Enlarge By Chris Schneider, Getty Images Richard Heene, center, and Mayumi Heene, left, walk out of the courtroom after their sentencing hearing at the Larimer County Justice Center Dec. 23, in Fort Collins, Colo. Despite her husband's claims to the contrary, "Balloon Boy" mom Mayumi Heene repeatedly confessed that the family staged the hoax to boost their prospects in reality TV. Video recordings of the interviews conducted by the Larimer County Sheriff's Office with Mayumi Heene disprove the claims made by her husband Richard during his media blitz before he began serving his 30-day jail sentence. The videos, obtained by the Coloradoan on Friday through the Larimer County District Attorney's Office, show Mayumi Heene telling investigator Bob Heffernan that she and her husband decided to report their 6-year-old son Falcon was aboard a UFO-shaped helium balloon. 'BALLOON BOY' DAD: Insists innocence in series of interviews JAIL TIME: Heene starts jail sentence "Richard and I agreed to it, so it was mutual," Mayumi Heene told Heffernan after she was told she failed a lie detector test she willingly took. Both Richard and Mayumi Heene pleaded guilty in November to lying to authorities in connection with the Oct. 15 incident. Mayumi Heene received a lesser sentence in part because she confessed and cooperated, prosecutors said. The balloon's flight and crash landing captivated viewers across the globe for about three hours as the public feared Falcon was aboard the craft. Falcon eventually emerged from a hiding place in the family's garage. Under questioning Mayumi Heene said she knew Falcon was hiding somewhere in the home. At another point in the interview she told Heffernan, "Initially, we wanted to make it a Monday, but didn't get (the balloon) finished. The kids were out of school so we thought that was perfect." She also told Heffernan about financial motivations to try and gain a more marketable image. "We tried working so hard to make money to survive. It's a shame to come up with this idea. This was something that could take me, take us to the point we wanted to be at." Mayumi Heene told Heffernan the family was told by production company RDF Media that "if you guys get in the news or get more like a popularity sort of, we are able to sell you guys." RDF Media is the same company that worked with the Heene family when they appeared on the show Wife Swap in 2008. Mayumi Heene stressed to Heffernan that RDF did not come up with the idea to report to authorities that Falcon was missing and aboard a balloon. Before reporting to jail Jan. 11, Heene said he truly believed Falcon was inside the balloon and that he pleaded guilty only to appease authorities and save his wife from being deported to Japan. Richard Heene told The Associated Press before he went to jail that his wife misunderstood the meaning of the word "hoax" when she purportedly confessed. "My wife's first language is Japanese, not English," Heene said. "My wife came home in tears wondering what she might have said. She opened this Japanese-to-English dictionary, and she walks up to me crying her head off, and she says to me, 'I thought hoax meant an exhibition.'" During her interview with Heffernan, Mayumi Heene told him she has a bachelor's degree in English literature from a Japanese college. Mayumi Heene confessed largely through yes or no answers to most questions from Heffernan. During the roughly four-hour interrogation, Heffernan frequently rephrases the same questions inquiring about the Heenes' guilt and Mayumi Heene repeatedly confesses. During his polygraph test and subsequent interrogation, Richard Heene maintained his innocence or stonewalled investigators who urged him to confess. He gave investigators the same story he initially told them and the media: that he believed Falcon had floated away in the balloon. "I thought 'Oh my God he's in it,'" Heene said. Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden appears several times in the recordings, refers to reporters as (expletive) and says that if Heene passes the lie-detector test, it would give him "control" instead of the media. But then investigators told Heene he had failed the lie detector test and that his wife was confessing in another room. They showed him a picture of her talking to Heffernan. "Your wife is here. She just got done taking a polygraph. She failed the polygraph. You failed the polygraph," Undersheriff Ern Hudson told Richard Heene. "Your wife has already told us the truth. She's told us the whole story about this case." As Heene continued to deny that he was lying, Hudson continued to press him, telling Heene that telling the truth now would help. "It's fruitless for you to continue to deny it," Hudson said. "We know that this incident didn't happen the way you reported it." Heene, who repeatedly complained about having low blood sugar during the questioning, at one point hangs his head over the side of the chair arm and yawns repeatedly. He told investigators he had little sleep the night before, and that he was diabetic. Hudson and Heene then discussed Heene's blood sugar level, and Hudson, who said he also is diabetic, chided Heene. "You're more than OK on your blood sugar," Hudson said. "This is not going to go away." Heene, becoming increasingly agitated, asked if he could take the test again and insisted that he needed to see his wife. He assured investigators he wouldn't try to stop her from talking and said he needed to discuss an unrelated matter with her, saying someone was blackmailing him. "Guys, please, please let me talk to her," he said. "I am very uncomfortable and I need to stop this right now." At all times, the investigators maintained professional composure and they repeatedly advised Heene that he was free to leave. But they prohibited him from seeing his wife until she was done speaking with Heffernan. Richard Heene is in the midst of serving a 30-day jail sentence, and Mayumi Heene will serve jail time later this year. During the Oct. 15 incident, a frantic three-county search ensued with the National Guard deploying helicopters and air-traffic controllers temporarily diverting flights at Denver International Airport. Prosecutors are seeking $48,000 in restitution for the cost of the search for Falcon and the cost to prosecutor the Heene parents. Heene's defense attorney David Lane has until Monday to challenge the restitution order. In past interviews, Lane has called the amount ridiculously high. Nate Taylor and Trevor Hughes report for the Fort Collins Coloradoan. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. 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