Notorious Bay Area Kindapping Hoaxer Changes Her Story, Again

REDDING, CA — Sherri Papini, the Northern California mother who authorities say faked her own kidnapping in 2016, is back with a new story to tell.

“I was abducted and I was tortured and the FBI said I made it all up,” Papini says in the trailer for the new documentary series “Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie,” which is currently streaming on MAX.

The Redding resident disappeared on Nov. 2, 2016, with her cellphone and earbuds found at an intersection. She resurfaced 22 days later on Thanksgiving, battered and bruised along a freeway in Yolo County near Woodland with bindings on her body and a brand on one shoulder.

Papini told authorities that two Hispanic women abducted her at gunpoint, but investigators later determined she made the story up, federal prosecutors have said, and that she was actually staying with her ex-boyfriend in Costa Mesa. She hurt herself to support her lies and asked her ex to brand her and later to drive her back to Northern California, according to previous reports.

In 2022, she was sentenced to serve 18 months in prison and pay over $300,000 in restitution after pleading guilty to mail fraud and making false statements, authorities said.

In the new docuseries, Papini claims her ex kidnapped her, holding her against her wishes, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which recently interviewed filmmaker Nicole Rittenmeyer.

“It never made any sense to me that Sherri would ask him to brand her,” Rittenmeyer told the publication.

The series also includes reenactments of the alleged kidnapping, according to the Reporter.

“I don’t even know if it’s fully captured in the video, but she was trembling so hard you could see it from 20 feet away,” Rittenmeyer said. “[Doctors] told me you cannot fake that kind of autonomic nervous response … She couldn’t just will it into existence.”

In the trailer, Papini admits to lying but contends there’s more to the story.

"Haven't you ever lied? And then has that lie been blown up?” she asks. "I was tortured, I was branded, I was chained to a wall — all of that is true.”