A Cuban man accused of faking his own kidnapping has been arrested in Guyana: He asked his father in the U.S. for $1,500.

A 29-year-old Cuban citizen was arrested on Thursday in Guyana after being accused of staging his own kidnapping to obtain $1,500 from his father, who resides in the United States, local media reported.

The case began when relatives of Iván Ravelo Martínez reported to the Georgetown police that the young man had been kidnapped and that a ransom was being demanded for his release.

The supposed evidence of the crime was a photograph in which Ravelo Martínez was shown with a firearm in his mouth, inside a vehicle. This image was sent directly to his father, Iván Ravelo Ruiz, who lives in the United States.

However, a review of surveillance cameras at various locations in the city allowed detectives to reconstruct the events with precision.

The recordings from a hotel on North Road, Georgetown, showed that on Wednesday at 9:10 AM, a white Toyota Axio arrived at the location driven by Shamar King, who identified himself as a police officer from Grove, East Bank Demerara, accompanied by the Cuban Daikol Manuel Tartabull Rodríguez.

Five minutes later, both of them left the hotel alongside Martinez and departed in the same vehicle, circling around the city several times before heading to the East Bank of Demerara.

The detectives located the four individuals involved in Grove, in front of King's residence, where they found a black Astra Glock 17 air pistol on the floor of the back seat of another vehicle, which matched the weapon visible in the photograph sent to the father.

The four men were arrested immediately.

During the interrogation, Ravelo Martínez admitted that the gun was his and that he himself asked Daikol to put it in his mouth for the photo.

According to News Room Guyana, Martinez stated that “he told his father that he was in trouble and needed 1,500 dollars, and that he never said he had been kidnapped.”

King, for his part, stated that Daikol hired him to transport him to Georgetown and that he was unaware of the plan, claiming he was told that Iván owed him money and wanted to meet with him at the hotel.

At 8:00 PM that same Wednesday, King received another call from Daikol to go out partying; he contacted a second taxi driver, Travis Fletcher, and it was then that the police intercepted all four of them.

The four detained individuals remain in police custody while investigations continue, and the police have confiscated several cell phones and vehicles as part of the process.