He said the abuse allegation “hurt” him separately from everything else. The betrayal of the kidnapping hoax was one thing. Being described to another man as a domestic abuser, in order to obtain his cooperation with a fraud, was a different kind of injury.
Reyes, for his part, was a victim of Papini’s manipulation in this dimension as well. He believed he was helping an abused woman. He opened his home, used social relationships to conceal his assistance, and maintained the secret for years because he believed he was protecting someone who genuinely needed protection. He was deceived into that belief. He was not charged with any crime. His cooperation with investigators — his truthful account of what had actually happened — was what made prosecution possible.
—
## The Federal Charging Decision
Federal jurisdiction in the Papini case was established through two mechanisms: the false-statements charge, which applied to her lies to FBI agents (a federal law enforcement agency), and the mail fraud charge, which required the use of the U.S. mail in a fraudulent scheme.
The involvement of the FBI in the original investigation — which had occurred because the case was treated as a high-profile kidnapping requiring federal resources — meant that Papini had given false statements to federal agents. Making false statements to a federal officer is a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. § 1001. Maintaining those false statements across multiple interviews, over a period of years, and specifically in the August 2020 confrontation interview when she denied the DNA match, constituted the factual basis for the false-statements count.