Sherri Papini Wiki

                                            Sherri Papini Biography

Who is Sherri Papini ?

California mother Sherri Papini, who claimed she was kidnapped for 22 days by two Hispanic women in 2016 in a story that shocked and baffled America, has now been arrested for making it all up six years later.

On Thursday, prosecutors charged “supermom” Papini, 39, with lying to federal agents about being kidnapped and defrauding the state victims’ compensation board of $30,000.

Arrested and Charged

The mother of two was found on Thanksgiving Day 2016 after weeks of searching in California and several nearby states 22 days after she went missing while jogging on Nov. 2.

She was found bound, with a broken nose, a ‘mark’ on her right shoulder and a shaved head. Papini told authorities at the time that she had been kidnapped at gunpoint by two Hispanic women, and even provided descriptions to an FBI cartoonist.

No one was ever arrested, and authorities were never able to determine the ‘Hispanic women’s’ motive.

When Papini was found on Thanksgiving Day 2016, police collected DNA samples from her clothing. They checked them against the national criminal database, but found no matches.

In 2020, however, they were tipped off to a possible match after someone in the ex-boyfriend’s family ran a family DNA test at home.

They then traced that sample back to the ex-boyfriend, and he admitted to the entire deception.

In reality, she was with an unidentified ex-boyfriend whom police say she asked to pick her up. An affidavit released by the US Attorney’s Office for Eastern California details how Papini had multiple affairs and boyfriends, and was described by her ex as an ‘attention-hungry’ woman who made things up out of sympathy.

The ex-boyfriend is not named in the affidavit, but the couple planned her escape on prepaid cell phones that they used to text each other before he picked her up in November 2016.

She then spent the next few weeks at her apartment. The boyfriend confessed to FBI agents, as did one of her cousins ​​who saw her inside the apartment.

He said that he also hired a rental car to take her back to her family’s neighborhood on November 24, 2016.

Papini has since claimed $30,000 from the Victims Compensation Board.

“In truth, Papini had been voluntarily staying with an ex-boyfriend in Costa Mesa and had harmed herself to support her false statements,” said a notice from the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California in a statement on Tuesday. Thursday night.

They alleged that Ella Papini continued to lie about what happened, even after FBI agents confronted her with evidence showing that it was a hoax.

Between 2017 and 2022, Papini claimed a total of $30,000 in 35 payments from the Victims Compensation Board.

She is now in federal custody, pending her first court appearance.

A 55-page affidavit released late Wednesday reveals how investigators suspected what had happened from the start.

Missing

On November 2, Papini’s husband, Keith, reported her missing at 5:50 p.m. m. after returning home from work. She was nowhere to be found and her two children were still in daycare.

Keith then used the “Find My iPhone” app to locate Sherri’s phone, which was lying on the side of the road near her house along with her headphones, which were tangled in her blonde hair.

He told authorities that she thought it looked like the phone had been ‘placed’ there and that it was placed in a strange way.

Keith said the couple argued like any other married couple but had no serious marital problems. He said their last argument was the month before and it was over a messy room, and that Papini could be ‘loud’.

Police began searching her phone and quickly discovered two men’s phone numbers that were saved under women’s names, the affidavit states.

Neither did the ex-boyfriend with whom she spent her ‘disappeared’ weeks, but authorities interviewed them and one of her former bosses.

The day before her disappearance, Papini texted one of the men and discussed meeting in Redding, California, near her home.

This man lived in Michigan and had been in California on a business trip. He told police that he met Papini in 2011 on a work trip and that the couple “spent the weekend together.”

They continued exchanging flirty messages for years, he said, but he didn’t finish seeing each other the weekend she was in California, before she disappeared.

The second man told police that he met Papini in 2000-2001 through a Friday Night Live teen show. He said that she was a liar who liked attention and that he ‘told stories’ to get it.

He said that she once told him that she was a victim of abuse in her family.

Man 2 described Papini as an attention-hungry person who told stories to try to get people’s attention. Man 2 stated that Papini fabricated stories of being abused by her family, her father, and then Man 2 after the couple separated,” the affidavit states.

Investigation

Investigators also spoke to Papini’s boss on Friday Night Live, who said he was concerned about having her on the show because “she was good at creating different realities for people to see what she wanted them to see, which she got.” . her very good care.’

Papini was married once before she met Keith.

