Disappearance of California wife and mom led to massive police search. Police say she lied about kidnapping to visit her ex-boyfriend.

 Police say a California woman lied about a kidnapping and assault in order to skip out on her husband and kids so that she could visit her ex-boyfriend.

Sherri Papini vanished while jogging from the town of Redding in Northern California on Nov. 2, 2016 and inspired national headlines and a massive multi-state police search.

Her husband said he knew she went missing when she didn't pick up their children from daycare, and he found only her cellphone and earphones went he went looking for her.

Papini was later found weeks later on Thanksgiving day by a driver on the side of a highway at 4:30 in the morning. She was bound and had been "branded" on her shoulder by what she said were two Hispanic females who had kidnapped her at gunpoint.

At the time, some experts said her story had the telltale signs of sex trafficking as a motive for the kidnappers. 

On Friday, police said the motive was much simpler: Papini was visiting her ex-boyfriend.

“When a young mother went missing in broad daylight, a community was filled with fear and concern,” said U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert in a statement. "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.”

Papini is accused of continuing to make false statements even after police showed her evidence that she had not been kidnapped but had been visiting her ex-boyfriend in Costa Mesa, another town in California.

Police said they identified the man with DNA evidence from her clothing when she was found. The former boyfriend told them that she had called him to go pick her up and that she had stayed with him during the time she was missing.

Shasta County Sheriff Michael Johnson said in a Facebook post that a conservative estimate of the cost of the investigation of Papini's claims was about $150,000.

"Not only did this charade take valuable resources away from real criminal investigative matters," wrote Johnson, "but in a time where there is serious human trafficking cases with legitimate victims Sherri Papini used this tragic societal phenomenon to gain notoriety and financial gain."

She is also accused of defrauding California's victim compensation board of $30,000 based on the false story she told.

The court filing says the couple were able to raise another $49,000 through a GoFundMe charity donation account.

Compounding the confusion in the case, another woman who went to the same high school as Papini had also disappeared 20 years previously about two miles away from where Papini had allegedly been kidnapped.

Here's more about the startling charges:

Sherri Papini is accused of faking her kidnapping and defrauding the statewww.youtube.com