It doesn't return the Controller (it's not possible), the reason why you think it does is the behavior of the function get_class()
.
Quoting the PHP documentation of the function get_class(): "If object
is omitted when inside a class, the name of that class is returned.".
Basically, in your case the find
method returns an empty value therefore the entity is not found.
When the current class is being returned by the function get_class()
then you should try the function gettype(); this function will indicate you whether the value returned is a string, an object, NULL or any other types.