Hue Jackson’s Hall of Fame Scammers: Wade L. Quattlebaum

Welcome back to another exclusive sneak preview of the Hue Jackson School of Scam Artistry!

As you’ve seen in previous sneak previews, I’ve long been an advocate that the big lie is one of the most tried-and-true methods of pulling off an ideal scam. Take a look at my QB depth chart from my days in Cleveland, right? The big lie takes work to pull off – but if you’ve got All-Star hustle, you, too, can make it big. Let’s take a look into one of the most audacious hoodwinking of cops ever perpetrated on American soil!

WADE L. QUATTLEBAUM: CAR SALESMAN, INVENTOR, AND SHYSTER

BORN: December 25, 1933, Harleyville, South Carolina

DIED: December 10th, 2016, Ridgeville, South Carolina

Imagine you could get rich by building stuff that didn’t actually work. Sorry – I’ll rephrase that original thought. Imagine being anyone other than Elon Musk and getting rich by building stuff that didn’t work. In this era of technology, innovation, and casual disregard for intellectual property, one might argue that we’re living in a golden age of people being able to spot shitty inventions really quickly. Think to the famous Juicero machine from a few years. $400 for a computer to squeeze a Capri Sun pouch? Took them about half an hour to figure out that was a dumb one. With STEM education being pushed so heavily in educational systems around the world, we’re in for more reverse engineering hijinks soon enough, I’m confident. It makes me yearn for the ’90s… back when we were right on the cusp of readily-accessible, easy-to-use technology… but reverse engineering was all the more difficult to manage. It was a great time to be alive for this week’s Hall of Fame Scammer.

Wade L. Quattlebaum, in the spirit of almost everyone who’s ever sold used cars, was a master in the art of scamming. Curiously enough, his obituary makes absolutely no notice of his most lasting mark on the world: his invention of the Quadro Tracker. While being a family man, a US Navy sailor in Korea, and an avid outdoorsman are nice family-friendly details, we’ll be completely disregarding them today. How could the Quadro Tracker go unmentioned? In fact, how will you be able to go another day in your life without mentioning the wonder and audacity of the Quadro Tracker to your family, friends and loved ones?

This little device first came to market in 1993. While it’s best known as the Quadro Tracker, it was also known as the Positive Molecular Locator early on; similar devices such as the GT200 and ADE 651 are still on the market today. However, you might also know it by its original name from the late 1980s: the Gopher Amazing Golf Ball Finder.

“What does it do?”, you ask. Well, it’s actually very simple – it finds stuff. Whatever you want it to, really. Golf balls, weapons, drugs, precious metals, contraband… according to Quattlebaum, all the device needed to be activated was for the user to insert a Polaroid photo of the item in question that they wanted to find. Fingerprints were also acceptable, apparently. According to a marketing brochure, the Quadro Tracker could detect missing persons from up to 500 miles away, and could even tell when people had consumed drugs, rather than just merely having them on their person. It could even find What made the Quadro Tracker all the more amazing was its highly simplistic design. It was mostly a plastic handle with a radio antenna attached to it – and the electrical current needed to run it comes from the human body’s latent static electricity. Remarkable, huh? According to the brochure, “static electricity produced by the body inhaling and exhaling gases into and out of the lung cavity” is used to “charge the free-floating neutral electrons of the signature card with the major strength of the signal.” Whatever the hell that means, I guess.

Law enforcement agencies were thrilled at the idea of having such a powerful tool available for usage on such a wide range of applications. The Quadro company sold over a thousand of these units to police departments and school districts across the United States – with a price range of between $400 to $8000 a pop. For over four years, the cash poured in.

Finally, in January 1996, the jig was up. The FBI had spent the last few months reverse-engineering the Quadro Tracker, and made some surprising – and hilarious – discoveries about its engineering. As it turns out, the only electrical bits in the device were the antenna and two wires – none of which were connected to each other. The “locator chip” was actually just some dead ants that were flash-frozen and glued to a piece of cardboard. After releasing a nation-wide bulletin to all bureaus stating the Quadro Tracker was a total fraud, and that its should be immediately discontinued. The United States issued an injunction against the company and prevented the Quadro Tracker from being sold in the United States – which is still in force today, I believe. Quattlebaum and three others were indicted on mail fraud charges, but in January 1997, they were acquitted of all charges.

Even after the banning of Quadro Tracker devices, multiple school districts continued to use them. In McKinney, Texas, one was quoted as saying “We’re not looking to nail a particular kid. We’re looking to send a message.” In Lafayette, Louisiana, the principal of Carencro High School went on the record about his enthusiasm for the Quadro Tracker: “I heard that there had been some trouble with it, but I tell you what. I’m impressed with it. And this is not necessarily going to be used to catch kids with drugs. If my having this thing keeps kids from bringing drugs on campus, it’s worth its weight in gold.”

While the Quadro Tracker is no longer available for sale in the US, you can apparently still buy similar devices from British companies; the aforementioned GT200 was sold to Thai law enforcement officials to deal with notable political instability back in 2009-10, to Mexico, and to some other Middle Eastern and African countries. The ADE 651 was sold to Niger and Iraq as a bomb detection device, and to the Pakistani military to guard the Karachi airport. Finally, the Alpha 6 was sold to Egypt, Thailand, and Mexico. As all of these were virtually identical to the Quadro Tracker, their “inventors” got in significant trouble in the British legal system. James McCormick, who swindled the Iraqi government out of $85 million in selling them the ADE 651 (at around $8000 a pop!), got ten years in prison for the fraud. Gary Bolton, who sold the GT200, got seven years, while Samuel Tree, who sold the Alpha 6, got three and a half years; Sam’s wife Joan got 300 hours of unpaid community service.

All this wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for the tenacity of Wade L. Quattlebaum. It’s clear that through the art of the big lie, he made his mark on the art of scamming. His place in the Hall of Fame is well-deserved, and his obituary never should’ve shied away from that fact in the first place!

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Remember, folks – don’t forget to call 1-900-FAST-BUX as soon as possible to get in on my exclusive audio cassette lessons, featuring hours of exclusive content! If you call in the next 20 minutes, you’ll even receive your very own Quadro Tracker, from my own personal stockpile – even personally signed by me! Don’t delay – you won’t get another opportunity like this anytime soon! Until next time – I’m Hue Jackson.

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Information from this article taken from here, here, here, and here. Banner image by The Maestro.