Cops foil Level 3 burglary

Three charged after attempted London heist

By Chris Williams • Get more from this author

Posted in Telecoms, 10th March 2009 15:33 GMT

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Three men have been charged following a break-in at a Level 3 datacentre in central London in the early hours of Monday morning.

John Harrison, 31, of no fixed address and Darren May, 23, of Mansell Court in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, were both charged with burglary. Christopher Skutela, 27, of Haymerle Road, Peckham, was charged with burglary and possession of a class B drug.

All three men will appear before Thames magistrates court on Tuesday.

Level 3 customers were alerted to a physical security breach at the firm’s facility in Braham Street near Aldgate tube station in an alert late on Monday morning.

“Level 3 physical security [network operations centre] have reported security alarms at Braham street, London, UK,” the alert said. “Police are currently on site and continuing their investigation work.”

Customers were told the alarm was triggered at 4.04AM.

It’s understood that police attending the scene discovered three suspects on the premises. They were taken to an East London police station and charged.

The Braham Street facility offers colocation to large corporate customers and to smaller companies via resellers. It contains millions of pounds worth of servers and networking gear. The site was burgled for network cards in November 2006. Level 3 refused to comment on Monday.

Last year BT suffered a series of disruptive raids at London facilities, prompting it to offer a £15,000 reward for information. ®

This story was corrected to indicate the magistrates hearing was on Tuesday March 10, not Wednesday March 11 as originally reported.

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