Seattle – A 32-year-old Bellingham woman was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Seattle to ten months in prison for making a false statement in an application for a passport as part of her scheme to kidnap her 4-year-old son and travel to Panama, announced First Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Neil Floyd. Talisa Manuella Munoz, failed to return the boy to his father as required by the final parenting plan. She secretly flew to Panama after using false documents to get the child a passport. She was arrested in Panama and ultimately extradited to the U.S. At the sentencing hearing U.S. District Judge John H. Chun said. “This is something you just can’t do. You can’t take the law into your own hands.”
According to records filed in the case, Munoz was supposed to return the child to his father on September 8, 2025, following a weekend visitation. When the child was not returned, the father reported it to law enforcement, and the FBI opened an investigation.
Law enforcement determined that months before leaving, Munoz had falsely claimed on her son’s passport application that she had no way to find or know the father. She submitted a birth certificate that said “none named” where the father’s name should be. The investigation revealed that Talisa Manuella Munoz schemed with her family for months to take the child to Panama and flew out of Seattle on or about September 7, 2025.
The Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs (OIA) and the U.S. Embassy in Panama City worked with law enforcement in Panama to arrest and secure the extradition of Talisa Manuella Munoz. She was returned to the Western District of Washington on January 8, 2026. Her young son was reunited with his father.
In preparation for sentencing the boy’s father told the probation office that enduring the kidnapping of his son “was the worst thing of [his] entire life.”
Judge Chun set a restitution hearing in November to determine the amount of restitution Munoz owes to the child’s father.
The case was investigated by the FBI. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Cecelia Gregson.
Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office — Western District of Washington — U.S. Department of Justice press release.