Here are some things to remember when planning to claim, falsely, that you were kidnapped:

• If you say you were on the way to a store to buy something, check to see if that store really carries that item. Because the police evidently do that.

• If you are planning to say you were robbed, take the money out of your wallet, especially if you have over $400 there.

• It is difficult to be hit in the back of the head if you are facing the assailant.

• If you claim to have escaped from the trunk of your car by pulling the “emergency release lever,” check to see if your car actually has one of those.

A Louisiana man (let’s call him “Doug”) who faked his own kidnapping did not consider any of these, it appears, before concocting his story. This was apparently intended for his girlfriend’s benefit, to explain how he lost $500 and where he had been all night. Well, I guess the money wasn’t actually “lost,” because a stripper or strippers has it now—according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, he had actually been at a local “gentleman’s club” called “Scuttlebutt’s.” He told police he “got substantially drunk amid all the exotic dancing” and that the next thing he remembered was waking up on the passenger side of his car with the keys and $500 missing, about two miles from his motel. “Think fast, Doug,” Doug’s brain probably said, but it then just sat there and mocked his failure to come up with anything better than a fake kidnapping story.

Capt. Rob Callahan of the Slidell, Louisiana, police department said that Doug’s story “went downhill pretty fast.” After about an hour of questioning, Doug admitted that the story had been intended “to insulate himself from the wrath of his pregnant girlfriend” finding out he had been at Scuttlebutt’s. “He really truly feared the wrath of his pregnant girlfriend, to the point where he was willing to go to jail” for the false report, said Callahan.

“Plus,” Callahan added, not only did the scheme fail, but “the wrath is still going to be there now.”