Inventor Sentenced Ten Years For Sham IED Detector

London, England James McCormick, a British inventor, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for selling more than $50 million worth of fake IED detectors to the Iraq Interior Ministry amid an Al Qaida bombing campaign lasting from 2007 to 2010. According to court records, the anti-IED devices, called "Advanced Selection Equipment", were based on golf ball finders produced in the US.

Judge Richard Hone said, "I am wholly satisfied that your fraudulent conduct in selling so many useless devices for simply enormous profit promoted a false sense of security and in all probability materially contributed to causing death and injury to innocent individuals." Prosecutors argued that McCormick profited over $50 million in his sales of the fake device to foreign clients, including Egypt and the UN, which reportedly purchased the devices for its peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

For nearly two years, the Iraqi Interior Ministry insisted that the devices were effective in bomb detection throughout Baghdad. At one point, nearly every major army checkpoint around the Iraqi capital was equipped with the wand-like devices, which were supposed to display an orange light when an explosive was detected.