Woman who faked pregnancies, including with Bachelor star, sentenced to 30 days

A woman who admitted to faking pregnancies and fabricating medical records while aiming to prolong relationships with men – including a star of the reality show The Bachelor – has been sentenced to 30 days in jail in Arizona as well as seven years’ probation.

Laura Owens, 36, received her punishment on Friday in Maricopa county superior court nearly two months after pleading guilty to felony counts of fraudulent schemes and artifices, perjury and identity theft in a case that has been the subject of multiple true-crime podcasts.

“I’ve thought about the choices that brought me here every moment of every day, and I wish more than anything I could go back to the moments that I still had the opportunity to make different choices,” Owens said to judge Jeffrey Rueter shortly before he sentenced her. “I genuinely wish I had made better choices and hadn’t panicked.”

She was thrust under authorities’ scrutiny amid a legal fight with Clayton Echard, who starred in the 26th season of The Bachelor in 2022 – and contested her claim that he had impregnated her with twins after an encounter at his suburban Phoenix home in 2023, as the Arizona Republic reported.

Owens eventually claimed that she had a miscarriage. But the family court judge presiding over that case, Julie Mata, in 2024 determined Owens had falsified sonograms and medical records and lied under oath, according to reporting by the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix news outlet KPNX.

Beside ordering her to pay Echard’s legal fees, Mata referred Owens to prosecutors.

Read the full article at The Guardian.