POTSDAM -- A Potsdam woman who reported being beaten and tied up during an armed home invasion last week has been arrested for falsely reporting the incident.

Mary E. Widmann, 23, of 6185 State Highway 56, was charged by county sheriff’s investigators with third-degree falsely reporting an incident and making a false written statement, both class A misdemeanors.

Widmann reported to St. Lawrence County 911 that an armed home invasion and attempted robbery had occurred at her residence on Sept. 11 around 7:38 p.m. She told investigators that two masked men brandishing handguns had broken into her home. Widmann said the men had entered her residence, assaulted her, tied her up and demanded “weed.”

Widmann told North Country Now that one of the alleged assailants had bound her to a kitchen chair, gagged her with her own sock and smashed her face into the table. She claimed one of them had taken the woman’s three-year-old daughter and placed her in her bed and had removed an infant daughter from her crib and placed her in her mother’s bed.

According to an earlier interview by a reporter from this paper, the woman’s father, Gerald Widmann, had found his daughter bound to a chair later. An uncle, Charles Widmann, was offering a $1,000 reward for information connected to the incident.

Patrols from the sheriff’s department, Potsdam police and state police were dispatched to the scene, said a press release from the sheriff’s department.

Investigators said that Widmann’s account of the incident did not add up and she was brought to the sheriff’s department for further questioning.

She was ticketed, released and is scheduled to appear in Potsdam town court at a later date.