Couple who made bogus bomb detectors and claimed they could find Madeleine McCann face jail

 
Facing jail: Samuel and Joan Tree
Paul Cheston1 August 2014
WEST END FINAL

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A husband and wife face jail at the Old Bailey for making bogus bomb detectors in their garden shed which they claimed could find missing Madeleine McCann.

Samuel and Joan Tree insisted their dud devices, marketed as Alpha 6, could track down explosives and drugs.

But the detectors, sold through their company Keygrove, were just plastic boxes with an antenna strapped on to them and bits of torn-up paper inside.

They cost just a few pounds to make, but were sold for more than £1,000.

The Trees raked in hundreds of thousands of pounds after making up to 1,500 of the devices in the back garden of their semi-detached home in Dunstable.

One of the boxes was found to have a photograph of missing Madeleine cut into pieces inside.

The jury found both guilty of making an article for use in a fraud between January 2007 and July 2012.

They will be sentenced at a later date by Judge Richard Marks QC.

The court heard that that Samuel Tree’s business partner Simon Sherrard believed the machine had located Madeleine McCann. Mr Sherrard, who was convinced the machines worked as claimed, was found not guilty of fraud in relation to the devices in a trial last year.

After loading a photo of the missing child into the handle of the device, Sherrard said the missing girl “was either in Ireland or somewhere in middle or Northern Europe.”

Tree had actually travelled to Ireland “on the trail” of Maddie, who was four when she went missing six years ago, the court heard.

Prosecutor Richard Whittam QC said the device was nothing more than “a confidence trick.”

Samuel Tree, 66, and his wife Joan, 62, had both pleaded not guilty.

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