SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sherri Papini, the California woman who pleaded guilty to faking her own kidnapping and lying about it to federal investigators, was sentenced Monday to 18 months in prison.
U.S. District Judge William Shubb also ordered Papini to surrender by Nov. 8, to pay nearly $310,000 in restitution and to serve 36 months of supervised release. The restitution was ordered to cover losses incurred by the California Victim Compensation Board, the Social Security Administration, the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI, NBC News reported.
William Portanova, Papini’s attorney, called the sentence “fair,” the network reported.
Papini, 40, pleaded guilty in April to mail fraud and making false statements in connection with the 2016 hoax.
Prosecutors had asked Shubb to sentence Papini to eight months in prison, while defense attorneys petitioned for one month in custody and seven months of home detention, CNN reported.
Papini was charged March 3 in a 35-count indictment related to her alleged Nov. 2, 2016, abduction, which she claimed happened while she was jogging near her Northern California home. A 55-page affidavit filed in federal court detailed how Papiniallegedly faked the kidnapping and stayed with a former boyfriend for three weeks.
Meanwhile, federal agents alleged that she caused her own injuries — including a brand burned into her shoulder — before being “rescued” on Thanksgiving Day as she walked along Interstate 5 near Sacramento, about 150 miles from her Shasta County home.
When questioned by detectives, Papini blamed two unidentified Hispanic women wearing masks for the abduction.
According to CNN, Papini’s accusations “led authorities to carry out an extensive search for the supposed Hispanic captors that came up empty for several years. She also received more than $30,000 from the state in victim compensation funds.”
Papini’s account unraveled in 2020, however, when investigators connected DNA from her clothing to an ex-boyfriend, who then admitted that the alleged kidnapping was a hoax, the network reported.
“Papini planned and executed a sophisticated kidnapping hoax, and then continued to perpetuate her false statements for years after her return without regard for the harm she caused others,” prosecutors stated in their sentencing memo. “As a result, state and federal investigators devoted limited resources to Papini’s case for nearly four years before they independently learned the truth: that she was not kidnapped and tortured.”
The memo also took Papini to task for causing “innocent individuals to become targets of a criminal investigation” and generating public fear for supposedly at-large Hispanic captors.
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