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LONDON---A British judge on Thursday sentenced a businessman who sold fake(假冒的)
bomb detectors(探测器)to 10 years in prison, saying the man hadn’t cared about potentially
deadly consequences.
It is believed that James McCormick got about $ 77.8 million from the sales of his
detectors---which were based on a kind of golf ball finder---to countries including Iraq, Belgium
and Saudi Arabia.
McCormick, 57, was convicted(判罪)of cheats last month and sentenced Thursday at the
Old Bailey court in London.
“Your cheating conduct in selling a great amount of useless equipment simply for huge profit
promoted a false sense of security and in all probability materially contributed to causing death
and injury to innocent people,” Judge Richard Hone told McCormick. “You have neither regret,
nor shame, nor any sense of guilt.”
The detectors, sold for up to $ 42, 000 each, were said to be able to find such dangerous
objects as bombs under water and from the air. But in fact they “lacked any grounding in science”
and were of no use.
McCormick had told the court that he sold his detectors to the police in Kenya, the prison
service in Hong Kong, the army in Egypt and the border control in Thailand.
“I never had any bad results from customers,” he said.