By Deanna Boyd
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram
FORT WORTH, Texas — The only thing this “firefighter” is putting out is malarkey, police say.
Fort Worth police are searching for a man who they say posed as a Fort Worth firefighter conducting a fire system inspection in order to steal from a north Fort Worth motel.
The theft occurred Wednesday at the Quality Inn, 4681 Gemini Place.
According to police, the suspect told the manager he was a 17-year veteran of the department and needed to complete an inspection of the motel’s fire system.
Sgt. Marc Povero, a police spokesman, said the man showed the manager an identification card that said Fort Worth Fire on it and a badge.
“He showed him some kind of credentials that made the manager at the motel believe that he worked for the fire department,” Povero said.
Police say the man seemed knowledgeable about the motel’s fire system.
“He knew where the fire control panels were located and how they worked,” Fort Worth police said in a Facebook post Friday morning. “He even reset some flashing lights on the control panel, which had been previously blinking.”
Police say the man then asked the manager to go to another part of the motel and set off a fire alarm to test the system.
When the manager returned to the motel’s front desk, the man told him he was going to his vehicle to “get some tools to turn off the alarm.”
He never came back, police said, and the manager soon found that $460 was missing from the register.
Surveillance cameras showed the man posing as a firefighter removing the money. He left in a dark-colored Ford Mustang.
Anyone with information about the theif’s identity is asked to call police at 817-392-4622.
Copyright 2016 the Fort Worth Star-Telegram