Sherri Papini kidnapping hoax

Sherri Papini, then 34, was reported missing on November 2, 2016, after she reportedly went jogging near her home in Redding, California, and did not return. Her husband found her cell phone and earbuds at an intersection about a mile away. She reappeared three weeks later, on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2016, on the side of a road in Yolo County, roughly 150 miles south of Redding, after reportedly being freed by her captors at 4:30 that morning, still restrained.

According to Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko, Papini told investigators she had been held by two Hispanic women who kept their faces covered. She said she had been branded on her right shoulder with the word "EXODUS," and her husband said she had been physically abused, had her nose broken, had her hair cut off, and weighed 87 pounds when she was released. The sheriff's office said it was searching for a dark-colored SUV occupied by two armed women and issued close to 20 search warrants, including some in Michigan, and examined phone, bank, email, and social media records; the FBI assisted. DNA recovered from Papini did not match her or her husband and returned no match in the FBI's Combined DNA Index System.

Law enforcement experts raised doubts about inconsistencies in Papini's account, and she maintained her story when a federal agent and a Shasta County Sheriff's Office detective questioned her again in August 2020. Between 2017 and 2021 she received more than $30,000 from the California Victim Compensation Board. In March 2022, investigators reported that DNA on her clothing matched a former boyfriend, who said Papini had stayed with him at his Southern California residence while she was reported missing and had asked him to injure her to support her account.

Papini was arrested by the FBI on March 3, 2022, on federal charges connected to the fabricated abduction, and she and her husband separated the same day. Six weeks later, in April 2022, she pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court in Sacramento to one count of mail fraud and one count of making false statements, admitting she had staged the hoax; a plea agreement dropped 33 additional mail-fraud counts. Her husband filed for divorce and sought sole custody of their two children a few days after the plea. At her September 2022 sentencing, Papini apologized and accepted responsibility, and her attorney cited past mental health issues; she was sentenced to 18 months in prison and three years of supervised release and was ordered to pay more than $300,000, including restitution for the investigation. She was released from prison in August 2023 to a halfway house.

Papini's disappearance drew extensive national news and true-crime coverage, including a People cover profile, and coverage continued afterward in documentaries, newsmagazine segments, and podcasts. A 2025 documentary series included Papini's first public interview since her conviction; in it, she said her injuries, including bruises, a waist chain, and the brand, had been inflicted on her without her consent by the former boyfriend. He denied the allegation and passed a police-administered polygraph, saying Papini had stayed with him voluntarily, had inflicted some injuries herself, and had asked for his help with others, including the branding. Medical examiners and an FBI criminal analyst concluded the wounds were consistent with deliberate, self-inflicted or controlled injuries rather than prolonged abuse or captivity, and forensic examiners determined that marks Papini described as bites were rashes. In 2003, Papini's mother reported to the Shasta County Sheriff's Office that Papini had been harming herself and blaming the injuries on others.