There is only one thing I enjoy more than exposing junk-science scams and that exposing junk-science scams where the perpetrator is dumb enough to try it on.

This morning, three comments were posted on my recent exposé of the ‘dowsing for explosives’ scam in the space of 20 minutes, all purporting to be from satisfied users of the ADE651 dowsing rod.

‘Frank’ claims to be ‘head of security for a large organisation in France’ and to have provided, in his comment, ‘the other side of the argument’ in which he accuses skeptics, like myself and James Randi, of making childish and unfounded accusations about the ADE651 dowsing rod.

That comment was posted at 10:50 GMT.

At 10:58, ‘Dani’ pops up and claims to have found ‘tests’ on the internet which prove that the ADE651 dowsing rod ‘works fine’ – the ‘test’ turns out to be Frank’s comment, which Dani is trying to Googlejuice.

Finally, at 11:11, ‘M Yasin’ shows up and he’s a ‘using the ADE651 in a private organisation in Cairo Egypt’ and ‘cannot believe all the abuse this product is recieving from people who have never used the product and have never worked in security before’.

Needless to say, all three comments were posted from the same IP address – 79.173.199.150 – which is on a bog standard ADSL circuit owned by Orange’s Jordanian telecoms operation, providing a neat link back to the company that originally sold the device, Cumberland Industries, which had a shell company and mail-drop address in the UK (see Techowiz’s comment) but actually operated out of Jordan.

Now that last entry throws up a rather interesting name in connection with the Middle Eastern end of this fraud – Marwan Nasser – who, it seems, could quite easily be the same Marwan Nasser referenced in this Haaretz article as a ‘reputed organized crime boss’ and by Y-net news as having been sentenced to 15 years in prison for, amongst other things, racketeering and money laundering.

Yes, it could easily be a different Marwan Nasser, but the involvement of an organized crime ring in this scam would go a long way to explaining how and why a bunch of worthless, useless, dowsing rods have been sold to Iraq’s security forces at up to $60,000 a pop.

What is, however, entirely clear is that someone has tried it on here, and is trying to astroturf their way out of being exposed for the frauds that they are, all of which makes them a really dumb cunt for trying on with me.

So, remember, all three of the ‘pro-ADE651′ comments came from the same Jordanian IP address, which proves conclusively that fake testimonials are being used to pitch the product and this, in turn, neatly confirms that this is indeed a deliberate and carefully contrived fraud; one that someone in a position of authority should really be investigated, especially if the Marwan Nasser behind Cumberland Industries in the same one that was sentenced to 15 years in prison by an Israeli court.