Woman pleads guilty to staged federal kidnapping

Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderón, 43, of South Los Angeles, pleaded guilty on Monday to conspiring to obstruct federal law enforcement. The Central District of California announced that Calderón, a Mexican national, fabricated her own disappearance in 2025 to generate media attention and build a legal case against U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Federal officials stated that Calderón used anonymous and blocked phone calls between June and July 2025 to spread a false narrative. She claimed that federal agents or their surrogates had detained her at various locations. To support these claims, she altered her appearance to suggest she had been mistreated in custody. A co-conspirator photographed her to document these changes.

Court documents detail the specific deceptions. On June 25, 2025, Calderón told an acquaintance that immigration officials were taking her into custody near a fast-food restaurant. She claimed agents threatened to break her window. Two days later, she contacted a tenants' rights advocate, falsely stating that authorities had taken her to San Ysidro and forced her to sign deportation papers. She also told another person she was being held in an unknown warehouse with other detainees.

The false reports reached local media and law enforcement. Officials said the claims described masked men in plain clothes driving an unmarked vehicle. While Calderón hid in Bakersfield, community organizers demanded her release based on the circulating information. On July 3, 2025, she contacted another individual by blocking her caller ID. She claimed media coverage would soon force her release. That same day, she traveled from Bakersfield to Tulare County to stage her release and recruit a witness.

For two days after staging her release, Calderón turned off her phones. She refused to return calls despite knowing law enforcement was searching for her. Her guilty plea covers one count of conspiracy to impede, obstruct, impair and defeat the lawful function of Homeland Security Investigations within federal jurisdiction.

Calderón faces a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. Her sentencing hearing is scheduled for February 8, 2027.