The consequences of snake oil products - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Pat Pending
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2012, 11:11:01 pm
content: I think I first heard of this product on here some time ago, but it now appears that a BBC reporter has blown the cover on this scam artist.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8471187.stm

author: krenzo
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2012, 11:34:59 pm
content: This makes me sick. It's one thing to steal gullible people's money, but to rip off a government for millions while endangering so many people, that's horrendous.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2012, 11:39:07 pm
content: How is this scammer not in prison for fraud?

author: gregariz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 12:52:40 am
content: Its quite possible he'll go to jailhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18795651

author: Rufus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 03:37:36 am
content: I find it rather hard to believe anyone (even the military) would spend that kind of money on a product which could not be demonstrated to work at all.On the other hand if your terrorists think (and they are not the sharpest pins in the cushion) you can detect their explosives that is a significant deterrent to them holding, moving and trying to use them.Maybe that deterrent was was actually worth $85 million and this 'brilliant' bit of investigative journalism has completely screwed up the cunning plan and will cost lives.The British government has no problem using speed cameras with no film and in some cases boxes with no camera to deter speeders - should the supplier of the empty boxes be charged with fraud?

author: ivan747
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 04:18:45 am
content: Quote from: Rufus on July 14, 2012, 03:37:36 amI suspect all the speed cameras here are just empty boxes.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 05:10:39 am
content: Boxes are empty, the camera is just moved from place to place. I would prefer visible policing though, not speed law enforcement where they are only out to make money.

author: retiredcaps
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 05:29:18 am
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on July 13, 2012, 11:39:07 pmPrison? Why waste taxpayers money? Make him use his product in war zones to prove it works. Clear an area, setup one area with explosives and another without. Make him walk the area.I heard that it costs $100K/annually to house one prison inmate in Canada. The average Canadian makes $50K/year before tax. So it takes 2 honest Canadians to work all year and to give every penny they have to house one inmate. It is sickening.

author: Dawn
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 07:45:33 am
content: I can't believe this fraud is still happening, especially with the US involved in Iraq. An almost exact device as shown in the video was sold as a scam to police departments, schools, even the FBI as a Quadro or Quatro Trakker back in the early 90's. IIRC, a fancier version called a molecular detector was sold later. The thing was supposed to be able to locate drugs and even find lost items. The unit looked identical to this UK version. It even had a slot that you could slip in a photograph of what your were looking for in the body pack part and the unit was supposed to dowse it out. It took a skeptic FBI agent to convince the FBI's labs to test the unit under lab and controlled conditions to prove it was worthless. For some reason, they let the company slide by after not only scamming law enforcement agencies, they compiled a huge testimony list from agencies and schools swearing how effective it was. that was during the early to mid 90's. Twenty years later some UK firm is pulling the same crap with an identical device that's supposed to locate explosives and they're being used right under the nose of US military and FBI agents working in Iraq and nobody calls bullshit?

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 08:08:34 am
content: Don't need to set up an area, just bring him to Mozambique and let him loose in a mine area with it, and get him to find mines. I bet he will find at least one.

author: AntiProtonBoy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 09:08:19 am
content: It would take only one brutal public tear-down of his dodgy product to defame him and get him out of this business.

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 10:42:44 am
content: Quote from: Rufus on July 14, 2012, 03:37:36 amIf the seller claims they can detect speeding vehicles, then obviously yes.

author: Bored@Work
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 11:16:26 am
content: Quote from: Pat Pending on July 13, 2012, 11:11:01 pmNow? The article is from 2010. "Page last updated at 16:56 GMT, Friday, 22 January 2010".

author: digsys
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 11:41:23 am
content: You guys know NOTHING !! The device works fine ... when coupled to my ultra resonance bio-magnetic feedback aerial, which Ihappen to have in stock for only $20,000 ea !!! Special this week

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 11:53:45 am
content: Quote from: Bored@Work on July 14, 2012, 11:16:26 amI remember reading about this when it first came out and was rather shocked at the lack of skepticism from those who bought them. There's just somethingverymagical and supernatural-like about the claims of being able to detect anything, and to blindly believe that is, in my opinion, pure stupidity. Then again, most people think computers and electronics are somehow magical too (just ask a random person on the street how a radio works, for instance)... I think the problem here is a lack of the right kind of education.

author: M. András
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 12:27:36 pm
content: if you educate people well fron the beginning they will be smart and ready to make their own decisions etc. as a side effect of a smart people. you cannot control them and make them do what you want them to do. just look at the goverments and their associates

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 01:02:33 pm
content: What astonishes me is the level of sheer piss-taking form this crook. If you were setting out to make a fake bomb detector, wouldn'y you at last put a battery and some flashing LEDs in it to make it look like it actually had something in it? The "Powered by static" think is an instant giveaway that it's bogus.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 02:27:48 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on July 14, 2012, 01:02:33 pmoh cmon that little trick saved a quid,he should be praised...... And then taken out and blown up to save us the cost of burying his Dick body

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 08:10:55 pm
content: doesn't anyone wonder about the dimwits and morons that actually approved the purchase of this equipment .. what was involved ? lots of money ? total lack of (evend dead) braincells ? The idiots that approve such purchases should at least test these. So they are equally guilty ... ( of even additional crimes )If i buy a piece of test equipment i ask one one demo for a week , torture it a bit , take the cover off. and then i ask two or three other brands to send one in and do the same... then i pick the one i want.that clearly didn't happen here. So there must have been another process at work. most likely one involving liitle bits of green paper with pictures of dead presidents on it .. ( or the equivalent color / iconography of the local country , although they may still have preferred the foreign green version)

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2012, 09:30:59 pm
content: I would think that what was involved in the sales of this device was lots of backhanders to various officials in Iraq who did not give a piss for any one blown up as long as they got their pockets lined.

author: TriodeTiger
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2012, 03:34:18 pm
content: I believe this was also mentioned on the Amp Hour, that's the fifth time I've found something :-)http://theamphour.com/2011/08/29/the-amp-hour-58-zappy-zendik-zoilism/('11)

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2013, 05:05:17 pm
content: The fraudster has now been convictedhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22266051Roll on some civil suits from the victims

author: 4to20Milliamps
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2013, 01:54:10 am
content: "There are no batteries and it consists of a swivelling aerial mounted to a hinge on a hand-grip. Critics have likened it to a glorified dowsing rod."Who was the IDIOT that was in charge of buying these things?He should have consulted me first, bombs have a very specific resonance pattern that is effected by atmospheric conditions, I can fix these if they give me1,10, 100 MILLION DOLARS> But only in gold, and they can't ever know who I am or where I'm at or it won't work.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2013, 07:04:50 am
content: I'm in two minds about this one.On the one hand, defective products that don't work properly are a curse, a pain in the ar*e, and the people who make and sell them deserve nothing but contempt... but:It's not as though this product was designed on sound principles whih have any air of plausibility about them. Such a product could not possibly have convinced anyone with even the slightest bit of technical knowledge that it could work. It could never have passed any kind of field testing, or any evaluation process of any kind whatsoever.In other words, it appears to be quite a reliable simpleton detector.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2013, 03:15:03 pm
content: Well now they have taken this fraud to court and convicted him perhaps they will make a move on the fraudsters who sell the other snake oil products like the E.M.F eliminator crystals and the ten thousand buck's USB cables.

author: Bored@Work
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2013, 03:21:13 pm
content: Quote from: AndyC_772 on April 24, 2013, 07:04:50 amMore like a corruption detector. A log of guys must have looked away.