I'd say they're equally insidious.

Faking the crime wastes public resources in chasing down a ghost while the Pee-Oh-See gets to have their 15 minutes of fame with all of the wokies cheering them on and trying to gin up support against the ebil wypipo. Taking something innocuous and attempting to crime-ify it is an attempt at a shift of the Overton Window, with the wokies trying to control the narrative and reframe the discourse. They literally try to take anything and everything they can and turn it into a hate crime or an attack on them and their pet causes so they can claim the moral high ground and sneer down their noses at anyone who tries to point out the bullshit of the claim (and then double down if they can't justify the bullshit, or find some way to blame the accuser of something unrelated so they can shift the attention away from their fuck-up).