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A Mexican illegal alien living in Los Angeles was charged with orchestrating her own fake ICE “kidnapping” to generate sympathy and solicit donations, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderon, 41, a resident of South Los Angeles, was charged with conspiracy and making false statements to federal officers, the DOJ said.
Calderon had been living in the U.S. based on a federal law enforcement parole that expired in 2023. She is in federal custody after she allegedly faked her kidnapping.
This comes after local outlet KTLA reported on a news conference held by Calderon’s “loved ones and attorneys,” who claimed she had been “kidnapped” by uniformed men in unmarked cars June 25.
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The outlet reported that a woman identified as an attorney named Stephano Medina claimed Calderon was cornered in a Jack in the Box parking lot in Los Angeles by men who did not identify themselves but were possibly bounty hunters. Medina claimed Calderon was taken to the border and presented to an “ICE staffer,” who demanded she sign self-deportation paperwork.
Medina said that when Calderon refused to sign the paperwork, she was taken to a warehouse until she agreed to sign the document.
Fox News Digital obtained a copy of the criminal complaint against Calderon, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. An affidavit filed with the complaint alleges that Calderon and others “planned a hoax kidnapping” for their benefit, “including their own pecuniary gain.”
The affidavit said that Calderon’s daughter set up a GoFundMe page to raise $4,500 after her mother was “taken by masked men in an unmarked vehicle.”
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The daughter filed a missing person report with the Los Angeles Police Department, which notified Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) of Calderon’s supposed kidnapping.
HSI determined Calderon was not in DHS custody and, out of concern for her safety, the agency launched its own investigation to find her. During the investigation, HSI noticed several irregularities, including that the phone calls to loved ones that Calderon had supposedly made via borrowed phones were made from her cell phone, intentionally masked to appear as an unknown number.
According to the affidavit, video surveillance of Calderon’s alleged forced abduction further showed her calmly leaving the Jack in the Box parking lot and getting into a nearby sedan. Despite the video showing a marked LAPD car in the vicinity, Calderon did not make any attempts to alert officers that she was in danger.
The affidavit states that “when confronted with true information that contradicted their kidnapping story,” Calderon and others lied to federal agents and “attempted to thwart law enforcement efforts” by keeping her whereabouts from law enforcement.
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According to a DOJ statement, HSI agents tracked Calderon down July 5 in a shopping plaza parking lot in Bakersfield, California. The statement said Calderon continued to claim she was taken by masked men and held in custody with others.
She is in U.S. immigration custody and is facing a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison for conspiracy and up to five years for false statements if convicted of the charges.
Commenting on the charges, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli thanked HSI and “all federal agents facing unprecedented levels of assaults” for “providing cool heads and professionalism during these difficult times.”
Essayli 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.”
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HSI Los Angeles Special Agent in Charge Eddy Wang also decried the scheme, saying, “My office invested valuable time and resources working this alleged kidnapping investigation only to discover that it was a hoax.
“Diverting critical law enforcement resources is not only reckless and irresponsible, but it also endangers the community,” Wang added. “The real cost of a fraud like this is the amount of fentanyl not seized, child predators not removed from the communities and human trafficking victims not rescued because law enforcement redirected resources to recover the defendant.
“We want to assure the public that allegations of criminal activity will be thoroughly investigated by HSI and our law enforcement partners and that those who engage in fraud and deception will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
The White House also chimed in on the development. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Fox News Digital that “the Fake News is so desperate to believe any anti-ICE narrative that they refuse to actually check the facts and instead just echo the lies they’re fed.”
“The truth has come out: this was nothing more than another Fake News Hoax,” she added. “Any outlet that participated in this hoax should be ashamed and apologize to their viewers for lying to them. Trust in the media is at an all time low and this is the perfect example why.”
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