4 fake LTO employees nabbed in South Cotabato

SOUTH COTABATO, Philippines - Policemen on Tuesday detained four men disguised as Land Transportation Office (LTO) employees caught mulcting money from motorists in an isolated stretch of a national highway in Surallah town.

Chief Inspector Arnold Cariño, in-charge of the police’s South Cotabato Highway Patrol Group, said the suspects wore fake LTO identification cards as part of their extortion ploy.

Cariño and his men learned of the illegal activities of the suspects, Mack Usop, Benjie Candang, Buhari Upam and Marco Abutazil, from victims they flagged down at the highway and forced into paying cash.

The suspects were arrested in an entrapment staged by Cariño and his men.

Cariño’s group had seized from them fake LTO identification cards and a car they used to move from one stretch to another of the Cotabato-Gen. Santos Highway.

Cariño said they will file corresponding criminal charges against the four men, now clamped down in a police detention facility, awaiting prosecution.