Nigerian firms import explosives detectors from US

From 2001 to 2010, the British company ATSC Ltd. sold tens of millions of dollars worth of bomb and drug detection equipment to foreign governments, until an investigation by the British government concluded that the devices didn't actually do anything, and the company's CEO, Jim McCormick, was arrested for fraud. Despite an enforced ban on the company exporting its wares, they continue to manufacture the "ADE 651" for any government gullible and rich enough.
What the website and manual for the machine try to hide under loads of technobabble is that the ADE 651 is a dowsing rod. In other words, it's an enchanted metal stick that can locate substances through the power of magic. Maybe military officials can be forgiven for not realizing this, since the description for how the device works reads, "The principle for long range detection is based on the substance excitation that needs to be detected, with an electromagnetic field that propagates on a long distance and is not disturbed by the 'electromagnetic noise' from the environment generated by the RF transmitters and other electronic equipments that use electric current or electromagnetic waves". But even considering that load of convincing-sounding nonsense, none of the governments or military officials who fell for the scam ever took a close look at the device before putting it into service protecting soldiers from bombs. If they had, they would have found that the only functional component of the device is a department store anti-theft tag that does nothing except look like something that does something. Nevertheless, in Iraq and Afghanistan, $85 million was spent on thousands of suspended bent wires with handles. When faced with accusations that he was selling magic wands, McCormick simply replied, "One of the problems we have is that the machine does look primitive. We are working on a new model that has flashing lights."