A man in Liuzhou, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, who used a fake base station to spread spam messages, has been detained by police, People's Daily reported on Wednesday.

The man, surnamed Li, was charged with destroying public telecommunications facilities after interrupting the communications of 130,000 cellphones in Liuzhou in the last month.

Some local residents found their cellphones stuffed with spam messages and unable to make calls since January. After similar interruptions occurred on Feb 10, technicians of a communication provider located a suspected fake base station, which the police later found in Li’s car.

In a confession, Li admitted to carrying a fake base station in his car to urban areas of Liuzhou to spread spam messages. More than 10,000 messages were sent on the day Li was caught, the police said.