Sherri Papini Pleads Guilty To Faking Own Kidnapping In Northern CA

REDDING, CA — A northern California mother pleaded guilty Monday after prosecutors said she faked her own kidnapping in 2016 and was found weeks after her disappearance bound and branded.

Sherri Papini, 39, of Redding, was charged last month with 34 counts of mail fraud and a single count of making false statements. Last week, she agreed to plead guilty to one count each of mail fraud and making false statements. She formally entered the plea agreement Monday and is scheduled to be sentenced July 11.

Last week, Papini said she was "deeply ashamed" of herself and "so very sorry for the pain" she caused family, friends and others who "needlessly suffered."

"I will work the rest of my life to make amends for what I have done," she said.

As Sacramento Patch previously reported, Papini disappeared Nov. 2, 2016. She was reported missing after she didn't pick up her two kids from day care, and was last seen jogging around her neighborhood. Her cell phone and earbuds were found at an intersection.

After an extensive search in Shasta County, elsewhere in California, and in several other states, she was found 22 days later battered and bruised, but alive, along a freeway in Yolo County, near Woodland. She had various bindings on her body and a brand on her right shoulder.

At the time, Papini told law enforcement two Hispanic women abducted her at gunpoint and held her captive. But investigators eventually determined she made the story up, federal prosecutors said last month.

In 2020, DNA on her clothes pointed investigators toward an ex-boyfriend, according to court documents. Papini was staying with the former boyfriend in Costa Mesa, and wounded herself to support her lies, prosecutors said. She asked the ex-boyfriend for help getting away, he told investigators. He picked her up in Redding.

But the man said he didn't know what their final plan was, nor whether the two would rekindle their relationship. At one point, Papini asked him to brand her, and he did so using a wood-burning tool. She later asked him to drive her back to Northern California.

When presented with evidence in August 2020 that she wasn't kidnapped, Papini insisted her story was true, even after a warning that it is a crime to lie to federal agents, authorities said.

Additionally, Papini requested and received about $30,000 in state victim assistance money from 2017 through 2021, including for therapy visits and for an ambulance that took her to a hospital.