Fire Department investigators in Knoxville, Tennessee, came up with their own bait to capture a man whom they suspect of making a series of phony 911 calls on his cell phone.

After receiving a false report of a gas leak on December 14, firefighters compared notes.

They confirmed 15 bogus 911 calls over a period of two months, including four house fires, six car crashes and various other medical emergencies. Every fake call came from the same cell phone.

So they called the number and left a message saying that the owner of the cell phone had won a gift card from a major retailer, according to Fire Captain Brent Seymour.

In less than an hour, Seymour received a call back from a man identifying himself as the owner of the cell phone. “He willingly gave his name and address,” Seymour said. “I told him I would be sending that gift card.”

But that wasn’t quick enough to please the man. He wanted the gift card in time for Christmas. So the investigators set up a meeting for that evening.

Seymour said he only waited a few minutes in a business parking lot before the suspect, identified as Jason Mark Harms arrived on foot, identified himself as the gift card recipient, whereupon he was arrested.

Seymour said Harms’ first words were, “You can’t prove it.”

But General Sessions Judge Charles Cerny found that the evidence was strong enough on December 27 to send 15 felony counts of making false reports against Harms to a Knox County grand jury.

The 29-year-old Harms gave authorities what I would consider a candidate for the dumbest excuse of 2006. He thought that he was doing taxpayers a favor by drawing otherwise lazy firefighters out of their cozy fire halls, court papers said.