Her first husband was in the army. Keith told police that her entire marriage was a sham designed so that she would have her health insurance so that she could receive treatment for a persistent heart murmur.

When police spoke to her first husband, he said she told him she needed her insurance due to “complications from regular egg donations.”

Papini’s mother said she had told him that she “traveled the world” with her first husband when in fact they had only traveled together once.

The ex-husband told police that after they divorced, mutual friends told him she had a history of lying.

She faces a mail fraud charge related to refund requests that carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, while lying to a federal official carries a maximum sentence of five years.

“Everyone involved in this investigation had a common goal: to find the truth about what happened on November 2, 2016, with Sherri Papini and who was responsible,” said Shasta County Sheriff Michael Johnson.

That 22-day search and five-year investigation not only cost money and time, she said, “but caused the general public to fear for their own safety, a fear they shouldn’t have had to endure.”

The mother of two, dubbed “supermom” by her sister Sheila Koester, 36, disappeared while jogging on November 2, 2016.

The day she disappeared, her husband Keith said he first became concerned about her whereabouts when he stopped answering her phone.

GoFundMe

When he found out that she hadn’t picked up the kids from daycare, he panicked.

I couldn’t find her, so I called the nursery to see what time she would pick up the kids. They never picked up the kids so I freaked out, hit the Find My iPhone app,” she said. ‘I found her phone; It’s got like hairs plucked out, like, on the headphones.

Her phone was discovered a mile away at the intersection of Sunrise Drive and Old Oregon Highway, neatly placed on the ground with the earphones neatly wrapped around it.

Keith, who said at the time that his wife would never willingly leave him or his children, also launched an appeal: a GoFundMe account raising cash to pay for the search that ultimately raised close to $50,000.

After being found three weeks later, her hair cut short and marked with a threatening message, Papini claimed that she had been kidnapped by two Hispanic women who could not be identified because they constantly covered her face.

Papini said the women were driving a dark-colored pickup truck with “a big rear side window” at the time of the abduction, but she has so far been unable to provide details of the make and model.

However, police also revealed that male DNA not belonging to her husband Keith was found on her clothing and she said that she had been texting another man prior to her disappearance.

Police investigating the kidnapping discovered Papini’s text messages and located the man in Detroit, Michigan, on November 9, a week after he disappeared.

After her return, Papini was said to have lived a quiet existence in her family’s home, which occupies a shady plot of land on the outskirts of Lake Shasta; a small town of 10,000 people in Northern California.

Neighbors told DailyMail.com that she had been living as “a recluse” but that she had started making more frequent appearances in 2017.

That year she was seen doing her school run and relaxing in her garden with a book.

More skepticism arose as to why she disappeared after it was revealed that she had previously run away from her when she was a teenager.

And according to the Sacramento Bee, documents uncovered from 13 years ago describe how Papini’s mother, Loretta Graeff, called police for help after her daughter allegedly self-harmed and tried to blame her for her injuries.

The incident report, filed in December 2003, is just two lines long and reads: ‘RP claims her 21-year-old daughter who lived with her was hurting herself and blamed RP.

‘RP says the woman is going back to live with them and she wants advice.’

The newspaper also found two other incidents related to Papini, where her father and her sister claimed that she damaged her property.

In 2000, Richard Graeff said her daughter “robbed her residence,” before Sheila Koester “claimed her back door had been kicked in and she believed Papini was the suspect,” the Bee reported.

In retrospect, “we are relieved that the community is not in danger from unknown and violent kidnappers,” said Sean Ragan, special agent in charge of the FBI Sacramento field office.

Sherri Papini Quick and Facts

• Prosecutors charged Sherri Papini, 39, for lying to federal agents about being kidnapped and defrauding the state’s victim compensation board of $30,000 
• She had been reported missing in November 2016. She told authorities at the time that she had been kidnapped at gunpoint by two Hispanic women
• Papini was found on Thanksgiving Day in 2016 after weeks of searching in California and several nearby states, with bindings on her body and injuries
• Authorities said she was actually staying with a former boyfriend nearly 600 miles away from her home and hurt herself to back up her false statements 
• Papini was still lying about the kidnapping in August 2020 when she was interviewed by a federal agent and a Shasta County sheriff´s detective
•  She also was reimbursed more than $30,000 by the California Victim´s Compensation Board for visits to her therapist and for the ambulance ride 
• She faces a mail fraud charge related to the reimbursement requests that carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison