Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderón
Introduction
Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderón is a 43-year-old South Los Angeles woman who pleaded guilty on October 26, 2026, in federal court to one count of conspiracy to impede, obstruct, impair, and defeat the lawful function of Homeland Security Investigations — admitting that she staged her own “kidnapping” by federal agents in the summer of 2025 . The hoax drew press conferences, false media coverage and a family fundraiser before prosecutors unraveled it; she faces a statutory maximum of five years in federal prison at her February 8, 2027 sentencing hearing .
Background Information
Federal prosecutors describe Calderón as a Mexican national living in the United States illegally and a self-described activist, resident in South Los Angeles . According to her plea agreement, in June and July of 2025 — while HSI was engaged in lawful government functions including responding to credible threats to public safety — Calderón faked her apprehension by federal agents or by surrogates acting on their behalf . The scheme unfolded at a moment when immigration-enforcement operations had ramped up across Los Angeles and Southern California, which is precisely the backdrop her story exploited .
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Pleaded guilty. Calderón admitted the conspiracy count — the kidnapping she reported never happened. The conviction rests on her own plea, entered in Los Angeles federal court; sentencing remains pending before Judge Stephen V. Wilson, where she faces up to five years .
Per the Justice Department’s account of her plea, the fabrication began on June 25, 2025, when Calderón falsely told an individual that “immigration” was taking her while in or near a fast-food restaurant — the tale of masked men at a Jack in the Box parking lot in downtown Los Angeles — claiming officials had “turned the lights on,” “threatened to break her window,” and were taking her into custody . Two days later she used caller ID blocking to tell a member of a tenants’ rights group that she had been taken by “authorities” to San Ysidro and pressured to sign voluntary removal documents, and called a third person the same day claiming she had been moved to a warehouse in an unknown location and held with other detainees; a June 28 call added a claim she was being held with someone from “B-18,” an immigration facility in Los Angeles .
The lies reached the public. False information was reported to media and law enforcement that Calderón had been “kidnapped” by masked men in plain clothes driving an unmarked vehicle posing as federal agents; on June 30, 2025, community organizers held a press conference where others repeated her story and demanded her “release,” while an attorney told assembled media she had been “punished” with abuse in a warehouse after refusing to sign self-deportation paperwork . Her daughter’s GoFundMe requested $4,500, saying Calderón “was taken by masked men in an unmarked vehicle … when she was on her way to work” . Meanwhile Calderón stayed hidden in Bakersfield: on July 3 she traveled to Tulare County to stage her “release,” had a co-conspirator photograph her altered appearance to look as if she had been mistreated in custody, and asked a stranger to witness her planned lawsuit against Border Patrol .
The story collapsed within days. From July 3 to July 5, 2025, she turned off her phones and ignored calls from law enforcement officers who, having confirmed she was not in immigration custody, were searching for her; agents tracked her down July 5 in a Bakersfield shopping-plaza parking lot, where she kept insisting she had been kidnapped . Prosecutors said surveillance video — including images of Calderón leaving the Jack in the Box parking lot and getting into a nearby sedan — and telephone records showing she was in contact with family throughout her supposed captivity bolstered the conclusion that she fabricated the entire story .
Public Reaction and Consequences
The hoax’s toll, as prosecutors and officials framed it, was fear and cynical coverage: the U.S. Attorney’s Office said the press conference “stoked fear in the community,” and the Department of Homeland Security said the hoax was created to malign the administration’s immigration-enforcement efforts . United States Attorney Bill Essayli, quoted by the Post from last year’s announcement, said: “Dangerous rhetoric that ICE agents are ‘kidnapping’ illegal immigrants is being recklessly peddled by politicians and echoed in the media to inflame the public and discredit our courageous federal agents” . The GoFundMe her daughter created has since been deleted .
Current Status
Calderón pleaded guilty Monday, October 26, 2026, to the single conspiracy count, admitting the conduct in a plea agreement; United States District Judge Stephen V. Wilson scheduled her sentencing hearing for February 8, 2027, where she faces a statutory maximum of five years in federal prison . The case was investigated by HSI’s El Camino Real Financial Crimes Division and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Lana Morton Owens of the National Security Division and Matthew J. Tako of the Transnational Organized Crime Section . Her sentence is not yet imposed; what is already adjudicated is the plea itself — her admission that the kidnapping was staged.
Impact on Their Career/Life
The plea converts the summer 2025 sympathy campaign — the press conference, the fundraiser, the staged abuse photos — into a federal felony conviction on her record, with prison time to be decided in February . The planned lawsuit against Border Patrol that prosecutors say motivated the scheme is dead, and the case now stands as the government’s exhibit that fake-kidnapping stories burn real fear in immigrant communities and real credibility in the press .
Sources
- “Illegal Immigrant from Mexico Pleads Guilty to Staging Fake Kidnapping Last Year Purportedly Committed by Federal Agents” — U.S. Department of Justice (C.D. Cal.): source
- “LA woman pleads guilty to staging fake ICE kidnapping hoax” — New York Post: source
- “South LA woman pleads guilty to fake, staged ICE kidnapping” — LA Daily News: source
- “South LA woman pleads guilty to faking her own kidnapping by federal agents” — CBS News Los Angeles: source
- “A South Los Angeles woman accused of staging a hoax kidnapping by federal authorities pleads guilty” — NBC Los Angeles: source
- “Illegal alien pleads guilty to staging fake kidnapping to target Border Patrol” — Fox News: source
- “California illegal migrant’s ICE fantasy implodes after she was busted on video at fast food joint” — NY Post on X: source