Kidnapping

Opening statements began Wednesday in the trial against a Newport Beach woman charged with asking a private investigator to kidnap her son. Niveen Ismail, 45, wanted her 7-year-old out of foster care so the two could flee to Europe or the Middle East, according to a statement from the Orange County district attorney's office. According to prosecutors, in 2009 she offered an investigator a large sum of money for him to kidnap the boy from his Lake Forest foster family and take him to Tijuana.

Costa Mesa police arrested a man Thursday on suspicion of kidnapping and assaulting his ex-wife's boyfriend. Carmen Mendez-Silva, 34, of Santa Ana and a second man beat the victim with a pipe or bat Wednesday and threatened him with further harm if he did not move out of his Costa Mesa apartment, police said. The victim was then allegedly placed in the trunk of a car and driven to Huntington Beach, where he was released. Police were initially called to the Fillmore Way home of Mendez-Silva's ex-wife on a child custody issue.

A Costa Mesa man was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison Monday for his role in a kidnapping and ransom plot that spanned the Southland. Vagan Adzhemyan, 44, was convicted in 2010 of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and kidnapping. His two partners, Galvin Shaun Gibson, 33, of Mira Loma and Suren Garibyan, 34, of North Hollywood received sentences of 27 years and about 17 years, respectively. The office of the U.S. attorney's violent and organized crime unit prosecuted the case.

A Costa Mesa man will face life in prison when he’s sentenced in August for kidnapping a Russian man and holding him for a $1-million ransom. Vagan Adzhemyan, 41, was convicted Monday of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and kidnapping along with his accomplice, Galvin Shaun Gibson, 30, of Mira Loma. The two will be sentenced Aug. 2 in federal court in Santa Ana. The two men, along with Suren Garibyan, 32, of North Hollywood, kidnapped a Van Nuys man in July at his mother’s apartment complex and held him for ransom.

A Costa Mesa pair pleaded not guilty Thursday to kidnapping and extortion after police said the two were part of a group that threatened a woman trying to buy drugs in a Costa Mesa home. Juan Pablo Ojeda, 21, and Juanita Eileen Ortiz Carillo, 36, are charged with five felonies, including kidnapping for extortion or ransom, assault with a firearm and sale and possession of a controlled substance, all with sentencing enhancements for allegedly being gang-related. According to police, the two were part of a group that trapped a girl inside a Costa Mesa home on Victoria Street on Dec. 17. When the woman went in to buy drugs, Ojeda pulled a gun and pointed it at her head while Carrillo and another closed the door behind her, said Newport Beach Police Sgt. Evan Sailor.

A Costa Mesa man and his co-defendant are scheduled to go on trial Jan. 19 for allegedly shooting and kidnapping a man and holding him for a $1-million ransom in Los Angeles County, prosecutors said Friday. Vagan Adzhemyan, of Costa Mesa, and Galvin Shaun Gibson, of Mira Loma, face life in prison if convicted of federal kidnapping charges, among others, for the July kidnapping of a Russian man. A third man, Suren Garibyan of North Hollywood, pleaded guilty Dec. 30 to his role in the plot and faces 17 years and six months in prison as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.

Young Chang Sheranne Kemme was handing out bread Wednesday to a little boy she didn't know when suddenly she, a parent to 8-year-old triplets, was made to feel like the bad guy. The parents of the little boy panicked after seeing their son, who wanted to feed nearby birds, taking bread from a stranger. They urged him to "get back here." "Here I am, with my three kids, I'm a mom, and they're worried about me," Kemme said at TeWinkle Park in Costa Mesa.

A Newport Beach resident was one of two men sentenced Friday to life in prison for kidnapping a businessman to extort $80,000 from him. Cuauhtemoc Agustin Reyes, 33, of Newport Beach, and Arthur Frank Zavala, 37, of Huntington Beach, were sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole on convictions of kidnapping and kidnapping with extortion, according to Orange County prosecutors. In November 2001, an unnamed businessman, referred to as John Doe by prosecutors, was followed by three men, including Reyes, and dragged into a car outside of Fry's Electronics in Fountain Valley, according to prosecutors.

