SOS Mike Hunt!

Step aside, you rank-amateur prank-callers, with your “Is Mike Hunt there?” A Largo, Florida, teen has achieved prank call godliness.

Using stolen marine radio equipment, the unnamed 15-year-old radioed mayday calls to the U.S. Coast Guard, sending them out looking for sinking ships and drowning swimmers in a four-day reign of fun-filled terror that might have lead to a wacky search for Jap subs had he not been ratted out by his own mother. According to Largo Police Officer Sean Mahabir, the boy’s antics led to at least four useless search-and-rescue missions. During one fake mayday, the teen gave the name of a cousin serving in Iraq as his own, prompting the Coast Guard to call the teen’s aunt. The woman immediately believed her son had been killed and fell into hysterics.

The good times came to an end when the teen’s mother found two marine radios in his room. She called Largo police, who eventually turned up four others. Mahabir said the prank distress calls, made because the teen “needed something to do,” cost the Coast Guard hundreds of thousands of dollars.

by Scott Saxon