for a while before the police in England moved in.

The fact that they were still in use at the time of the hotel bombings in January 2010 was the result of vast corruption and astonishing ineptitude. Massive kickbacks worth millions of dollars had been handed out to Iraqi officials; the Government in London had been slow to crack down on the lethal fraud.

McCormick was arrested after Colin Port, the Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset, ordered an investigation following reports about the "detectors" in the media.

It was carried out by a team led by Detective Superintendent Nigel Rock who collected evidence from six countries.

McCormick, who had briefly been a policeman, had sold his equipment among other places to the Pakistani forces who used it for airport security in cities which had experienced terrorist bombings, the Mexicans in their murderous drugs wars, the Lebanese in protecting hotels in Beirut which had been affected by the strife from Syria's civil war and the Thai army fighting an increasingly violent counter-insurgency.

ATSC's sales literature claimed the device could sense minute quantities of incendiary material from a kilometre away on land and 3km away from the air. It could also track down a variety of other items including various fluids, ivory and people who had hidden themselves. They were able to operate, McCormick maintained, through walls, underwater and underground. It was, he would declare in his sales pitch, truly a miraculous piece of engineering which could detect anything "from explosives to elephants".

All this may seem comic but the bogus devices cost lives.

Considering the prevalence of just one of McCormick's "detectors" - ADE-651s - in Iraq at some of the most sensitive checkpoints at some of the most violent locations, its failure had contributed to the loss of dozens, if not hundreds, of lives which may have been saved with genuine security equipment.

Abdulhamid Al-Masri, a 22-year-old student, was near the Hamra Hotel on his way back to his home in the Jadriya district when he was caught by a blast.

"I went to the area after the bomb because it was so near our house, we wanted to make sure none of our neighbours were hurt," his 25-year-old sister, Rahima, said. "It was a terrible sight even for a place like Baghdad.

"We went to the morgue after they told us what had happened to Abdulhamid. My mother fainted when we got to the body. We didn't know anything about the bomb detectors then, we found out later they were false. I just feel very angry; I can't believe anyone would do such a thing, put so many lives at risk just to make money? It is shameful, shameful."

Money was flowing in at a massive rate for McCormick. The devices could be bought in the US for US$20 each and sold for US$40,000 with a little makeover. His rewards included a £3.5 million ($6.3 million) house in The Circus, Bath, a £600,000 Sunseeker motor yacht, called Aesthete, a farmhouse with paddocks in Somerset, worth another £2 million, and he made sure that his daughter lacked nothing as a member of the British dressage team.

Restraint orders have been put on about £7 million worth of assets, while others are still being traced; no significant sums of cash have been found so far.

McCormick, who left school with four O-levels, maintained until the end at his Old Bailey trial that his "detectors" had produced results. They had been used, he claimed, to sweep a hotel in Europe before a visit by a US President, although he did not elaborate where. He declared he was so confident that he had no qualms about using them in a minefield to find an IED - but again there were no details.

Questions can be raised about how McCormick, a rotund and unsophisticated character who is not particularly articulate, could build such a thriving business selling a product which withstood little scrutiny.

McCormick claims that he only got £12 million out of the US$75 million paid out by the Iraqi Government. He may be lying about the size of his cut, just one invoice was for US$38 million, but there is little doubt that massive amounts were paid out in bribes. When questions began to be asked in Baghdad about the detectors amid mounting casualties, Major General Jihad al-Jabiri, the head of the Interior Ministry's directorate for combat explosives, declared "I don't care what they say, I know more about bombs than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world."

He was subsequently arrested on suspicion of corruption over the purchases from McCormick.

A deputy minister at the Ministry of Defence, General Tarq al-Asl, who faced questions from Iraqi MPs over the affair, endorsed it: "The reason the director of the company [McCormick] was arrested was not because the device doesn't work, but because he refused to divulge the secret of how it works to the British and American authorities. I have tested it in practice and it works effectively, 100 per cent."

There is no evidence that the General was involved in corruption.

Novelty device netted millionsJames McCormick, a failed policeman, now faces jail for fraud.
Picture / Snapper Mediarights

His background:

James McCormick was found guilty in the Old Bailey yesterday of fraud. He is a former electrical salesman who spent less than two years in the Merseyside Police. He became involved after another businessman demonstrated a supposed prototype in 2000. He agreed to buy one for 10,000 and marketed the device around the world.

The claims:
McCormick told armies and police forces that his bomb detectors worked from 30m underwater or a plane 5km up. He said they were powered by "electrostatic energy from the human body".

Devices sold:

About 37 million worth to Iraq at up to 27,000 per device. The United Nations paid 46,000 for five of them to find bombs in Lebanon. Other clients were the Kenyan police, Hong Kong's prison service, the Egyptian army and Thailand's border control.

In reality:

The devices consisted of a swivelling antenna connected to a plastic handgrip. They were 13 novelty golf ball finders with no scientific basis and no ability to identify explosives. Simple coloured cards were inserted depending on the substance to be detected: explosives, drugs, or even specific currencies.

The profits

McCormick is thought to have made 14 million in five years. He bought a 630,000 yacht and a 3.5 million home in Bath and a 480,000 home in Cyprus.

- Telegraph Group Ltd