Around 1,000 were sold to police departments and school districts around the United States on the basis that it could detect hidden drugs, explosives, weapons and lost golf balls.
[5] According to the manufacturers, the Quadro Tracker could be used to detect items as varied as drugs, weapons, explosives, specific people, golf balls, alcohol, precious metal, dead pets or wild game animals.
"[3] Quadro Corp. claimed the device worked by oscillating "static electricity produced by the body inhaling and exhaling gases into and out of the lung cavity" to "charge the free-floating neutral electrons of the signature card with the major strength of the signal".
[6] It was claimed to be able to detect drugs hidden in air-tight containers, a bomb inside a building from outside or a criminal suspect 15 miles away.
"[11] The Texas Department of Public Safety used a Quadro Tracker in a failed attempt to find the body of the murdered 7-year-old Carlin Smith.
"[13] The Quadro Tracker enjoyed considerable commercial success before FBI agent Ron Kelly, stationed in Beaumont, Texas, learned about the device from a contact on the Narcotics Task Force of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana in 1995.
It was immediately apparent that the Quadro Tracker was hollow; as Kelly later recalled, "It didn't take a lot of effort on our part to determine it was phony.
[4] Attorneys for Quadro Corp. later contended that the inductors and oscillators supposed to be inside the device "aren't the type usually thought of by electronics experts".
[6] The "locator chip" was shown to be equally fake; one example put on display by the FBI contained dead ants that had been frozen and stuck onto paper with epoxy glue.
[4] Kelly's office brought it to the attention of US Attorney Mike Bradford, who went to US District Judge Thad Heartfield to initiate action against Quadro Corp.
In January 1996, Judge Heartfield issued an injunction against Quadro Corp. from "using the United States mails or private commercial interstate carriers, or causing others acting on their behalf to use the United States mails or private interstate carriers, to solicit customers or entities, promote, sell, transfer, or demonstrate the Quadro Tracker… and devices of a similar design marketed under a different name.
[1] Despite the demise of the Quadro Tracker, a succession of similar devices has appeared in widespread use in a number of countries including Iraq, Mexico and Thailand.
A UK-based company, Global Technical, produced a device called the "MOLE programmable detection system" which Sandia National Laboratories described in a 2001 evaluation as "physically nearly identical" to the Quadro Tracker.
[18] A similar device produced by a different British company, the Alpha 6, is also in widespread use in Thailand but is due to undergo double blind testing to ascertain its effectiveness.
[19][needs update] Another British company, ATSC, produced a very similar device called the ADE 651 which was sold to Iraq as a bomb detector.
After a series of devastating bomb attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere which killed hundreds of people, its export to Iraq and Afghanistan was banned by the British government in January 2010 and the company director was arrested on suspicion of fraud.