An illegal alien from Mexico has pleaded guilty to staging a fake kidnapping in 2025 and falsely claiming that federal agents, or people acting on their behalf, had abducted her, federal officials announced Monday.
According to the Office of First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bilal A. Essayli for the Central District of California, Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderón, 43, of South Los Angeles, fabricated her disappearance to stir up media outrage and build a case for a lawsuit against Border Patrol, then went into hiding. "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 Calderón repeatedly reached out to people through anonymous and blocked phone calls as she built the story, portraying federal authorities as responsible for her supposed disappearance and detention. Officials said she falsely claimed that agents abducted her and held her at multiple locations.
Court documents show that on June 25, 2025, Calderón told an individual that immigration officials were taking her into custody near a restaurant and that agents had threatened to break her window. Two days later, she allegedly blocked her caller ID while giving a tenants' rights advocate another false account, claiming 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 unidentified warehouse where she was being held with other detainees.
"As a result of Calderón's intentional lies, false information was reported to the media and law enforcement" that she had been "kidnapped" by masked men in plain clothes driving an unmarked vehicle, officials said. While those claims spread and community organizers demanded her release, officials said Calderón "chose to stay hidden in Bakersfield.”
On July 3, 2025, Calderón again allegedly used caller ID blocking to tell someone she would soon be released because of the media coverage. That day, according to officials, she traveled from Bakersfield to Tulare County to stage her release from "Border Patrol" and approached an individual about serving as a witness in her case. Officials said she "altered her appearance to make it appear that she had been mistreated while in custody," and that a co-conspirator photographed her altered appearance.
For the next two days, Calderón turned off her phones and refused to return calls, even though she knew law enforcement was searching for her, according to the attorney's office.
Calderón pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to impede, obstruct, impair, and defeat the lawful function of Homeland Security Investigations. She faces a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.
