A 40-year-old man was arrested in Rajarhat late on Tuesday on the charge of cheating thousands of people of crores of rupees on the pretext of taking space on rent to install mobile phone towers.

Rajnish Singh, the director of Crater Online Retail Pvt Ltd, targeted towns and villages in Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, an officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate said.

The fraud involves more than Rs 50 crore and over Rs 1 crore was seized from Singh’s office in Sector V, the officer said.

A team of officers from the cyber crime police station in Salt Lake picked up Singh from his home in Rajarhat.

He had been running four offices in Sector V with at least 250 people (in Bengal and other states) on his payroll, the officer said. “The main office was in Sector V’s Megathrem Tower in GP Block, near the RDB Boulevard. Cops raided Singh’s head office based on a complaint filed by Goutam Bordoloi, of Kamrup district in Assam.”

His employees would call up people to ask if they had vacant plots or empty rooftops and if they were interested in renting out the space for mobile towers, the officer said. “They targeted people in the districts and other states and would offer incredibly high returns for a very small space.”

As soon as anyone showed interest, Singh’s team would convince him/her to pay a huge sum as “registration fee”, “no-objection fee” and “GST charges”, the officer said.

Singh apparently gave advertisements in the names of top mobile service providers.

In October, police had arrested 13 people from Singh’s offices, including the one in Sector V, but he had fled.

“He was on the run, keeping his phones switched off and changing hideouts frequently. We had information he would return home to collect some documents... a team kept watch at his home,” the officer said.

Documents and computer records seized from the offices indicate more than 10,000 people have been cheated, he said. “The racket was well structured. The best performers even received gifts, bonuses and paid vacations.”

Singh — booked for cheating and criminal conspiracy, among other charges — was on Wednesday remanded in 14 days’ judicial custody.