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.

Prosecutors filed formal criminal charges against Owens in May 2025 in connection with Echard, 33. They then criminally charged her in relation to claims of having become pregnant by another man whom she dated in Scottsdale in 2021, the Arizona Republic reported.

The outlet wrote that prosecutors charged Owens with using forged medical records and misappropriating other women’s identities to buttress her deceptive claims. Both Echard and the second man were represented by the same family law attorney, Gregg Woodnick, who was credited with helping authorities investigating Owens to link the two cases.

Owens pleaded guilty on 28 August, setting the stage for her sentencing on Friday, which the Phoenix news outlet KSAZ livestreamed.

“I know there are people who have suffered because of decisions that I’ve made, and I want to take accountability for that,” Owens – the daughter of National Radio Hall of Fame inductee Ronn Owens – said to Rueter. “I am profoundly, profoundly sorry for the pain, distress and expense I’ve caused them and for failing to meet the standard of honesty that this court had every right to [expect] from me.”

In his own remarks to Rueter, Echard asked the judge to incarcerate Owens, asserting: “She’s not sorry. She’s sorry she got caught.”

He also said: “If you don’t take her out of her environment, she’s going to come back.”

Rueter concluded Friday’s sentencing by ordering Owens to immediately be jailed until 22 November and then to complete seven years of probation.

The judge noted that Owens could technically be sentenced to up to 12.5 years in prison if she ultimately fails to complete probation and has it revoked.

Rueter said he acknowledged Owens had inflicted “emotional and financial harm” to multiple victims, but that he did not think it was “the right thing” to put “a potentially mentally ill person who has committed a non-violent offense, with no prior criminal history, in prison”.

“I’m not going to do that,” Rueter said.