The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed. When a man allegedly turned up at a South African police station, announced himself as Capt Mailula and worked for almost three years, earning promotion to detective, no one smelled a rat.

Yet the “smooth”, hard-working man who came to work each day with badge and blue uniform was no cop, it is alleged. He was an escaped convict hiding in plain sight. His duped colleagues rearrested him only for him to escape two nights later and go on the run – again.

“It’s not our finest hour, definitely not,” Col Ronel Otto of Limpopo police said on Monday. “If we find the allegations turn out to be true, it will be quite an embarrassment.”

South Africa’s City Press newspaper reported that Alex Matsobane Maake – the name on his arrest record – is a convicted rapist and thief who fled jail in the capital, Pretoria, in 2012. He arrived at Polokwane police station, Limpopo province, shortly afterwards claiming to have been “sent from national”, but this was never checked and his record never vetted.

The paper interviewed several police officers who knew him, with some saying they were shocked and others claiming there had always been something strange about the so-called Capt Mailula.

One told City Press: “He was very smooth. He fooled almost everyone for a very long time and managed to have commanders eating out of his hand. He lived a lavish life, drove cars that were way too expensive for someone who was a captain – but this did not raise any questions with the bosses.”

Maake was even promoted to the detective unit in the town of Seshego, but some colleagues reportedly complained that he was “messing up cases”.

A source was quoted as saying: “He was good, though, in making swift arrests. And because of this, commanders saw him as a hard worker and dismissed others’ complaints as acts of jealousy.”

In another riddle, it appears that Maake did not have an employment number and, therefore, might have been working unpaid. The source said: “The big headache for the police now is what he was doing all the time when he went out on his own driving marked vehicles with blue lights, armed with state firearms and wearing a police uniform.”

It seemed the game was up earlier this month when Maake was finally rumbled and arrested. Yet after just two nights in police cells, he somehow got away again and remains at large.

Otto confirmed that police have opened cases of impersonating a police officer and escaping from lawful custody. “These allegations are being investigated,” she said.