PENANG police have crippled a gang where its members posed as policemen before robbing their victims, with the arrest of eight Filipinos and a local man in a raid at Jalan Penang last November 15.

State police chief Mohd Shuhaily Mohd Zain said the Filipinos, including a woman, and the local man, all aged between 30 and 50, were arrested in a special operation conducted by the Penang police contingent’s Criminal Investigations Department and the Timur Laut district police.

“Following the arrests, police confiscated 13 mobile phones of various brands, 33 bank cards, clothing, passports, RM6,265 cash and 5,840 pesos and two rented cars,” he told a press conference in George Town today.

He said preliminary investigations found that the gang used a modus operandi of getting its members to impersonate police officers and then approached their victims, normally foreigners, on the pretext of arresting them for certain offences, and then robbing them.

Shuhaily said that based on police investigations, the gang was involved in at least seven cases of impersonating policemen to commit robbery in Penang, Kuala Lumpur (2 cases) and Malacca (1) involving losses amounting to RM42,600.

He said checks found that the local man had two previous criminal records and the Filipinos were his friends.

All of them are in remand for 10 days for investigations under sections 395 and 170 of the penal code, for gang robbery and impersonating a public servant, respectively. – Bernama, November 23, 2022.