Sherri Papini charged with faking her own 2016 abduction

March 5 (UPI) -- A woman who told police that she'd been kidnapped, held for three weeks and branded in 2016 allegedly made the whole story up, authorities announced this week.

Sherri Papini, 39, has been arrested and charged with making false statements to a federal law enforcement officer and mail fraud, the Justice Department said in a news release on Thursday. She made an initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremy Peterson on Friday.

Papini, a young mother from northern California, disappeared while out for a jog. She was reported missing by her husband on Nov. 2, 2016, after failing to pick up their children from daycare.

She was found abandoned on Interstate 5 three weeks later after an intense and expensive search, nearly 150 miles from the jogging trail where she was last seen.

In police interviews, she described her supposed abductors in vivid detail, claiming that she was taken at gunpoint by two women who covered their faces but spoke in Spanish.

Papini told police she'd been bound in a closet and beaten, and told by her captors to use a litter box as her toilet. She claimed the women said they were part of a human trafficking ring and that Papini would be sold. She said the kidnappers branded her when she tried to escape.

When Papini reemerged, her body had indeed been branded, authorities confirmed to CNN at the time.

Investigators who looked into Papini's harrowing account over the last six years found that "this was a false narrative Papini fabricated," the Justice Department said in its recent statement.

She had been voluntarily staying with an ex-boyfriend in Costa Mesa, prosecutors allege, and inflicted the bruises and burns upon herself to support her false statements to police.

Her attorney, Michael Borges, has not responded to requests for comment from CNN or The New York Times.

"When a young mother went missing in broad daylight, a community was filled with fear and concern," Eastern California U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert said in the press release.

"Ultimately, the investigation revealed that there was no kidnapping and that time and resources that could have been used to investigate actual crime, protect the community, and provide resources to victims were wasted based on the defendant's conduct."

Between 2017 and 2021, Papini also received around 35 payments totaling more than $30,000 from the California Victim's Compensation Board, the Justice Department said.

Papini's request for victim assistance included reimbursements for visits to her therapist and for the ambulance that transported her to the hospital when she reemerged.