[chris]

A North Carolina woman's report that her 3-year-old had disappeared from a busy flea market triggered a statewide Amber Alert, only for investigators to determine days later that the boy had never been missing at all.

Rosnah Hassan Thomason, 43, of Four Oaks, called 911 on May 18, 2008, telling dispatchers the boy vanished while she shopped at the Brightleaf Flea Market in Smithfield, according to police. She did not alert market staff for nearly two hours, telling investigators she had first driven home to find someone who could interpret for her because she does not speak English.

Smithfield police issued an Amber Alert and searched the market grounds, while other crews searched roughly 24 miles of the nearby Neuse River by boat and helicopter, according to the FBI. Thomason had described herself to officers as the boy's mother.

The next day, Thomason told investigators the boy was actually with her brother, who had taken him to Japan. Police called off the Amber Alert on May 20 and said the disappearance had been staged. Smithfield Police Chief Steve Gillikin said investigators would not call it a misunderstanding, saying it was "maybe a hoax."

The FBI said DNA testing later confirmed that Thomason's brother, not Thomason, was the boy's biological father, and that the false report grew out of a family dispute over the child. Investigators said Thomason had planned the report in advance, printing instructions on how to file a missing-child report and buying plane tickets in the days beforehand, and that the false claim nearly diverted an international flight.

Thomason pleaded guilty in February 2010 to making false statements to federal agents. A federal judge in Raleigh sentenced her that September to one year and one day in prison, three years of supervised release, and restitution to the law enforcement agencies that had searched for the boy.