The disappearance of two teenage girls that resulted in an Amber Alert being issued on Monday was “a pre-planned joke,” Seagoville police said Tuesday, and a man is currently in custody related to the case.

20-year-old Jose Penaloza Estrada is accused of harboring a runaway child.

The girls, a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old from East Texas, had gone to the Seagoville Trade Days flea market with a family friend on Sunday but were reported missing that evening after being separated from the adult and failing to do so did answer their phones.

At around 11:30 pm, one of the girls called her mother “alarmingly”, informed the police and made the woman believe that the children had been kidnapped and were in danger. The call was traced back to a Dallas motel, but authorities did not find the girls there.

An Amber Alert was activated for the girls early on Monday morning.

Seagoville police said footage from the area where the call was made, taken on Monday, showed the girls with two men on Sunday evening. There was no sign that they were in any dire straits, police said, and the footage confirmed the clues the department received that they had orchestrated a kidnapping.

“We got information and videos that contradicted what everyone thought was a kidnapping,” Police Chief Ray Calverley told KDFW-TV (Kanal 4).

Police identified Penaloza as one of the men in the video and interviewed him after they found him in Dallas. Detectives learned he had paid for a motel room in Plano earlier that day and found the girls there unharmed.

Penaloza was arrested after police determined the kidnapping was a joke. It was unclear if he had a lawyer.

Police said additional charges could be brought, possibly against the girls.

“These things are taken very seriously,” Calverly told KDFW.