Box of Dreams

How a too-good-to-be-true tool fooled drug warriors.

Brian Doherty from the November 1996 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

"If we legally have to prove how it works, then the whole psychic phone network is absolute wire fraud." (Psychic phone networks do, however, include disclaimers saying their services are for entertainment purposes only.)

To avoid the injunction, Quadro even offered to attach with all sales literature and the Tracker itself a notice with the money-back guarantee which would read, in part: "Some scientists believe no known scientific principals [sic] could be responsible for Quadro Corporation products operating as we believe they do. The principals [sic] underlying the operation of Quadro Corporation products are not generally accepted by the scientific community. We invite you to examine Quadro Corporation products for yourself, educate yourself in the proper use and limitations of these products and make up your own mind."

Sounds like a reasonable, liberal compromise between the free play of products and ideas and the government's desire to prevent fraud, but Judge Heartfield said no. The government's tactics when it gets peeved at a product can be extreme, as in the 1950s, when scientific papers of the psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich were burned by the government in the course of stopping the sale of a device he sold that it judged fraudulent.

In the Quadro case, the defense had called to the stand Guy Womack, a solid citizen, an assistant U.S. attorney in the southern district of Texas, and a Quadro distributor. The day he was to testify, the prosecution informed Womack that he was under investigation for his role as a Quadro salesman. On the stand, instead of singing the praises of the product, Womack took the Fifth 42 times and clammed up.

"That's not the way they're supposed to do business," says Womack, who four months later is still an assistant U.S. attorney and has not been officially charged with anything. Womack laments that Judge Heartfield couldn't hear from more satisfied users, and insists that the device has worked for him under circumstances where he had neither knowledge nor even any traditional context clues to go on--where there is no explanation other than that the Quadro Tracker can do what it claims. "The things I found with the Quadro Tracker, I never would have dreamed of looking there without it.

"I guess I'm not skeptical enough. Living in Houston, I'm hearing about new science discoveries almost every week, from NASA to the Texas Medical Center. So it wasn't hard for me to believe this could work if it appears to work."

The government is charging Quadro and its salesmen with fraud. That implies a culpable attempt to fool people. Surely, you'd think that the Quadro guys knew that the device was useless. That's not the sort of thing people involved in criminal investigations admit, even if they will talk to you. Halbig certainly has suspicions that the Quadro people had no real faith in their device: In their instructions, they tell people not to reveal that Quadro was the key to finding any guns or drugs that might be found. "Wouldn't you want Quadro to get the credit?" Halbig wonders. "You need a history of success to get courts to validate it."

But there seems to be no detectable stream of dissatisfied customers. The U.S. Attorney's Office can't name any. Angus Williams of the Polk County School District in Florida tells me he got a refund, no problem. Other school board officials haven't even tried to get a refund. Womack, the former distributor, says no one has asked him for their money back. Kulp claims Quadro refunded $35,000 to a disgruntled Texas distributor. Quadro may have made a lot of money off the deal, but without upsetting too many people. Numerous officials expressed regret that the FBI publicly blew the whistle on the device, ruining the possible deterrent effect on superstitious crooks, cowed by weird science into fearing that there would be no concealing their contraband from the molecular-frequency detectors of the law.

The Amazing Randi, sworn enemy of all metaphysical fraud, is strangely more charitable in his dissection of possible motive. As with all devices working on the dowsing principle, he says, it's very easy to fool yourself that the Quadro Tracker is working.

"They could start out thinking it works, test it and find it doesn't make sense, and then decide that there must be some sort of unknown principle of science or divine influence. They don't know why it worked in the first place, and then they've invested their money and reputations in it," he says.

"I got an amusing letter from the Quadro people in response to my $624,000 challenge, which they wouldn't take. That's as stupid as you can get, not trying for that much money just to do something you claim you do every day. But they said, 'We may call upon your magical powers to get us out of prison.'

"They may need me yet."

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