What do you get when you throw together some plastic and a metal rod? A metal detector of course. Completely believable right? Well apparently it is for some, because one UK company has managed to make millions on the device. Thankfully a UK news team decided to analyze the device a whole lot closer than the governments that have spent millions purchasing the bomb detectors. They of course found out that they were a complete sham.
Inside of these devices is a card the size of an ID badge. It claims to detect certain items and causes the rod to point to it using only the power of the user’s static electricity. It can pick up on things like TNT and plastique. Of course the BBC took the card to the Cambridge Computer laboratory and discovered that the cards don’t have anything on them. Despite that in 95 the FBI discovered a similar item to be fraudulent and since then there have been several other created and debunked by different organizations there were those ignorant enough to buy them anyway. To be specific the Iraqi government purchased thousands of them at $40,000 per unit. After the news report was aired the inventor was sent to jail, of course he was then released on bail. Moral of the story, don’t buy a bomb detecting device that looks like a toy.
Source: Crunchgear
