Chef said he had been kidnapped to skive off work
A MAN has been jailed for sparking a police hunt after telling his boss he had been kidnapped – while skiving off work at home.
Chef Mariusz Kaminski sent texts to his manager and a friend that three men bundled him into a BMW over a £1,500 debt.
The father of one later claimed he had escaped his captors and hid in a hedge for half an hour before walking to a hospital.
A police investigation involving 22 officers was launched in response to the fake kidnap on October 28 last year as friends also searched for him.
But he was texting from home, Salisbury Crown Court heard.
Two men were interviewed under caution and a friend, who he had warned off calling the police, took out a loan to give him the cash before Kaminski came clean.
Kaminski, 36, of Trowbridge, Wilts, was sentenced to 16 months in jail on Monday for making up the “bizarre” tale.
The chef, born in Poland, had been convicted by a jury in February of perverting the course of justice and fraud by false representation. He was also ordered to pay £1,750 compensation to his friend.
Jurors had heard Kaminski ran into financial difficulties and had to declare himself bankrupt while his marriage also broke down. By October 2017, he was working in a pub and struggling to pay the mortgage on his Swindon home. Mitigating, John Dyer told the court the breaking point for his client was when he heard of a close friend’s suicide in Poland. He said Kaminski had reconciled with his wife and daughter and was offered a senior chef role at a Marco Pierre White-run restaurant. Sentencing Kaminski, Recorder Roger Harris told him: “This is an unusual, bizarre and ultimately sad case.”