A 29-year-old man, who stole thou­sands of dol­lars from peo­ple by pre­tend­ing he was a po­lice of­fi­cer and could fast track their ap­pli­ca­tions to join the po­lice ser­vice, has been ar­rest­ed.

The sus­pect, of Union Vil­lage, La Brea, was ar­rest­ed by the po­lice on Mon­day.

Over the past six months, the sus­pect col­lect­ed $1,500 from his vic­tims to “fast track” their med­icals and in­ter­views for re­cruit­ment with­in the TTPS.

He would drop the vic­tims off at a po­lice sta­tion, in­struct­ing them to in­form of­fi­cers they were there for an in­ter­view, and then leave with­out fur­ther con­tact. The vic­tims were from the South­ern and South West­ern Di­vi­sions.

The sus­pect was ap­pre­hend­ed fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion ini­ti­at­ed af­ter a so­cial me­dia user post­ed his pho­to on­line, ex­pos­ing his fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ties.

As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice (ASP) South Cen­tral, Wayne Mys­tar, stat­ed, “I would like to ad­vise mem­bers of the pub­lic that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice does not ac­cept any pay­ment to fast track the re­cruit­ment process. Any in­di­vid­ual or group claim­ing to of­fer ex­pe­dit­ed en­try in­to the TTPS, in ex­change for mon­ey, is en­gag­ing in fraud.”

Mys­tar ad­vised the pub­lic to ver­i­fy all re­cruit­ment in­for­ma­tion through of­fi­cial TTPS sources, in­clud­ing its web­site and so­cial me­dia pages, and to re­port any­one re­quest­ing mon­ey for re­cruit­ment as­sis­tance. He al­so en­cour­aged oth­er vic­tims of the La Brea sus­pect to come for­ward. The sus­pect faces charges of lar­ce­ny by trick­ery and im­per­son­ation of a po­lice of­fi­cer.

Sgt Nand­lal and a team from the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.