For a moment there, he was sure the job had been a false lead.

It might be a false lead, but he didn't think so.

My guess is that it's a false lead to head us off.

That had been a blind, a false lead, of course.

Some of them were also false leads, and turned out to be something else.

During the search, the police received over 550 false leads.

Such false leads can take several days or even weeks to identify.

It was a false lead, but we did not know that then.

"Then why didn't you just let me kill myself with the false lead?"

"What did you intend to do with the false lead?"