Sherri Papini Released From Jail After Allegedly Faking Her Own Kidnapping

Sherri Papini has been released on bail a week after being arrested for faking her own kidnapping. Terms of her release include that she must give up her passport, can only travel to one part of California and participate in psychiatric treatment.

Papini had been on a mid-morning run in Redding, California, when she went missing in November 2016. Her worried family appeared on news shows and her disappearance became national news. When Papini was found 22 days later on a rural road 150 miles away from where she was last seen, she told investigators that she had been kidnapped by two Hispanic women. She said she had been held at gunpoint, abused and chained up in a dark room.

Then, an investigation found it all to be a fabricated story.

“In truth, Papini had been voluntarily staying with a former boyfriend in Costa Mesa and had harmed herself to support her false statements,” investigators said in a press release.

Papini has been charged on accounts of making false statements to federal law enforcement and mail fraud.

“The 22-day search for Sherri Papini and subsequent five-year search into who reportedly abducted her was not only taxing on public resources but caused the general public to be fearful of their own safety, a fear that they should not have had to endure,” Shasta County Sheriff Michael L. Johnson said in the release.

The California Victim’s Compensation Board said it spent above $30,000 in therapy and ambulance trips.

If Papini is convicted, she could spend up to 25 years and be ordered to pay a $500,000 fine for her crimes. Her hearing date is set for March 25.