Sherri Papini, the northern California woman arrested last week for allegedly faking her own 2016 kidnapping and lying to federal agents, was released from jail on Tuesday after her family posted a $120,000 bond.
d on Tuesday.
Papini, 39, was seen leaving the Sacramento county jail on Tuesday afternoon, after a judge approved her release on conditions including that she undergo psychiatric treatment and surrender her passport.
During a virtual detention hearing, the US magistrate judge Jeremy D Peterson agreed with Papini’s attorney that she wasn’t a flight risk or a threat to the community.
Papini was arrested Thursday on charges of lying to federal agents about being kidnapped and defrauding the state’s victim compensation board of $30,000.
In arguing against her release, the assistant US attorney Veronica Alegria said when FBI agents tried to arrest Papini last week, “she screamed ‘no’ and ran away from them and resisted arrest”. Her attorney said Papini had been running toward her children.
Papini, of Redding, was found on Thanksgiving Day in 2016 after three weeks of searching in California and several nearby states. She had bindings on her body and injuries including a swollen nose and a “brand” on her right shoulder.
She told authorities that she had been kidnapped at gunpoint by two Latina women, providing descriptions to an FBI sketch artist along with extensive details of her purported abduction.
Authorities said she was actually staying with a former boyfriend nearly 600 miles away from her home in Orange county, in southern California, and hurt herself to back up her false statements.
Prosecutors and the Shasta county sheriff’s office say Papini’s abduction hoax cost Shasta county, state and federal taxpayers, crime victims and donors more than $200,000.
News of her arrest sent shockwaves through the small town of Redding, although doubts about her story were raised by local investigators at the time. In a statement last week, Papini’s family said they were “appalled” by the arrest but did not directly challenge the FBI’s conclusions.