{"id":21911,"date":"2022-04-20T08:03:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-20T12:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=21911"},"modified":"2022-04-20T08:03:00","modified_gmt":"2022-04-20T12:03:00","slug":"us-woman-pleads-guilty-to-faking-2016-kidnapping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2022\/04\/20\/us-woman-pleads-guilty-to-faking-2016-kidnapping\/","title":{"rendered":"US woman pleads guilty to faking 2016 kidnapping"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A California woman has pleaded guilty to faking her own high-profile kidnapping and lying to authorities in 2016.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Sherri Papini, 39, vanished while running near her home, only to reappear three weeks later on Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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At the time, she claimed two Hispanic women kidnapped her, sparking a massive manhunt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The FBI later concluded she was at an ex-boyfriend’s house and inflicted injuries on herself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The crime earned Papini the nickname “California’s Gone Girl” – after a popular novel and film in which the protagonist executes a similar hoax.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It remains unclear why Papini staged the kidnapping, and she has offered no explanation. In court on Monday, she told the judge she felt “very sad”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As part of the guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence of between eight and 14 months in custody, far below the 25 years she could have faced for the charges of mail fraud and lying to federal agents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She has also agreed to pay $300,000 (\u00a3230,917) in restitution, part of which will cover the police search for her and investigation into the alleged captors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Controversy has swirled around Papini since November 2016, when her husband reported her missing after she failed to pick up their children from day care, triggering a massive search effort.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Three weeks later, she was found on the side of a road, battered and bruised and with restraints on her waist and wrists. Police said she had also been branded and her hair had been cut.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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After an exhaustive hunt for her alleged captors, the FBI announced in March this year that it found she had staged the whole affair.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In a 55-page criminal complaint, the FBI said that she spent her disappearance at the home of an ex-boyfriend, with whom she had communicated using prepaid “burner phones” as early as December 2015.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The complaint adds that Papini “harmed herself to support her false statements”, sometimes with the ex-boyfriend’s help. This included “hitting herself to create bruises and burning herself on her arms”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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While Papini has offered no motive for the crimes, the FBI complaint includes witness statements from long-time acquaintances which said she has “a history of lying” to get attention.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Her lawyer has previously suggested she suffered from mental health issues.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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On Monday, Papini said that since the incident she has been treated for depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The treatment was paid for using money from a state victim compensation fund, which she must now pay back as part of her restitution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She is due to be sentenced on 11 July.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A California woman has pleaded guilty to faking her own high-profile kidnapping and lying to authorities in 2016. Sherri Papini, 39, vanished while running near her home, only to reappear three weeks later on Thanksgiving. […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[177,8480],"class_list":{"0":"post-21911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-usa","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-fake-kidnapping","11":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21911"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21914,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21911\/revisions\/21914"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}