It’s a small world, after all.
A contestant on the new season of “Survivor” allegedly dated Sherri Papini, the California woman who was sentenced to 18 months in prison for faking her kidnapping in Sept. 2022.
Shauhin Davari was announced as one of the 18 people competing on “Survivor 48,” premiering Feb. 26, by CBS on Wednesday.
Davari is a 38-year-old debate professor who lives in Costa Mesa, Calif.
But the most shocking fact about Davari is his past connection to Papini.
In 2016, Papini disappeared for 22 days while allegedly on a jog in Redding, Calif. When she resurfaced, she claimed she was kidnapped by two masked Hispanic women.
However, after a years-long investigation, authorities discovered that Papini orchestrated the kidnapping with her ex-boyfriend. She was arrested in 2022 and released from prison in Aug. 2023.
After the truth about Papini came out, Davari revealed in a 2022 interview with Inside Edition that they allegedly dated when she was 20 and he was 15.
“She’s a compulsive liar,” Davari said about Papini. “She would not talk to you for three or four days, and then all of a sudden there’d be some fantastical story about what happened.”
Davari claimed Papini told several lies when they dated, including that she surfed and had a heart condition. He also said he didn’t believe the initial news that she was kidnapped.
“I was like, there’s no way. She’s fine. I promise you she’s fine. There’s just no chance that she got kidnapped,” he said.
Davari also clarified to Inside Edition that he wasn’t the ex-boyfriend who helped Papini commit the kidnapping hoax.
To pull off the crime, one of Papini’s exes, a man named James Reyes, helped her escape her home in Redding to hide in Costa Mesa – 600 miles south of her home – for three weeks.
When she reappeared, she told police that two Hispanic women kidnapped her at gunpoint and tortured her while in captivity.
But her lies fell apart after investigators found DNA on a piece of clothing that would lead back to Reyes, who dropped her off in Woodland when she decided to reappear.
In March 2022, Papini was arrested and charged with making false statements to federal agents and mail fraud. A month later, she formally pleaded guilty, admitting her kidnapping claims were a hoax.
Papini’s case was explored in the 2024 Hulu documentary series “Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini,” which featured interviews with Papini’s husband, Keith, who filed for divorce and for sole custody of their kids after she pled guilty.
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