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Fake bomb detector husband jailed for three years Fake bomb detector husband jailed for three years
(34 minutes later)
A man who claimed plastic devices he made in his garden shed could detect bombs and find missing Madeleine McCann has been jailed.A man who claimed plastic devices he made in his garden shed could detect bombs and find missing Madeleine McCann has been jailed.
Samuel Tree, 68, was sentenced to three and a half years while his wife Joan received 300 hours community work.Samuel Tree, 68, was sentenced to three and a half years while his wife Joan received 300 hours community work.
Their plastic Alpha 6 cost just a few pounds but sold for thousands.Their plastic Alpha 6 cost just a few pounds but sold for thousands.
The couple are the last of a group of fraudsters - who marketed their devices to governments and conflict zones around the world - to be jailed.The couple are the last of a group of fraudsters - who marketed their devices to governments and conflict zones around the world - to be jailed.
Police said they were driven by "personal greed" and were part of a criminal network worth £80m.
The Trees, of Dunstable, Bedfordshire, sold their worthless devices to an agent for £2,000 each, who then pitched them to other countries' authorities.
Their trial heard the devices were nothing more than plastic boxes with a free-rotating metal antennae.
Police were first alerted to the scam by a BBC Newsnight investigation into the production and sale of the Alpha 6.
'Golf ball detector'
Mr Tree claimed the detectors could track down missing people if a photograph of them was placed inside - a technique he said he had used to search for Madeleine, who went missing as a toddler in 2007, and two other children.
Police said one of the fake gadgets, assembled out of plastic imported from China, was bought for £500,000.
The bogus contraptions were based on a novelty "golf ball detector" called the Gopher which sold for around $20 (£12) in the US.
The couple's jailing brings to an end a series of trials following a four-year police investigation into what officers described as a "criminal network that turned over more than £80m".
Businessmen James McCormick and Gary Bolton were jailed last year for versions of the scam, which saw the devices used at check points in Iraq.
Bolton claimed his GT200 device could detect anything from cash and land mines to ivory and tobacco.
He worked closely with the Trees after meeting them at an arms fair, police said.
Det Con Joanne Law, from City of London Police, said the couple were "driven by personal greed".
"The jailing of the Trees is the concluding act in a highly complex investigation which over a 10-year period saw a global criminal network turn over up to £80 million by producing and selling thousands of substance detectors which put both the users and the people they were bought to protect in grave danger," she said.
"The demise of these individuals sends a strong warning to anyone else who believes they can make criminal capital abroad while trading off the good name of British business."
Despite the convictions, versions of the fraudsters' devices are still being used by the Egyptian military to detect HIV and hepatitis, on Iraqi checkpoints, and to protect shopping centres in Pakistan, according to the BBC's correspondent Caroline Hawley.