Losing your child to a kidnapper must be a parent’s worst nightmare, but for one woman, her child turning out to be safe was an even bigger nightmare.

On the first day of March, a 22-year-old woman named N.T.B.T., originally from the Mekong Delta Province of Hậu Giang and working for a factory in Bình Dương, caused her neighbour a scare as she screamed about having her 20-day-old baby girl kidnapped in broad daylight.

She said after taking a bath, the baby, left on a mat in the living room, was gone.

Local police quickly investigated and news of the shocking incident spread across social media.

But in a strange turn of events, barely a day later, provincial police announced no such crime had occurred. What’s more, it was the young mother that invented the story to cover up the fact that she had given up her own child.

The police said details in T.’s account did not add up, plus the security camera outside her rented apartment did not show anyone or anything suspicious.

She eventually confessed that because she was struggling financially and could not take care of the baby, she had given her to an infertile couple in HCM City’s District 8 after the two sides connected over a Facebook group.

She said she did not ask for money but claimed the couple insisted on leaving her VNĐ15 million ($644) as “compensation to cover her birth expenses.”

Some commented it’s possible that fearing social backlash and legal punishment for her crime, the woman had fabricated the incident.

Under Vietnamese law, the crime of buying or selling a child carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

The story did not end there though, as it emerged the child was likely fathered not by the woman’s long term partner in her home of Hậu Giang, but by another man, leading to another theory that she might be “getting rid” of the child due to guilt.