CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A federal judge Monday sentenced a Sandusky man who wanted to be a U.S. Coast Guard aviator to three months in prison and ordered him to pay $489,007 in restitution for making a false distress call that prompted a large-scale search on Lake Erie in March.

U.S. District Judge Sara Lioi sentenced Danik Shiv Kumar, 21, in a case that ended his career aspirations and sent rescue crews searching for hours after he reported seeing "flares going up off the lake.''

Court records filed by federal prosecutors show Kumar took off in a Cessna single-engine plane at about 10:30 p.m. March 14 on a solo flight from Burke Lakefront Airport to Bowling Green State University, where he was a student. About 30 minutes into the flight, he radioed the control tower at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, saying he believed he had seen a boat.

The records show that someone in the tower asked him to clarify, and he said he saw a boat "launching up flares.'' He descended for a closer look and said ''one more flare went up. I see flashlights up in the sky, turning on and off. Seems to be a small vessel. Flares keep going up.''

He said he saw four people aboard. He told officials that he was somewhere near Lorain and that he believed the boat was a 25-foot fishing vessel. The information was quickly passed on to the U.S. Coast Guard, which dispatched two rescue boats.

The U.S. and Canadian Coast Guard crews spent hours on the lake in search of four passengers. The Coast Guard Cutter Thunder Bay searched for 21 hours, while boat crews from Coast Guard Station Lorain searched for about 16 hours. Rescue helicopter crews from Coast Guard Air Station Detroit joined in the search, as did a Canadian Coast Guard airplane crew from Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Trenton, Ontario, according to federal prosecutors and court documents.

When the search and rescue efforts ended, authorities began questioning Kumar. About a month later, he admitted that he never saw a boat in distress, and there were never any people in need of help. He also said that when he landed at Bowling Green, he knew the Coast Guard was searching.

The documents, filed by prosecutors, said he "chose not to report the truth to protect his aspirations of being a U.S. Coast Guard aviator.''

His attorney, Edmund Searby, said Kumar apologized to the Coast Guard, as well as his family and Lioi.

"Based on my review of the evidence, he did not initiate contact with air traffic control for the purpose of causing a hoax,'' Searby said. "As a 19-year-old boy, he made an unfortunate mistake while flying alone over water at night.''

Mike Tobin, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Cleveland, said the $489,007 restitution amount represents the cost of the search. The amount is comprised of the $277,257 expended by U.S. agencies and the $211,750 cost to the Canadian government.

Kumar, who pleaded guilty to a charge of making a false distress call to the Coast Guard, was also sentenced to 250 hours of community service.