NBC News reports that a 34-year-old New York man has been charged with filing a false report after he admitted he had not been kidnapped as he had claimed. He really could not argue otherwise because under the law of New York, and everywhere else, it takes at least two people to have a "kidnapping." N.Y. Pen. Code § 135.20 ("A person is guilty of kidnapping … when he abducts another person.") The man first told police that two other men had abducted him, but later admitted he had faked the crime rather than tell his girlfriend the truth about where he had been for the previous two weeks. As the report put it, "he may have concocted the whole story to avoid his girlfriend's wrath."

I guess the good news for him is that they couldn't charge him with self-kidnapping.

Police reportedly became skeptical of the kidnapping story shortly after finding the man in the middle of the road a few blocks from his home, bound and gagged with duct tape. The skepticism arose from the fact that a roll of duct tape was still hanging from his wrist when police arrived. This is only circumstantial evidence, of course, and it's possible that the kidnappers were interrupted while binding the man (in the middle of the road), or that as professional kidnappers they have more duct tape than they could ever use and so don't bother to keep leftovers. Seems at least equally possible, though, that a dumbass might use the whole roll to tape his ankles and mouth first and then his wrists, realizing only then how hard it'll be to tear the last strip and/or get rid of the roll.

The man had been gone for two weeks, and one report says he had been reported missing. None of the reports explain where he had actually been, so maybe that's still a closely guarded secret. All the reports do agree that (1) the man's motive was to deceive his girlfriend, (2) it was not a very good effort ("a pathetic attempt to pull the wool [over] her eyes," said a source), and (3) as the same source put it, the suspect is "a total moron."

He is not the first such moron, though, as you may recall if you have been reading this thing for—Jesus Christ—almost eight years now? See "Man Fakes Own Kidnapping to Avoid Wrath of Girlfriend," Lowering the Bar (July 17, 2005). On further review, that fake-kidnapping effort was even worse than this one, so it may be worth looking at, especially if you are considering something similar.

I probably remember that one because of the excellent quote from a police captain, who, coincidentally or not, used the word "wrath" just as the NBC report did. "He really truly feared the wrath of his pregnant girlfriend," the officer said, "to the point where he was willing to go to jail" for a false report rather than tell her he had spent $500 at a strip club. "Plus," he added, "the wrath is still going to be there now."