A 32-year-old Bellingham woman was sentenced to 10 months in prison for a scheme to kidnap her son.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Talisa Manuella Munoz secretly flew to Panama after using false documents to get her 4-year-old a passport. She failed to return him to his father – which is required in their parenting plan.
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. The father then reported it to law enforcement, and the FBI opened an investigation.
Law enforcement determined that months before leaving, Munoz had lied 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.
“This is something you just can’t do. You can’t take the law into your own hands,” U.S. District Judge John H. Chun said at Monday’s sentencing.
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 extradite her. 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.
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