Twenty-four minutes of fame and a lifetime of regret.

Of course, that still hinges on the appeal Calgarian Adam Tang has filed with a New York court, nearly three months after he was convicted in absentia for using his BMW sports car to make a record-setting lap of pre-dawn Manhattan.

It took only 24 minutes to complete the 42.6-kilometre loop, and just over a year for 31-year-old Tang to be sentenced on a reckless endangerment charge, after police tracked him down via the video he anonymously posted on YouTube, bragging about the achievement.

It was the maximum sentence, for what the judge called a selfish and dangerous stunt.

“This is a person who sped around our city as fast as he could, reaching speeds of almost 100 miles per hour at some points and for what? So he could indulge some juvenile fantasy about who could drive the car the fastest around New York City,” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ann Donnelly told the court.

But the born-and-raised Calgarian has avoided prison thus far, having bolted the United States for an undisclosed hiding place in Canada, leaving his pregnant wife and their East Harlem apartment behind.

The great escape north lead the New York Post to put Tang on the front page, along with the headline quip, ‘Land of the Flee.’

Between dominating New York’s media for a spell and garnering over a million views on his YouTube video of the record-breaking ride, Tang — also known by the alias “Afroduck” — ended up with more spotlight than even the most devoted attention-seeker could imagine.

But it came at a huge cost.

His wife has now joined him in Canada, but their careers in New York are over, and if he returns to the State, Tang will be arrested — all this, for the sake of bragging rights and a popular Internet video.

Tang, speaking to the Sun via text, says the New York justice is out to get him, and trying to use his lap of Manhattan as an example to deter others.

“If you watch the original versus the sped up video, the conclusion you should come to is rather the fallacy of the American legal system (namely in NYC) and underscores the ever increasing need to create crimes out of the lowest common denominator,” said Tang.

“Someone who is truly innocent has nothing to regret.”

That innocence is of course debatable.

Tang, son of an oilman and an attorney, hasn’t denied making the lap of Manhattan, and he’s publicly called himself “stupid” for even attempting to break the record, which meant speeding, running one red light and crossing a double-white line.

But he says jail is going too far for what should have been a minor charge at best, and Tang says the unedited video of the ride, as compared to the edited, sped-up version, shows he was always in control and making good driving decisions, including stopping at all other lights.

Police and prosecutors don’t agree, and the case was taken so seriously that officers even went out on the road with special timing equipment to recreate the race.

It may be a case of police finally having someone to arrest, after years of similar videos from racers who either did a better job of hiding their online identities, or who waited two years until the statute of limitations on misdemeanour charges has passed.

Tang admits he wanted to brag as quickly as possible, and police pounced.

At first cooperative with cops, Tang decided to flee the country when he heard the court planned to use him as an example to other street racers.

He’s probably safe to stay Canada, and reporters in New York have spoken to law enforcement officials, who say they can’t ask Canadian authorities to extradite a suspect on a misdemeanour traffic charge.

But if he ever returns, it’s a different story, with a prison sentence awaiting the broker who went for broke,

All Tang can do is await the result of his appeal, and wish he’d kept his mouth shut.