VALLEJO, Calif. (AP) - A couple has reached a $2.5 million settlement with a Northern California city and its police department after investigators dismissed her bizarre kidnapping as a hoax.

Police in the city of Vallejo initially discounted a report by Denise Huskins and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, that a masked intruder drugged them in their home and then kidnapped her in 2015.

The assailant sexually assaulted Huskins and released her two days later outside her family's home in Southern California. The Associated Press doesn't normally name victims of sexual assault, but Huskins has frequently spoken publicly about the case in the past.

Police realized the couple were telling the truth after disbarred Harvard University-trained attorney Matthew Muller was implicated in another crime and tied to the abduction. He's serving a 40-year prison term.

Quinn's mother, Marianne Quinn, tells the San Francisco Chronicle that the settlement came Thursday.

(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press.)