Sherri Papini, a California woman who pleaded guilty to faking her own kidnapping and lying about it to the FBI, has been released from federal prison to community confinement. Papini, 41, was released last week and will be residing at a location supervised by the residential reentry management field office in Sacramento.
Papini was sentenced to 18 months in prison in September after admitting to two counts of a 35-count indictment, which included mail fraud and lying to a law enforcement officer. It’s important to note that these charges were not related to her faked abduction but rather to the lies she continued to tell after the incident.
Papini, a mother of two from Redding, was reported missing in November 2016 and reappeared three weeks later on Thanksgiving. When she resurfaced, she was found about 145 miles south of where she had disappeared, with injuries that authorities determined were self-inflicted. She claimed to have been abducted by two Hispanic women.
However, her story began to unravel when investigators discovered male DNA on her clothing, leading them to her ex-boyfriend, with whom she had been staying while pretending to be missing. Her ex-boyfriend admitted to dropping her off along Interstate 5 when she expressed a desire to go back home. He also confessed to holding a hockey stick for her to run into and hitting her with hockey pucks. Furthermore, he admitted to branding her at her request.
Papini’s attorney was unavailable for comment at the time of this report. Her full release date from custody is set for October 29th.