Busted for racial Central Pk. rob lie

A BROOKLYN man has been busted for lying about being robbed by two black men in Central Park, officials said.

Muhammad Shaukat, 22, was arrested for falsely claiming the two men stole $33,000 in camera equipment from him at W. 106th St. and the West Drive about 12:20 a.m. Tuesday.

“It never happened,” a police source said of the robbery.

Shaukat — described by the police source as a semiprofessional photographer — was charged with making a false written statement.

Cops almost immediately suspected he was lying when he gave varying accounts of what had happened, according to a high-ranking police source.

After reviewing the case with Shaukat for four hours, the shady shutterbug finally admitted he had made the whole thing up, the source said.

The items he reported stolen were rented, so police believe Shaukat had made the robbery claim so he could keep the equipment.

He was arraigned early Wednesday and released on his own recognizance.

Shaukat is not the first person arrested for falsely claiming to be the victim of phantom black men.

In March, Breana Harmon Talbott, 18, of Denison, Tex., ran into a church clad only in underwear and a bra and claimed three black men in ski masks had kidnapped and raped her.

The claims sent shivers of fear through the town of 23,000.

The Denison Police Department investigated it, but found it was a hoax and arrested her. In a statement, Chief Jay Burch said Talbott staged the whole thing and caused her injuries herself.

“Breana Harmon Talbott’s hoax was also insulting to our community and especially offensive to the African-American community,” Burch said at the time. “The anger and hurts caused from such a hoax are difficult and so unnecessary.”

She was charged with filing a false report.

In 2010, Bethany Storro claimed a black woman threw a cup of acid in her face, causing tremendous burns.

She was booked as a guest on Oprah Winfrey’s show, but that fell apart and she admitted to investigators that she burned her own face with the acid in a suicide attempt.

Perhaps the most infamous case of all was that of a woman whose complaint led to the 1955 lynching murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till. After two men were charged with the murder, Carolyn Bryant testified that Till had grabbed her and verbally abused her. The killers were acquitted.

But she changed her story this year in an interview with Duke University Prof. Timothy Tyson.

“That part’s simply not true,” she said at the time.