Woman pleads guilty to faking federal agent abduction

Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderón, 43, pleaded guilty on Monday to one count of conspiracy to impede the lawful function of Homeland Security Investigations. Federal officials in the Central District of California announced that the resident of South Los Angeles admitted to fabricating her disappearance in 2025.

According to the Office of First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bilal A. Essayli, Calderón created the scheme to provoke media outrage and support a legal case against Border Patrol. She claimed in June and July 2025 that federal agents or their surrogates had abducted her.

Court documents detail a sequence of false calls made with blocked numbers. On June 25, 2025, Calderón told a contact that immigration officials were taking her into custody near a fast-food restaurant. She alleged that agents threatened to break her window.

Two days later, she contacted a tenants' rights advocate, claiming authorities had taken her to San Ysidro and forced her to sign deportation papers. She also told another person that she was being held in an unknown warehouse with other detainees. Officials stated that these intentional lies led to reports that masked men in an unmarked vehicle had kidnapped her.

While Calderón hid in Bakersfield, community organizers demanded her release. On July 3, 2025, she used a blocked number to tell a contact that media coverage was forcing her release. That same day, she traveled to Tulare County to stage her escape from "Border Patrol" and recruited a witness.

Calderón altered her appearance to look mistreated, and a co-conspirator took photographs of the changes. She then turned off her phones for two days while law enforcement searched for her. Her sentencing hearing is scheduled for February 8, 2027, and she faces a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.