The moment ‘Sherri Papini Who Faked Her Own Kidnapping To Be Sentenced’ The California woman who faked her own kidnapping in 2016 in a hoax that was exposed with the help of advances in DNA technology is set to be sentenced on Monday.
Sherri Papini Who Faked Her Own Kidnapping To Be Sentenced
Sherri Papini, 40, pleaded guilty in April to two counts of mail fraud and making false statements for carrying out the elaborate fake kidnapping and receiving more than $30,000 in victim compensation.
According to a sentencing letter submitted by the US Attorney’s Office, federal prosecutors asked a judge to sentence her to eight months in prison followed by three years of supervised release since the hoax squandered resources and caused harm to others.
Prosecutors stated in the complaint that “Papini planned and carried out a complex kidnapping hoax and then continued to perpetuate her false allegations for years after her return without concern for the harm she caused others.” Because of this, state and federal detectives spent nearly four years devoting limited resources to Papini’s case before discovering the truth on their own: that she had not been kidnapped and tortured.
Papini’s attorney requested a sentence of one month in prison and seven months of home detention, noting that Papini has admitted to the hoax, according to a memo filed Wednesday.
“Sherri’s years of denial are now undeniably over. Her name is now synonymous with this awful hoax. There is no escaping it,” attorney William Portanova wrote in the filing.
“It is hard to imagine a more brutal public revelation of a person’s broken inner self. At this point, the punishment is already intense and feels like a life sentence,” he added.
She is scheduled to appear before Judge William Shubb for sentencing Monday at 9 a.m. PT.
Read Previous Post: Crime Update: Sherri Papini To Serve Time In Jail- Faking Her Own Kidnap
The charges date to November 2016, when Papini was reported missing after she went out for a jog near her Shasta County home in Northern California. Three weeks later, she was found injured and alone on a highway about 140 miles away. She told police she had been abducted and tortured by two masked, Spanish-speaking women who kept her chained in a closet, held her at gunpoint, and branded her with a heated tool.
The accusations led authorities to carry out an extensive search for the supposed Hispanic captors that came up empty for several years.
“Papini caused innocent individuals to become targets of a criminal investigation,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. “She left the public in fear of her alleged Hispanic capturers who purportedly remained at large.”
The New DNA Technology Helped Solve The Case
A break came in 2020 when investigators took unknown male DNA on clothing she was wearing and tested it using the technology known as genetic genealogy. The DNA was connected to a family member of Papini’s former boyfriend, and investigators then took DNA from the ex-boyfriend to confirm him as a match, according to a 55-page affidavit released earlier this year.
The ex-boyfriend acknowledged helping Papini “ran away” from what she described as an abusive relationship and housing her at his home in Southern California during an interview with police, according to the affidavit. The affidavit claims that as part of the hoax, he claimed she had hurt herself, cut her own hair, and wanted him to brand her with a wood-burning tool.
Numerous sources, including phone records, his work schedule, rental car receipts, odometer records, toll records, and an interview with his cousin, who saw Papini enter the house, helped investigators to support the ex-version. boyfriend’s
Authorities confronted Papini with the new information and warned her that lying to authorities is a crime. Still, she stuck to her original story about two Hispanic women kidnappers and denied she had seen the former boyfriend, the affidavit states.
Authorities announced charges against her in March 2022 and she pleaded guilty as part of a plea deal a month later. Her husband also filed for divorce and custody of their two children, saying she was “not acting in a rational manner,” court records show.
In court in April, Papini said she was in treatment for anxiety, depression, and PTSD starting in 2016 and also struggled in middle school.
“I am deeply ashamed of myself for my behavior and so sorry for the pain I’ve caused my family, my friends, all the good people who needlessly suffered because of my story, and those who worked so hard to try to help me,” Papini said in her statement. “I will work the rest of my life to make amends for what I have done.”
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