polish prank

When an individual attempts to pull a prank, typically on April Fools' Day, and the joke is actually on the prankster.

Jim texted a former colleague, falsely claiming that their previous company had sold for hundreds of millions of dollars, implying that the stock options the colleague had declined to purchase upon leaving a few months earlier were now worth tens of millions. In reality, the company was in dire straits, and Jim's job was terminated just weeks after this polish prank.