Janette Ramirez, a 34-year-old resident of New Orleans, pleaded guilty on September 25, 2025, to interstate transmission of a ransom demand. The plea was entered before U.S. District Judge Barry W. Ashe.
Court documents show that the victim was kidnapped by Hector Mondragon-Flores and Edwin Salgado-Nunez, who bound the victim’s hands and legs and held him at gunpoint in Mondragon-Flores’s apartment. They demanded $7,000 from the victim’s father for his release. Salgado-Nunez was arrested by officers from the New Orleans Police Department during a ransom exchange after an associate received $3,000 in cash from the victim’s father.
After Salgado-Nunez’s arrest, Mondragon-Flores took the victim to Ramirez’s apartment. There, Mondragon-Flores instructed the victim to facilitate a payment from his girlfriend for his release. Ramirez translated a conversation about the ransom payment between the victim and his girlfriend from English to Spanish so that Mondragon-Flores could monitor it. Ramirez also agreed to use her CashApp account to receive ransom payments and sent payment requests via CashApp to the victim’s girlfriend knowing they would be seen as requests for ransom.
Ramirez faces up to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, up to three years of supervised release, and a mandatory special assessment fee of $100.
The case is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), which brings together law enforcement agencies and communities with the goal of reducing violent crime and gun violence nationwide. The Department launched an updated violent crime reduction strategy on May 26, 2021, focused on building trust in communities, supporting organizations working on violence prevention, setting strategic enforcement priorities, and measuring results.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and New Orleans Police Department investigated this case. Assistant United States Attorneys David Berman and Sarah Dawkins are prosecuting.
