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Sherri Papini was sentenced in Sacramento to 18 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to mail fraud and making false statements to a federal officer in connection with her reported 2016 abduction in Shasta County, California.

Papini lived in Redding with her husband, Keith Papini, and their two young children. She was 34 years old in the autumn of 2016 and ran regularly in her neighborhood. On November 2, 2016, she went for a run near her home and did not return. Keith Papini reported her missing that evening after returning from work, finding her gone and learning the children were still at daycare. A multi-state search followed, drawing national coverage.

Papini reappeared 22 days later, on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2016, beside a freeway roughly 146 miles south of Redding. She was heavily bruised, her long hair had been cut, and a brand had been burned into her shoulder. She told investigators that two Hispanic women had taken her at gunpoint, held her for three weeks, and tortured and branded her.

Male DNA recovered from her clothing did not match anyone in criminal databases, and the case stalled for years. In 2020, investigators used genetic genealogy to identify James Reyes, whom Papini had dated years earlier. By 2016, Reyes lived in Costa Mesa in Southern California, nearly 600 miles from Redding.

In August 2020, a federal agent and an investigator from the Shasta County Sheriff's Office told Papini that the DNA was Reyes's. They said Reyes had passed a polygraph examination and described an arrangement in which Papini asked him to collect her. They said he bought the tool used to brand her and helped injure her, including breaking her nose with a hockey stick. Reyes's cousin had seen her at his Costa Mesa home, they said. Papini repeatedly denied that the man was Reyes and maintained the abduction story. Investigators concluded she had spent the three weeks at Reyes's home and that her injuries were arranged or self-inflicted. The Shasta County Sheriff's Office later released the interview recording, which was reported publicly in September 2022. Reyes was not charged.

Papini was arrested on federal charges in March 2022 and faced a 35-count indictment. On April 18, 2022, she pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and one count of making false statements to a federal officer. United States District Judge William Shubb sentenced her on September 19, 2022, to 18 months in federal prison, 36 months of supervised release and $309,902 in restitution. The money was owed to the California Victim Compensation Board, the Social Security Administration and people who had contributed to a fundraiser during the search. She was released from a federal prison camp at Victorville, California, in August 2023 after serving about 11 months and completed community confinement in the Sacramento area that autumn.

Keith Papini filed for divorce and sole custody in April 2022. As of a June 2024 interview, he no longer spoke with her, and she had monthly supervised visits and weekly telephone contact with the children. She still owed roughly $340,000 in restitution as of March 2024. On May 26, 2025, Investigation Discovery and Max released "Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie," a four-part series containing her first on-camera interview since the case. She contradicts her guilty plea in the series, saying she was abducted, Reyes was responsible, and she invented the two women to protect her position in a custody dispute. The conviction stands and has not been overturned.

The video runs about 76 minutes and presents a narrated analysis built on police interview-room footage. It covers the August 2020 interview described above.