Bomb detectionBomb detectors fraudster ordered to pay £1.2 million

Gary Bolton, a convicted fraudster who made millions selling fake bomb detectors around the world, has been ordered by a court to pay more than £1 million.

In August 2013 Bolton, 49, from Chatham in Kent, was sentenced to seven years in jail for the sale of more than 1,000 useless detectors that he claimed could track down bombs, drugs, ivory, and money.

The prosecutor, Sarah Whitehouse QC, told the Old Bailey during a confiscation hearing that Bolton had made about £6.8 million from his criminal activities, but that his assets were much lower.

The BBC reports that Judge Richard Hone QC ordered Bolton to pay £1,265,624, including more than £400,000 from the sale of his house — excluding 5 percent of the proceeds owed to his partner, Carly Wickens, who attended court with Bolton’s mother, Grace Bolton.

The judge gave Bolton three months to pay the money — most of which deposited in British or foreign bank accounts – or face a seven additional years in jail.

Bolton produced and sold his fake detectors between January 2007 and July 2012.

Numerous witnesses described how Bolton, with no experience in science, research, training, or security, had built a £3 million per year company selling the devices around the world for up to £10,000 each.

The devices were nothing more than crudely made boxes with handles and antennae that he created at home and at the offices of his company in Ashford, Kent.

In his sales pitch, Bolton claimed the devices worked with a range of 700 meters at ground level and up to 2.5 miles in the air, saying they were effective through lead-lined and metal walls, water, containers, and earth. “Double-blind” tests in 2001 showed, however, that the devices had a successful detection rate of 9 percent.

Bolton was one of several defendants convicted for their part in fake bomb detector scams.

In 2013, James McCormick, a British businessman, was convicted of having made millions in profits from selling fake bomb detectors to Iraq, Georgia, and several other countries (see “U.K. businessman convicted of selling fake explosives detectors,” HSNW, 30 April 2013). McCormick bought $20 golf ball finders in the United States, then sold the devices, which had no working electronics, for $40,000 each. The Iraqi government used more than $40 million in U.S. aid money to buy 6,000 of the devices, despite being warned by the U.S. military that the devices were a sham. The Iraqi military used the fake detectors at check-points, leading to scores of soldiers and civilians being killed by suicide trucks which went through the check points undetected. Some police units in Kenya still use the devices.