California woman pleads guilty to 2016 kidnapping hoax

FILE – Sherri Papini of Redding leaves the federal courthouse accompanied by her attorney, William Portanova, right, in Sacramento, Calif., April 13, 2022. During a virtual hearing Papini accepted a plea bargain with prosecutors and pleaded guilty, Monday, April 18, 2022, to a single count of mail fraud and one count of making false statements. She will be sentenced on July 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

PUBLISHED: April 19, 2022 at 8:04 a.m. | UPDATED: April 19, 2022 at 8:06 a.m.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A Northern California woman pleaded guilty Monday to faking her own kidnapping and lying to the FBI about it, leaving her motive unanswered in the carefully planned hoax that set off a massive three-week search before she resurfaced on Thanksgiving Day in 2016.

Sherri Papini, 39, of Redding, offered no explanation for her elaborate hoax during the half-hour court hearing.

“I feel very sad,” she said tearfully when Senior U.S. District Judge William Shubb asked her how she was feeling.

“Were you kidnapped?” he asked her later in the hearing.

“No, Your Honor,” she replied.

“Did you lie to government agents when you told them you were kidnapped?” Shubb continued.

“Yes, Your Honor,” she responded.

Papini agreed to plead guilty in a deal with prosecutors reached last week and is scheduled to be sentenced July 11.

Prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence on the low end of the sentencing range, estimated to be between eight and 14 months in custody, down from the maximum 25 years for the two charges.

She also agreed to pay restitution topping $300,000. That includes the cost of the search for her that covered several Western states, and the subsequent investigation into the “two Hispanic women” she said had kidnapped her at gunpoint.

Papini was actually staying with a former boyfriend nearly 600 miles away in Southern California’s Orange County. Three weeks later, he dropped her off along Interstate 5 nearly 150 miles from her home.

She had bindings on her body and self-inflicted injuries including a swollen nose and blurred “brand” on her right shoulder.

The married mother of two kept lying about it as recently as August 2020 when in fact there was no kidnapping, she admitted in her guilty plea.

Her attorney, William Portanova, said last week that he doubts even she knows why she did it.

He suggested “a very complicated mental health situation,” and said her long-delayed acceptance of responsibility and punishment is part of the healing process.