A Scottish wide-boy selling mobile phone jamming equipment to hotels has been exposed by local newspaper the Daily Record.

Ronnie McGuire was caught selling the illegal devices, which send out radio waves that swamp the signal between base stations and mobile phones, rendering handsets inoperable in the vicinity of the jamming equipment. He was selling the devices, imported from Taiwan, to hotels and bars at £75 a time.

His pitch was that mobile phone users would be unable to get a signal in premises where the device is used, forcing them to use expensive hotel or guest house phone facilities instead. The devices also stop hotel or bar staff using their own mobiles at work.