Federal prosecutors announced on Monday that a woman from Mexico living in the country illegally has pleaded guilty to staging a fake kidnapping in 2025. She had falsely claimed that federal agents, or people acting on their behalf, abducted her.
Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderón, 43, of South Los Angeles, invented her disappearance to generate media outrage and lay the groundwork for a lawsuit against Border Patrol before going into hiding, according to the office of First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bilal A. Essayli for the Central District of California.
"In June and July of 2025, Calderón faked her apprehension by federal agents or surrogates acting on behalf of federal agents," officials said. The attorney's office said she repeatedly placed anonymous and blocked phone calls to people in order to build a fraudulent account of what had happened to her.
Court documents describe several of those calls. On June 25, 2025, Calderón allegedly told one person that immigration officials were taking her into custody near a fast-food restaurant, and that agents had threatened to break her window. Two days later, she reportedly used caller ID blocking to reach a tenants' rights advocate, falsely saying authorities had taken her to San Ysidro and forced her to sign deportation papers. That same day, she reportedly told another person she had been moved to an unknown warehouse, where she was being held with other detainees.
Officials said her lies spread. "As a result of Calderón's intentional lies, false information was reported to the media and law enforcement that Calderón had been 'kidnapped' by masked men in plain clothes driving an unmarked vehicle, who were acting as federal agents or as surrogates of federal agents," they said. Community organizers demanded her release, even as Calderón "chose to stay hidden in Bakersfield," according to the attorney's office.
On July 3, 2025, she again used caller ID blocking to contact someone, claiming she would soon be freed because of the media coverage. The same day, officials said, she traveled from Bakersfield to Tulare County to stage her release from "Border Patrol." There she approached an individual about acting as a witness in her case.
Prosecutors said Calderón also changed her appearance to make it look as though she had been mistreated in custody, and that a co-conspirator photographed her altered appearance. For the following two days, she turned off her phones and ignored calls, knowing that law enforcement was searching for her.
Calderón pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to impede, obstruct, impair and defeat the lawful function of Homeland Security Investigations within federal jurisdiction. Her hearing is scheduled for Feb. 8, 2027. She faces a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.
