By MEERA VIJAYAN

JOHOR BARU, MALAYSIA: A school bus driver and a security guard have been detained for posing as policemen for extortion.

The imposters, who are in their 30s, had earlier demanded S$70,000 (RM169, 578) from their victims to settle an illegal lottery case.

One of their victims reported to police at 8pm on Wednes-day that two of his female colleagues had been "detained" by policemen claiming to be from Bukit Aman.

At around 10pm, police spotted a car with two men and a woman entering the compound of the New York Hotel and tried to stop the vehicle.

The car sped off, resulting in a high-speed chase. The suspects were stopped at Jalan Lingkaran Dalam.

Police found mobile phones, five false police identification tags and several fake police badges in the car which had a false registration number plate.

Johor police chief Deputy Comm Datuk Mohd Mokhtar Shariff said police believed the two imposters were involved in a series of extortions in Johor and several neighbouring states.

He said police rescued one of the women while the other had purportedly been released by the suspects before the car chase.

In an unrelated case, police recovered RM300,000 worth of stolen cables from a factory in Jalan Kempas Lama, Skudai on Thursday. The owner of the factory and a worker have been detained.

The recovered cables were part of a shipment of 301 wire cables and 11 wire drums that were reported stolen from a parked lorry in Taman Teknologi Cheng in Malacca at around 3.30pm on June 24.