The defense attorney for a Costa Mesa man and an associate from Mira Loma, whose trial for allegedly shooting and kidnapping a man for ransom ended in a mistrial last month, is slated to meet Monday with a federal judge and prosecutors. Vagan Adzhemyan, of Costa Mesa, and Galvin Shaun Gibson, of Mira Loma, were tried last month for allegedly taking part in the July abduction of a Russian man in a Los Angeles County parking garage. The jury was hung, and the judge declared a mistrial, officials from the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Costa Mesa police arrested a man Thursday on suspicion of kidnapping and assaulting his ex-wife's boyfriend. Carmen Mendez-Silva, 34, of Santa Ana and a second man beat the victim with a pipe or bat Wednesday and threatened him with further harm if he did not move out of his Costa Mesa apartment, police said. The victim was then allegedly placed in the trunk of a car and driven to Huntington Beach, where he was released. Police were initially called to the Fillmore Way home of Mendez-Silva's ex-wife on a child custody issue.

A Costa Mesa man was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison Monday for his role in a kidnapping and ransom plot that spanned the Southland. Vagan Adzhemyan, 44, was convicted in 2010 of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and kidnapping. His two partners, Galvin Shaun Gibson, 33, of Mira Loma and Suren Garibyan, 34, of North Hollywood received sentences of 27 years and about 17 years, respectively. The office of the U.S. attorney's violent and organized crime unit prosecuted the case.

Costa Mesa police arrested two people Thursday on suspicion of kidnapping and car theft after the victim, who was still in the vehicle, was able to use a cell phone to provide street-by-street updates to police. Dan Floyd Hillard, 42, of Oklahoma was arrested for grand theft auto and kidnapping while another man was arrested but later released due to a lack of evidence, according to a Police Department news release. Police contend that Hillard and the other man stole a delivery truck about 8 a.m. from the Chevron station at Harbor Boulevard and Gisler Avenue.

A Newport Beach woman accused of trying to kidnap her son was acquitted by a jury Thursday. After a week-long trial, Niveen Ismail, 45, was acquitted after being accused of trying to hire someone to kidnap her 7-year-old boy, who would then take the boy to Mexico where he and Ismail would rendezvous and fly to Egypt, Ismail's native country. Her son was adopted by a Lake Forest family after taken from Ismail's custody in 2005. —Joseph Serna Twitter: @JosephSerna

Opening statements began Wednesday in the trial against a Newport Beach woman charged with asking a private investigator to kidnap her son. Niveen Ismail, 45, wanted her 7-year-old out of foster care so the two could flee to Europe or the Middle East, according to a statement from the Orange County district attorney's office. According to prosecutors, in 2009 she offered an investigator a large sum of money for him to kidnap the boy from his Lake Forest foster family and take him to Tijuana.

Two men who were retried on suspicion of kidnapping a Brazilian woman and her son and holding them hostage in a Costa Mesa motel have been convicted on lesser charges of attempted extortion by force, according to court records. Reynaldo Eid, 52, of New York and Alaor Oliveira, 57, of Connecticut were originally sentenced to life in prison for two counts of kidnapping for ransom in 2009. An appellate court, however, sent the case back for retrial because the original trial failed to instruct jurors that prosecutors' had to prove that the captors knew the woman and her son wanted to escape.

A suspected white supremacist gang member from Costa Mesa is to appear in court Friday on charges of aggravated assault and kidnapping. Jessie Raffensberger, 32, is accused of assaulting a man who was lured to a hotel, holding him against his will and hitting him with a semi-automatic pistol for the benefit of white supremacist and criminal street gangs, according to a 2010 news release from the Orange County district attorney's office. Raffensberger's arrest in 2010 was part of the largest take-down of white supremacist prison and street gangs in Orange County.

Orange County prosecutors Monday filed additional charges against a professional clown arrested Friday in Newport Beach on suspicion of kidnapping and raping a girl nine years ago. Jose Guadalupe Jimenez, 41, of Anaheim was charged with two felony counts of lewd acts upon a child under 14, one felony count of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one felony count of committing a forcible lewd act on a child under 14, according to the district...

A local transient has been linked through his DNA sample to an unsolved case in Arizona and faces extradition Thursday back to that state, authorities said in a news release. In September, police in Chandler, Ariz., reached out to Newport Beach police and the Orange County district attorney's office to find Santos Basilio O'Dell, 32, according to a joint news release from Newport police and the D.A.'s office. Detectives in Arizona allegedly got a "hit," or match, from O'Dell's DNA with evidence they had from a 2004 cold case rape, kidnapping and robbery in Chandler, according to the release.