The 2023 movie Hoax: The Kidnapping of Sherri Papini started streaming on Netflix on Friday, May 15. It offers a fictionalized account of the case with Jaime King portraying the Redding, California, mother.
Papini went missing in 2016. She reappeared three weeks later and claimed to authorities that she had been kidnapped and tortured.
Papini had admitted her alleged kidnapping was a hoax in 2022. However, after serving time in prison, she alleged that the real story is more complex.
What we know about Sherri Papini’s ex-husband
Papini, now 43, is currently not married as her 13-year marriage to Keith Papini ended when their divorce was finalized in May 2023. Originally, Keith filed for divorce in April 2022. He was granted full custody of their two children, and the two have since remained in heated custody disputes.
Sherri and Keith Papini had been married since 2009. They share a son and a daughter. Keith filed for divorce just days after Papini submitted her plea agreement, and requested emergency custody of the kids: Tyler, then 9, and Violet, 7.
“I am asking that the court help me protect my children from the negative impact of their mother’s notoriety,” Keith said at the time.
The marriage was dissolved in May. While Keith was granted full custody of their kids, Papini is allowed monthly one-hour visits with her children, which are supervised by a judge-appointed agency.
It was Keith who found Papini missing in November 2016 after he returned home from work. He contacted police, setting off an FBI-assisted search for her alleged abductors.
Before Sherri’s disappearance, she and Keith lived outside Redding, California. They had originally met in middle school after. They tied the knot after reconnecting in 2006.
Keith worked as an audiovisual specialist at Best Buy, and Sherri had previously been an account executive for AT&T, per The Sacramento Bee. Sherri was eventually laid off, following which she became a stay-at-home mom for her kids.
Keith called Sherri a “super mom” before her disappearance.
“She wakes up in the morning, has her kids dressed, their meals planned out for them and their activities for the day. And not just that, she’s just a super wife,” he said during an appearance on 20/20.
Sherri Papini’s disappearance
Sherri made headlines with her disappearance. However, after she returned, investigators noticed inconsistencies in her testimony and arrested her in 2022.
Papini pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and one count of making false statements as part of an agreement with prosecutors. Authorities claimed that she lied about her kidnapping and was actually staying with an ex-boyfriend at the time.
Papini was sentenced to 18 months in prison back in September 2022, followed by 36 months of supervised release. She was also ordered to pay $309,902 in restitution.
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Papini was released early, in August 2023, from a satellite camp of the Federal Correctional Institution Victorville Medium I in Victorville, California, after serving only 11 months of her sentence. Court records reportedly showed that she was placed in community confinement and released from a halfway house in Sacramento County on September 29, 2023. She will remain on supervised release until an undisclosed date in 2026.
However, after gaining her freedom, Papini has alleged that she was in fact abducted. She spoke about it publicly for the first time for Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie, a four-part Investigation Discovery docuseries that debuted in 2025 and is now streaming on HBO Max.
As of June 2025, a huge portion of Papini’s restitution was outstanding. She had only returned $9,119.70 of the $148,866 she owes to the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, records obtained by KRCR showed. It remains unclear how much of the payment she owed to the California Victim Compensation Board, the Social Security Administration, and the FBI has been returned.
