Almost unbelievable

Foreign residents of Thailand, for the most part, know that they have to be on their guard against farang fraudsters and crooks in their midst. Thanks largely to the internet's social media, the often-clever antics of the men who want to take your life savings to feather their own nests are less secretive than they once were. Conmen are certainly still with us but their tricks and deceit are more likely these days to be in the public domain.

But foreign fraudsters can also trick Thais and on an almost unbelievable scale. It is said that British national James McCormick smiled through much of his trial at London's Old Bailey for selling what he knew to be fake bomb detectors to various foreign countries and to the UN. The ones he sold to Thailand were called GT200 and Alpha 6. They were plastic dowsing rods with no ability whatsoever to detect bombs, explosives, drugs or anything else.

Thirteen government departments, including the army and the police, were completely duped by the supposed magical ability of the dowsing rods. Nobody bothered to order proper checks and many influential figures were duped by the sleight-of-hand demonstrations by McCormick's agents. One politician is even alleged to have believed that the GT200 could predict an upcoming military coup. Another fell for the line that the dowsing roads could operate underwater or even smell illicit substances behind walls.

More than 400 million baht was spent on the actual devices and double that sum on commissions of one sort and another. A total of nearly 1.15 billion baht. How could it happen? Well, the government did not actually buy the fake equipment because authorized licensed middlemen negotiated the purchases for which they added on procurement, shipping and other unspecified charges. The two companies which bought most of the dowsing rods have so far not been named.

The biggest tragedy of all is that human lives were lost when the useless technology was in "use" in the southern provinces. The GT200 worked on a random basis. It could give the all-clear on the bomb front yet there were loud explosions anyway. Some people were arrested and even physically assaulted, and worse, on the basis that the dowsing rods claimed they had recently handled explosives.

Yet the evidence was always there. A Chulalongkorn University scientist made his own exact copy of the GT200 costing just 159 baht to construct. Reporters in Iraq regularly reported that the useless plastic devices with their wobbly aerials were in widespread use at checkpoints. Goodness knows how many bomb-laden vehicles were allowed through because of this almost-unbelievable naivety. But soldiers happily used the device and were grateful that the wonders of modern science saved them the bother of properly searching the van or truck. The bribery in Iraq was on an astonishing scale and McCormick is said to have netted US$75 million. One major general in Iraq has been arrested.

The whole saga reflects the reality that pure human greed can be responsible for the most ridiculous of scams. McCormick, a former Merseyside policeman, succeeded because of the huge profits he allowed the middlemen to make whilst making himself into a multi-millionaire. At his trial he defended himself by saying nobody in authority had stepped forward to complain to him and that he knew more about bombs than anyone else in the world. Yes, of course. It's not likely anybody will step forward now. It's all far, far too embarrassing.