A Man Dressed as a Cop and Pulled Over a Motorist Just to Steal Some Cutlery

A man allegedly impersonating a police officer pulled over and searched a campervan in Adelaide’s North last Saturday. Then he stole some silverware. The pseudo cop stopped his victim by flashing fake police lights mounted to the dashboard of his Toyota Camry and, after identifying himself as a police officer, searched the van and made off with the cutlery, according to a statement by South Australia Police.

Speaking to ABC Radio Adelaide, Senior Constable Kate Dawson described the whole incident as “a bit odd”.

The driver of the campervan reportedly became suspicious of the man’s behaviour when he wasn’t given a receipt for the cutlery, and noticed the Camry had dark tinted windows and no front number plate. Police are still on the lookout for the suspect who is described as a Caucasian male with a “grey scraggly looking goatee beard”.

This marks the latest in a string of incidents that have seen people imitating police officers in Adelaide and South Australia recently.

Earlier this month, two men dressed as federal officers tried to scam money from an Adelaide couple claiming they had unpaid tax debt. In September, an Adelaide woman also posted a warning on social media after she was handed a speeding fine by two men impersonating police officers. In that case, the men were found to have issued fake fines to multiple drivers across Adelaide. And let’s not forget the two fake Chinese police cars spotted in Adelaide and Perth in the midst of pro-Hong Kong demonstrations around Australia in August.

VICE contacted South Australia Police for comment, but they don’t seem to think this recent spate of incidents points toward an emerging trend of police fraud. They stressed that there have only been three incidents this year, all of which were isolated.