Durban - The tree-lined streets of upmarket Westville have, for the past few months, belied a sordid set-up at one of its smart office complexes.
The Derby Downs building in University Road - which houses well-to-do corporate offices - has also been playing host to a webcam porn studio operating under the guise of a call centre.
And after a brief stint working there, a 29-year-old Pinetown woman who said she was owed money by the scheme’s operator has come forward to expose it.
Chantelle sat down with The Mercury at the weekend to reveal what had really been going on at SA Call Holdings.
She was recruited to work at SA Call Holdings, where webcam porn sites ilive.com and jasmin.com operate, in early June.
Her boyfriend, Shawn, had taken up a managerial position there about a month earlier.
He was working at a restaurant where Craig Thompson, who headed SA Call Holdings, was a regular, Shawn told The Mercury.
He said he was initially made to believe he would be working in the “fashion and modelling” industry.
“By the time I realised what it was really all about, I had already quit my previous job and it was too late to turn back.”
Chantelle recently quit her job too. She had been working as the manager of a wholesale liquor outlet.
After a few weeks of unemployment, she decided to give working as one of Thompson’s “girls” a try.
She described the set-up:
“He rented out five offices in the block and converted them into bedrooms with sleeper couches and pictures on the wall to make it look authentic.”
Each of the bedrooms also had a camera and a computer.
Chantelle showed The Mercury photographs of herself, dressed in a negligee and posing provocatively on a couch.
She worked with a number of other “girls”, who were all in their early twenties.
“We would come to work dressed normally and then change into lingerie or something sexy,” Chantelle explained.
Then, she went on, they would disappear into the “bedrooms” where they would engage with men - from across the globe - in a free chat room.
The aim was to convince the men to enter into a “private chat room” which they had to pay for.
“Once they were in a private chat room, we would do whatever they asked us to,” she said.
She came to the media after her and Shawn’s relationship with Craig soured.
The pair explained that a few weeks ago, he told them he was shutting down the operation and went to ground without having paid them.
Chantelle said she was owed around R5 000 and Shawn R10 000.
The chairman of the body corporate for the complex, Gavin Futcher, said on Monday that Thompson had cleared out his offices.
“We went in on Friday and all the furniture had been removed,” he said, “All we found was a box of webcams in the kitchen.”
Looking back, Futcher said he thought Thompson’s set-up seemed strange.
“They would come in and out at odd times,” he said.
He also said Thompson seemed “on edge” whenever he saw him around the building.
“But when I spoke to him, he said he was running a call centre.”
The owner of the building, Sunil Singh, was appalled.
“I would never have allowed that,” Singh told The Mercury. “But I didn’t know.”
He said he had enlisted the services of a property agent to deal with letting of the offices.
Singh, too, only became aware of what was going on in his offices after Thompson left.
He said Thompson had defaulted on his rent and breached the one-year lease agreement.
“But I just hope all those people who were working for him get paid,” he said.
On Monday The Mercury made numerous attempts to contact Thompson via SMS and WhatsApp and over the phone. He had read a WhatsApp message sent to him but did not respond. When his father’s house was visited no one came to the door.
Thompson’s father, Ron Thompson, who signed as guarantor on the lease at Derby Downs, said on Monday that he was “a father who had tried to help his son” and he had signed as guarantor on the lease, but he had no involvement at all with the business.
“I didn’t even know what it was all about,” he said.
He had been approached in an attempt to recover Shawn’s and Chantelle’s salaries, but he had discussed that with his lawyer and deemed it “extortion”.
The Mercury