A man in Arizona was arrested for faking his own kidnapping in order to avoid getting out of work.

ABC7 reported that the man, 19-year-old Brandon Soules, told police an elaborate story about how he was kidnapped over a large amount of money his father hid in the desert. Police were called to the scene and found Soules on the side of the road 55 miles from Phoenix looking roughed up and scared.

To execute his plan, Soules shoved a bandanna in his mouth and tied his hands with his own belt, and then crawled on the ground next to the highway waiting for a passerby to call the police. Eventually, it worked. Police received a call about an injured man going in and out of consciousness near train tracks in Coolidge, a rural town of 13,000 people.

Commander Mark Tercero of the Coolidge Police Department said that they took Soules in for questioning, where he informed officers that he was kidnapped by two masked men. Soules told officers that he was knocked unconscious and shoved in a car in front of his home, but when checking surveillance footage in front of the house, police didn’t find anything.

Police investigated for days, interviewing potential witnesses and looking for surveillance footage, but found nothing. Hospital records showed that Soules did not receive a head injury or a concussion. After repeated questioning over problems in the story, Soules eventually confessed that he fabricated the story as an excuse to not go to work at his job at the Tire Factory.

“Our community is still safe and there are not two masked men running about kidnapping people,” Tercero said.

Although Soules may have gotten off work, he ended up in jail instead and will have to show up in court to face up to his crime.  He also lost his job.

Moral of the story: It’s never a good idea to waste the police’s time and resources.