Politics & Government

Manassas Woman Gets Two Years for Extortion, Kidnapping Sceme

A Manassas woman was sentenced Friday to two years in prison for staging a kidnapping in Guatemala to extort money from a family living in Manassas, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said Friday.

A Manassas woman was sentenced Friday to two years in prison for staging a kidnapping in Guatemala to extort money from family living in Manassas, the U.S. District Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced today.

Sheena Flores, 34, of Manassas, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release following her jail sentence and ordered to pay $3,000 in resititution.

According to court documents, Flores was living in Guatemala in July of 2010 with a child under the age of two who was born in Guatemala.  Flores did not have legal custody of the child, but had been taking care of the child in Guatemala while her husband was making arrangements to legally bring the child to the United States to live with him and Flores.   

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Flores contacted a family member in Manassas by telephone on July 6 2010 from Guatemala, and reported that she and the child had been kidnapped by three men and that the men wanted $5,000 in two hours or they were going to kill Flores and the child. 

An FBI investigation found Flores knew she and the child had not been kidnapped and was attempting to extort money from her family with a hoax kidnapping and false threats. The family member called law enforcement authorities in Virginia upon learning of the kidnapping and believing it to be true. 

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FBI agents began investigating the kidnapping and members of the FBI’s Crisis Incident Response Group were dispatched to the family member’s house to monitor the situation and assist the family in negotiating with the kidnappers.          

Flores’ husband, who was in Manassas, received numerous text messages from Flores’ cellular phone in Guatemala, which repeatedly threatened that Flores and the child would be killed if he did not pay $10,000 in ransom by the next day. 

Flores’ husband wired a partial ransom payment to Guatemala.   

According to court documents, Flores enlisted the help of two men whom she believed were members of the violent gang MS-13 to help carry out the fake kidnapping. 

Flores and the child were found a week later with the assistance of Guatemalan police.   

The case was investigated by FBI, with support from the Legal Attaché Office in El Salvador and the FBI Transnational Anti-Gang Task Force in Guatemala.


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