Woman Sentence to 18 Months in Prison for Faking Own Kidnapping
A middle-aged woman identified as Sherri Papini, a California mother who faked her own kidnapping 6 years ago has been sentenced to 1 year and 6 months in prison.
Christine Juma 
Papini, 40, acknowledged to the hoax and pleaded guilty to mail fraud and making false claims in April. Judge William B. Shubb decided that she should serve 18 months in jail followed by 36 months of supervised release.
In addition, reparations totaling around Ksh. 37 million ($310,000) was mandated for her.
Compared to what the lawyers had asked for, the punishment was very long. While the defense requested one month of incarceration and seven months of home detention, the prosecution asked the judge to sentence the defendant to eight months in jail.
Pappi teh accused further apologized for her wrong doings and asked for forgiveness in astatement.
"I am so sorry to the many people who have suffered because of me. The people who sacrificed for the broken woman I was. The people who gave willingly to help me in a time that I so desperately needed help. I thank you all."
The charges came after the officers found Pappi`s kidnapp allegations fake and misleading.
The allegations stem from Papini's disappearance in November 2016 after she went on a jog close to her Shasta County residence in Northern California. She was discovered alone and hurt on a roadway some 140 miles away three weeks later. She reported to authorities that two masked, Spanish-speaking women had kidnapped and tortured her, keeping her chained in a closet, holding her at gunpoint, and branding her with a heated object.
Authorities conducted a thorough search for the alleged Hispanic captors as a result of the claims, but they were unsuccessful for a number of years. She also earned more over $30,000 in victim compensation money from the state.
However, her narrative was disproved in 2020 when detectives linked DNA from her clothing to an ex-boyfriend, who later acknowledged that the alleged kidnapping was a fabrication.
Federal prosecutors claimed that the hoax wasted resources and led police to investigate innocent people in their memo for punishment.
"Papini planned and executed a sophisticated kidnapping hoax, and then continued to perpetuate her false statements for years after her return without regard for the harm she caused others," prosecutors said in the filing. "As a result, state and federal investigators devoted limited resources to Papini's case for nearly four years before they independently learned the truth: that she was not kidnapped and tortured."
"Papini caused innocent individuals to become targets of a criminal investigation," prosecutors added. "She left the public in fear of her alleged Hispanic capturers who purportedly remained at large."
