Sherri Papini, the California woman who admitted to faking her own kidnapping in 2016, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Papini’s case grabbed national attention when she went missing for several weeks, prompting a frantic search and widespread media coverage. She eventually reappeared with an elaborate story of being abducted by two “Hispanic women”, chained to a pole for three weeks, beaten and branded before being released by the side of a highway.
But after an exhaustive search for her captors, authorities concluded that Papini had made the whole story up. Federal prosecutors have alleged that she actually was staying with a former boyfriend nearly 600 miles away in southern California, and had injured herself to back up the false statements.
Papini, from the northern California town of Redding, was arrested earlier this year and accepted a plea deal with prosecutors that included acknowledging she fabricated the incident.
Probation officers and Papini’s attorney had recommended a month in custody and seven months of supervised home detention. But senior US district judge William Shubb said he opted for an 18-month sentence in order to deter others.
The judge said he considered the seriousness of the offense and “the sheer number of people who were impacted”. They included law enforcement officers who searched for her, the community that believed her for four years, those who lived in fear because of her fake story and the Latino community that was falsely viewed with suspicion.
“The nation is watching,” Shubb said, paraphrasing the prosecutors’ argument in a court filing. “They need to be sent the right message … We have to make sure crime doesn’t pay.”
Papini, who was emotional throughout the proceedings, quietly answered, “Yes, sir,” when the judge asked if she understood the sentence. In comments to the judge ahead of her sentencing, she tearfully accepted responsibility and admitted her guilt.
“I’m so sorry to the many people who have suffered because of me,” she said. “I am guilty, your honor. I am guilty of lying. I am guilty of dishonor. What is done cannot be undone. It cannot be erased.”
Assistant US attorney Veronica Alegria cast Papini’s comments as simply more manipulation. “At this point she would say and do anything to mitigate her punishment,” Alegria told Shubb. “This case is serious and there have been very real harms to society.
“There was a community that lived in fear … Miss Papini took money from real victims,” Alegria said. “Victims of crimes may not believe they will be believed by law enforcement because of this hoax.”
Outside the courtroom, Papini did not take questions from reporters, and was surrounded by more than a dozen supporters, some of whom hugged her tightly. They included her husband’s sister, with whom she has been living since she split with her husband, who filed for divorce and sought custody of their children after she pleaded guilty.
Speaking briefly outside the courthouse after the hearing, defense attorney William Portanova called it “a fair sentence, even though it’s longer than we wished”.
Portanova previously said Papini, now 40 years old, was troubled and disgraced and that she should serve most of her sentence at home. Prosecutors, though, said it was imperative that she spend her full term in prison. The judge ordered her to report to prison on 8 November.
Exactly what prompted Papini to undertake the elaborate hoax has remained a mystery. In a criminal complaint from the FBI, investigators said that several people close to Papini, including her ex-husband, told them she had a history of lying to draw attention to herself.
Northern California residents had mobilized to find Papini when she disappeared and a GoFundMe raised more than $49,000 for her family. The hoax had “painful consequences” for Latinas in the area, some of whom stopped walking in groups of two and driving SUVs, the Redding Record-Searchlight reported, due to Papini’s claim that she was abducted by Hispanic women in an SUV.
Prosecutors agreed to seek a sentence on the low end of the sentencing range in exchange for Papini’s guilty plea. That was projected to be between eight and 14 months in custody, down from the maximum 25 years for the two charges.
Papini has offered no rationale for her actions, which stumped even independent mental health experts who said her behavior didn’t conform with any typical diagnosis.
“Papini’s painful early years twisted and froze her in myriad ways,” Portanova said in arguing for home confinement. With her deception finally revealed, he said, “It is hard to imagine a more brutal public revelation of a person’s broken inner self. At this point, the punishment is already intense and feels like a life sentence.”
But prosecutors said her “past trauma and mental health issues alone cannot account for all of her actions”.
As part of the plea agreement, Papini has agreed to reimburse law enforcement agencies more than $150,000 for the costs of the search for her and her nonexistent kidnappers and repay the $128,000 she received in disability payments since her return. But Shubb said she was unlikely to ever be able to repay the money “unless she wins the lottery”.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
