Thai businessman convicted of selling fake bomb detectors

BANGKOK (AP) — A court in Thailand has convicted a local businessman of fraud for selling fake bomb detectors to the Thai government, five years after a court in the United Kingdom sentenced the British head of the company that supplied them to seven years in prison.

Sutthiwat Wathanakij had already received a 10-year prison sentence last week for selling the bomb detectors to the Thai army under 12 sales contracts worth 600 million baht ($18.5 million). Wednesday's conviction covering three other contracts landed him another nine years' imprisonment.

The GT200 bomb detectors — which were claimed to be capable of detecting drugs and other substances — were exposed in 2010 as worthless pseudo-scientific instruments after many millions of dollars of the devices were sold to police and military units around the world.