(London, 26/07/2013) Gary Bolton, the former director of Global Technical Ltd and maker of the GT200 'remote substance detector', was found guilty on two counts of fraud at the Central Criminal Court ('Old Bailey') in London on Friday afternoon. At the end of a three week trial, the jury reached a majority verdict of 11–1, declaring him guilty of both manufacturing and supplying a device in the course of fraud between January 2007 and July 2012.

Gary Bolton outside the Central Criminal Court in London

This news may come as a surprise to a Thai audience because the media in this country had widely reported the conviction of James McCormick at the end of April 2013 as that of the manufacturer of the GT200, but this was incorrect. Mr. McCormick had been making and selling the ADE-651, a device very similar and as ineffective as the GT200, but he had been selling his devices mainly to Iraq and Mexico, and only very few devices to Thailand. He was sentenced in May 2013 to the maximum period of 10 years in jail.

In the ADE-651 case as well as the GT200 trial, the defendants were charged with fraud and not with other offences such as corruption or for the physical harm caused by the use of these devices. Mexico and Thailand were Gary Bolton's biggest export markets. He sold over 1,000 of his GT200 devices to Mexico and told the court that he had sold about 500 devices to Thailand, though other sources report sales of around 800 GT200s to this country. Mr. Bolton sold the devices to his agents at a price of about £11,000/each, but the end users were charged significantly more than that.

The 12 members of the jury at the Old Bailey heard the opinion of many scientists presented as expert witnesses by prosecution counsel. These scientists testified that the GT200 was just an empty plastic box with an antenna and no working components inside it, and that the explanations given for its operating principle did not comply with any know laws of physics.

However, the jury's task was made more difficult by the fact that they did not only have to be sure that the GT200 did not perform any better than random chance, but they also had to be sure that the defendant knew that the item he was producing and selling to government agencies around the world did not work.

Mr. Bolton's defence was that he had never claimed that the GT200 (or its predecessor model named 'The Mole') gave correct results all the time, and that he had also regularly pointed out to potential customers that some operators could not get the device to work at all. He argued that his method of marketing was by giving practical demonstrations of the GT200 to potential clients around the world, and if they were happy with the results of the demonstration they placed an order, but if they were not convinced they of course did not have to buy it.

Gary Bolton said that he himself did not understand how his device worked, but that he had seen it detect drugs and explosives successfully on many occasions. He expressed disappointment with scientists, whom he blamed for being prejudiced against his product, trying to fail it in their tests simply because they could not explain how it worked. He himself suggested that it worked along the lines of dowsing (water-divining), and two experts were presented by defence counsel to explain the principles of dowsing. One of these witnesses was Mr. Geoffrey Crockford, who had also provided Mr. Bolton with the concept of dia-and para-magnetism as an explanation for the operating principle for his susbtance detection device. When cross-examined under oath by Mr. Richard Whittam QC about his theory of biolocation using a sixth, magnetic, human sense, Mr. Crockford explained how he had in 2012 successfully used dowsing to prove retrospectively an UFO visit by Galactic Intelligent Life-Forms (GILFs) to  Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk, UK, Earth, in 1980.

What impression such evidence made on members of the jury is not known, but in the end the jury did not believe Mr. Bolton's arguments and found him guilty on both counts of fraud he had been charged with. Gary Bolton was given bail with the condition of not travelling abroad and having to report to a police station several times a week until the date of sentencing later this year.

This verdict may provide some solace to those who fell victim to the use of the GT200 devices, especially in the Far South of Thailand. It may also be an inspiration to the Thai authorities.