Fake bomb detector seller told to forfeit 8 million pounds
In southern Thailand, with its longstanding insurgency, they were deployed by the armed forces in security sweeps.
London: A British businessman serving a 10-year jail term for making and selling bogus bomb detectors to countries like Pakistan and Iraq was on Wednesday ordered to forfeit cash and assets worth nearly 8 million pounds.
Jim McCormick from Somerset made a fortune selling his wand-like devices to many countries. At his Old Bailey trial in 2013, Judge Richard Hone said that McCormick's fraud had undoubtedly cost lives.
Now the same judge has ordered that his cash, properties and a luxury motor cruiser should be taken from him, the BBC reported. In total the proceeds of crime order amounted to 7,944,834 pounds.
Judge Hone ordered that some of that money should be paid in compensation to nations around the world who bought the bogus devices, including Bahrain, Lebanon, Niger and Georgia. Iraq is due to receive 2.3 million in compensation, the report said.
In southern Thailand, with its longstanding insurgency, they were deployed by the armed forces in security sweeps. In Pakistan, they were used to guard Karachi airport. And around the Middle East they were bought to protect hotels, an earlier BBC report had said at the time of McCormick's sentencing in 2013.
McCormick and his wife bought cheap plastic parts from China and assembled the devices in a shed in their back garden.