Quebec Falls for a Scam - Econoco Inc.

[greyl]

Reader Rose Anne Mussar, of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, informs us that Econoco Inc., a company based in Prevost, Quebec, near Montreal, has been ordered to stop selling a bogus “fuel-saver” that falsely promises to cut car energy consumption. That’s what we call, a move forward. However, this only happened after a federal agency spent thousands outfitting a fleet of vehicles with the device – at $750 a pop – and boasted it was contributing to a federal plan to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

The Econopro promoters marketed their scam as a gadget that when attached to a car, generated fuel savings of “at least 10 per cent,” eliminating emissions and even improving engine performance. These very common claims, in themselves, should have alerted any agency to the fraudulent nature of such a device, particularly because there are literally hundreds of such devices being offered to the naïve, all over the world.

But Econoco's marketing promotion was enough to convince the Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions to outfit its fleet of vehicles with the device, despite the fact that there was no evidence whatsoever to support the claims.
http://www.randi.org/jr/2006-10/100620sentient.html