The policeman in question, Leo Dieker, had ordered a sim card in the Netherlands on eBay. ‘I always do that before I go on a trip. When I got to Florida I was bombarded with messages. That is not unusual in the States because companies are allowed to call you so I would just hang up,’ he told the paper.

But one of the callers was very persistent and even when Dieker had said several times he was not ‘Nick’, the person who had apparently used the number before him, the calls kept coming.

Following an text message that said ‘What’s up?’ Dieker received two videos of marijuana plants that suggested that ‘Nick’ would know what to do with them. ‘But he was talking to the wrong person,’ Dieker told the Parool.

The policeman contacted the local police who were tickled by the story. He was told the number used to belong to a wanted drugs criminal and that they would take it from there.

After his three weeks’ holiday Dieker returned to the Netherlands. ‘The police are probably going to track down the criminal using the number. Other people would perhaps not have taken action but I am a policeman so he was just unlucky,’the Parool quotes him as saying.