The California mother who infamously staged her own abduction in 2016 is breaking her silence for the first time since the incident in a new documentary series.
Sherri Papini, once known as “the perfect wife,” admitted guilt in 2022 concerning charges related to her false kidnapping claim six years earlier. However, the California mother of two maintains that she was indeed abducted, tortured, and branded during the 2016 event, which prosecutors argued she orchestrated.
“Haven’t you ever lied? And then, has the lie been blown up?” Papini asks in a trailer for the new docuseries, “Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie.”
In the trailer, she claims, “I vanished in 2016, was absent for 22 days. I was tortured, branded, chained to a wall. All of that is factual. However, I did hide certain truths from you.”
Papini, now 42, pleaded guilty in April to two of the 35 total counts she was charged with — for engaging in mail fraud and making false statements to a federal office, prosecutors said. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison for her costly scheme.
Sherri Papini departs a child custody hearing in Redding, California, on Friday, March 21, 2025. Papini previously served 18 months in federal prison for faking her own kidnapping in 2016. (Derek Shook for Fox News Digital)
She is currently engaged in a legal battle with her ex-husband for visitation rights with their two children.
In addition to her sentence, Papini agreed to restitution payments of up to $300,000. More specifically, she was ordered to pay nearly $149,000 to the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, at least $127,568 to the Social Security Administration, $30,694 to the California Victims Compensation Board and more than $2,500 to the FBI, according to court papers.
