Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderón, a 43-year-old Mexican national residing in South Los Angeles, pleaded guilty on Monday to conspiring to obstruct federal agents after staging a fake kidnapping in 2025. The Office of First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bilal A. Essayli for the Central District of California announced that Calderón fabricated her disappearance to generate media outrage and support a lawsuit against Border Patrol.
Federal officials stated that between June and July 2025, Calderón faked her apprehension by federal agents or surrogates acting on their behalf. According to the attorney’s office, she used anonymous and blocked phone calls to contact various individuals, building a fraudulent narrative that she had been abducted and detained at multiple locations.
Court documents detail that on June 25, 2025, Calderón told an individual 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 used caller ID blocking to contact a tenants' rights advocate, alleging that authorities had taken her to San Ysidro and forced her to sign deportation papers. On that same day, she told another individual she was being held in an unknown warehouse with other detainees.
Officials noted that Calderón’s lies resulted in false reports being sent to media outlets and law enforcement. These reports described her as having been "kidnapped" by masked men in plain clothes driving an unmarked vehicle who were acting as federal agents or their surrogates. While Calderón remained hidden in Bakersfield, community organizers demanded her release based on the false claims.
On July 3, 2025, Calderón contacted another individual via blocked caller ID, falsely claiming she would soon be released due to media coverage. That day, she traveled from Bakersfield to Tulare County to stage her release from "Border Patrol." She approached an individual about serving as a witness in her case. Officials stated that Calderón altered her appearance to suggest she had been mistreated in custody, and a co-conspirator photographed these changes.
For the two days following the staged release, Calderón turned off her phones and refused to return calls while law enforcement searched for her. She admitted guilt to one count of conspiracy aimed at interfering with the lawful operations of Homeland Security Investigations within federal jurisdiction.
Her sentencing hearing is scheduled for February 8, 2027. Calderón faces a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.