“I’ve hidden the body, what do we do now?” read the text message. An engineer, unnamed in the French press, received this unusual text message on June 6. He didn’t recognise the number of the sender and called the police, French regional daily Le Telegramme reports.

Officers immediately opened an investigation into the suspected concealment of a corpse. Over the next couple of days, they combed mobile phone directories and located the whearebouts of the sender of the message, over 700 kilometres away in the north-western town of Lorient. 

Police then visited the scene from where the text message was sent: a street near Lorient hospital. But no missing persons or bodies were reported. 

The police then confronted the owner of the mobile phone, a fifty-year old man who does not have a criminal record. Five days after the engineer received the mysterious text message, investigators pay the suspect a visit at his workplace. He denies having sent the message. 

But a check into the man’s background eventually led to the culprit – his 15-year-old son admitted he sent the text message. According to the Telegramme, he told officers he took up a bet on Facebook and sent the mysterious message to an unknown number. Police say they gave the teenager a stern rebuke, but did not arrest him.