Police Hunt for Man Suspected of Making Up Gilroy Kidnapping Story

Police announced today that a San Jose man who reported being kidnapped and robbed in Gilroy last month fabricated the incident in an alleged attempt to cover up embezzling money from his employer.

Police are searching for the 22-year-old man, whose name is being withheld pending his arrest, on suspicion of felony embezzlement and filing a false police report.

"His allegations of being kidnapped, carjacked and robbed have been determined to be false," Sgt. Chad Gallacinao said today.

Inconsistencies in the man's initial accounts of the crimes prompted detectives to investigate and led them to find that the man had falsified his report to conceal embezzling more than $5,000 from his employer, Gallacinao said.

Police continue to search for the man, who is avoiding contact with officers, Gallacinao said.

In the man's police report, he claimed to have been kidnapped at gunpoint in his own car and robbed of an undisclosed amount of cash in Gilroy on Feb. 11, according to police.

He told police that between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. that day, he was sitting in his car in a parking lot in the 7600 block of Monterey Street when a suspect got into his car and forced him to drive at gunpoint.

The man reported that another suspect arrived and forced him into the backseat of his car before the two suspects drove south along U.S. Highway 101 and dropped him off on the side of the freeway in an unincorporated area of Monterey County.

Police found the man's abandoned car at Highway 101 and Sanborn Road in Salinas.