An Australian man reportedly made his girlfriend believe that he had been kidnapped so he could spend New Year’s Eve with his mistress.

35-year-old Paul Iera narrowly avoided jail time after he admitted before a judge that he had concocted an elaborate lie to hide his infidelity from his girlfriend, wasting tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars in the process. On December 31st of last year, the Australian man from Wollongong called his girlfriend to tell her that he was meeting his “finance guy,” when in reality he was going to see his mistress. At one point, in order to buy themselves some time, the couple messaged Iera’s girlfriend again, this time pretending to be a kidnapper who promised to deliver him safe and sound the next day.

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“Thank you for sending Paul to me, now payback is a ***** bye bye. We will keep him with us until the morning wen (sic) he gives us his bike we call it square,” the ‘kidnapper’s” message read.

The one thing Paul and his mistress didn’t count on was his girlfriend’s panic after reading the message. Fearing for his life, the woman immediately notified the police to report his kidnapping, and a strike force was immediately established to locate and rescue the victim. So while Paul Iera and his mistress were spending some quality time together, the Lake Illawarra Police District was spending 200 hours of police work, equivalent to more than $25,000 of taxpayer money on trying to find him.

On the morning of January 1st, during a high-risk vehicle stop, the police pulled over Iera’s van and found him safe and sound in the company of his mistress. He tried to tell the officers that he had been indeed kidnapped by some Middle-Eastern fellows who eventually let him go, but his story had kinds of inconsistencies, and twelve days later he was arrested and charged with making a false accusation with the intent to subject another person to investigation.

Paul Iera faced up to seven years behind bars for his despicable deception, but after admitting to making up the story of his kidnapping to hide his infidelity from his girlfriend in a court of law, he dodged the bullet and was ordered to pay $AUD 16,218.11 to the New South Wales Government in compensation for the work done by police. Iera was also sentenced to 350 hours of community service.

Magistrate Michael Ong described the accused’s actions as “abhorrent”, adding that he had seriously considered giving him jail time.