On this April Fool's Day, police are not pleased to know they've wasted resources investigating an abduction hoax, which has turned out to be just some friends fooling around.
Those friends are now being questioned by police at the 33rd precinct.
It looked like something out of a movie.
Two masked men, one wearing a ski mask and the other with a plastic bag over his head, bolting down Haven Avenue in Washington Heights on Friday.
Behind them was a van going the wrong way a one-way street with its doors open.
"It was a Chrysler. It was a navy blue Chrysler. It turned down the one way, and it pulled over and stopped and a couple of guys came out and picked up a girl, pushed her in the car," an eyewitness said.
It was an abduction of a woman and a man, or so it seemed to eyewitnesses.
In fact, it was all a hoax.
"In the beginning when they scream we were nervous, but the way they walked in, it didn't seem suspicious because it was like they knew which car they were going in," a woman said.
"They had this hoax where they got out of the car, we don't think a gun was involved even though an 8-year-old boy said he saw a gun, he recognized them. He knew who they were, and they took him," Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
Police say one of the men involved in the fake kidnapping called and admitted to the prank when he saw news coverage of police putting up Crime Stoppers posters and searching for victims.
He told investigators that he and several others pretended to kidnap their buddy, abducting him for a weekend of birthday celebrations in the Poconos.
"There's no criminal charges here. Just wished they'd use email next time," Kelly said.
The man who was kidnapped told police he recognized his friends' voices and never felt threatened.
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