An Australian man who staged his kidnapping to spend time with his lover on New Year’s Eve has been awarded police compensation by a court for the time spent searching for him and investigating his claims, CNN and the BBC have reported.

The man, Paul Iera, appeared before magistrates in Wollongong, New South Wales, on Tuesday who told him he owed the government A$16,218 (about US$10,000) for 200 hours of work lost by police searching for him after his partner reported him missing and is investigating his claims.

As reported by the local station 9News, the 35-year-old man went to his mistress on December 31 last year, lying to his partner that he was going to meet with his financial advisor.

Wanting to spend more time with his mistress, the man sent his partner a message that attracted her legal problems, implying that he had been kidnapped.

“Kidnapping” with a song in Australia

“Thank you for sending me Paul, now the revenge will be over, goodbye. We will hold him until the morning when he gives us his motorcycle and we will say we are ready,” the couple wrote in a message attributed to the alleged kidnappers that sent Iera’s partner into a panic.

She called the police before midnight, who immediately launched an investigation and soon began hunting for him.

Hiera and his lover were stopped the next morning in a police raid, but even then the man tried to claim he had been kidnapped, saying a group of Middle Eastern men he did not know had abducted him.

Police arrested Iyera 12 days later after concluding that his claims were baseless and finding out what really happened. Although the court said it was “appalled” by his actions, it spared the man a prison sentence.

The court ordered him to pay both for his search and for the time police later spent investigating his claims about the group of men who allegedly kidnapped him.