A prank caller wasted hours of emergency responders’ time late Wednesday night, falsely claiming that a plane had crashed in the North Fork area.

Two Park County Sheriff’s deputies, personnel from Park County Search and Rescue and an ambulance crew from Cody Regional Health all had responded to the area before determining that the caller had fabricated his report.

“While these types of pranks seem funny to the people pulling them, the waste of resources — including monopolizing personnel — is not only irresponsible, but potentially dangerous,” Park County Sheriff Scott Steward said in a statement.

Park County Communications Supervisor Monte McClain said the case will be referred to the FBI.

The sheriff’s office said it received the call at 11:48 p.m. Wednesday, in which a male claimed to have witnessed a twin-engine plane crash about 20 miles from the Wapiti Campground in the Shoshone National Forest. The caller, who identified himself as a Detroit resident staying at the North Fork campground, reportedly said the plane’s left engine appeared to be on fire and that he could see people falling from the aircraft.

“The dispatcher who received the call tried for a little over seven minutes to get a good location for the reporting party,” said Charla Baugher-Torczon, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office. “At that time, he was transferred to a deputy [who] had already been made aware of the call, who stayed on the phone for almost an additional 21 minutes.”

In his conversation with the deputy, the male claimed he was trying to drive to the crash site with his Jeep to offer aid, the sheriff’s office said. The caller said he was going to make his way through the dark using glow sticks, but then claimed he had crashed into a tree and was ejected from his Jeep.

“The call was eventually disconnected by the reporting party almost 28 minutes after he first called in,” Baugher-Torczon said.

Deputies, Search and Rescue personnel and the Cody ambulance were all dispatched to the North Fork. However, using “multiple resources,” the sheriff’s office says it ultimately determined the call originated from a cellphone located in Florida. With no Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELT) activated in the area, either, the call was finally canceled and ruled to be a prank at 1:53 a.m., Baugher-Torczon said. More than two hours had passed since the call had been placed.

The sheriff’s office said in Thursday’s release that, in the interests of safety and security, it “takes all calls seriously until proven otherwise.”