Wife gets jail in fake kidnapping plot
PHILADELPHIA - A woman upset about her household allowance will spend 11 months in prison for plotting a fake kidnapping to extort money from her alleged cheapskate husband.
Yudeka Valdez, 35, of Philadelphia, said her estranged husband was not making payments on her Mercedes. She told two men hired for the kidnap job he was a heroin dealer who kept $20,000 to $30,000 in cash.
But the man she had approached was an informant who brought an undercover drug agent along for the job.
“This was a foolish woman, angry at an estranged husband who wasn’t providing . . . [what] he should have been,’’ said defense lawyer Peter Bowers, who called the plan something out of the TV show “Divorce Court.’’
He called his client “emotionally spent’’ by the time she concocted the October 2008 plot.
After her arrest, Valdez told agents she never planned to go through with the plot. She apologized for her actions in court yesterday.
Prosecutors agreed to an 11-month sentence, below the three-year guideline range.
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