NBC News reported that Sherri Papini, the Northern California woman accused of staging her own kidnapping in 2016, has signed a plea deal in which she will admit that she made up the entire plan, according to her attorney’s office.
PAPINI: “I am deeply ashamed of my actions and deeply sorry for the pain I have caused my family, my friends, all of the good people who have been forced to suffer as a result of my story, and all of those who have worked so tirelessly in an attempt to assist me,” Papini said in a statement. The sentence continues, “I will work for the rest of my life to atone for what I have done.”
The statement was released by Papini, 39, through her attorney, William Portanova, according to a report in The Sacramento Bee published on Tuesday.
After going out for a jog near their home in Shasta County, California, Papini was reported missing by her husband in November 2016, according to a previous report from CNN. After being missing for three weeks, she was discovered alone on Thanksgiving Day on an interstate highway 140 miles from her home.
Two women abducted her and branded her, she told police, and she was chained in a closet for the duration of her ordeal. She provided a detailed account of her kidnapping and treatment at the hands of the alleged assailants, who she claimed were dressed in masks and spoke Spanish, held her at gunpoint, and branded her with a heated tool, according to her testimony.
According to court documents, Papini actually stayed with an ex-boyfriend in Southern California during the three weeks she was reported missing, and she received more than $30,000 in fraudulent victim assistance money as a result of the hoax, according to the Department of Justice.
She was charged with making false statements to a federal law enforcement officer and mail fraud, and she agreed to plead guilty to one count of each charge, according to prosecutors, who announced the agreement in a statement on Tuesday. She faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000 in addition to any other penalties.
The sentence will be determined by the court. The date for Papini’s arraignment has not yet been set.
“We are taking this case in a completely different direction,” Portanova, a former federal prosecutor, told The Sacramento Bee in an interview. “Everything that has happened up to this point has come to an end today.”