A woman from California has been jailed for 18 months after faking her own kidnapping back in November 2016.
Sherri Papini, 39, was sentenced for making false statements to the FBI after making out she was taken by two Hispanic women while out jogging. She was reported missing by her husband after she failed to collect their children from daycare, but appeared three weeks later, when she was found "beaten up" by the roadside, the BBC reports.
It was then she made the extraordinary kidnapping claims, insisting she had been abducted at gunpoint. But in March this year, the FBI came to the conclusion that the whole affair had been staged and that she had been staying at an ex-boyfriend’s house.
They suggested she had got herself injured while there. And in a US District Court in Sacramento on Monday (September 19), Papini admitted to making it all up and apologised for doing so.
“I am so sorry to the many people who have suffered because of me – the people who sacrificed for the broken woman I was, the people who gave willingly to help me in a time that I so desperately needed help,” she said. “I am choosing to humbly accept all responsibility.”
In a criminal complaint, the FBI said Papini had been staying at a former boyfriend’s home and had been communicating with him using prepaid “burner phones” as early as December 2015. Her lawyer, William Portanova, has previously said she suffered from mental health issues.
She faced 25 years in prison, but in a deal with prosecutors, she pleaded guilty to one count each of lying to a federal officer and mail fraud. She was then sentenced to 18 months inside, but will also spend three years under supervised custody upon her release – she also agreed to pay $300,000 (£231,000), part of which will cover the costs of the police investigation.
In a sentencing memo, her lawyer blamed the hoax on her “painful early years [that] twisted and froze her in myriad ways”. He also referenced her “chameleonic personalities”, which he said pathologically “drove her to simultaneously crave family security and the freedom of youth”.
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