Mariana Yepez climbed the ranks of the Los Angeles street food scene before building her own taco empire.
A native of Sonora, Mexico, Yepez and her husband toiled at various food trucks and restaurants until 2018, when they launched a series of stands named after their daughter: Ricos Tacos Naomi.
Serving up heaps of fatty cabeza and sizzling al pastor, it grew to nearly a dozen locations spanning from Long Beach to L.A. to the Antelope Valley, drawing praise from prominent food critics.
But now, Yepez sits in jail — accused of plotting to kill one of her employees.
Yepez, 43, and aworkers at Ricos Tacos Naomi are charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the death of Soledad Lopez, who was last seen alive around 2 p.m. on Sept. 7. A second employee faces murder charges.
Video surveillance showed the 47-year-old Lopez leaving work at one of the taco stands with her coworker, Sandra Romo Diaz. The pair then went to a warehouse related to the business, according to a transcript of a November court hearing.
Lopez never emerged from the building. Prosecutors say Diaz was seen leaving and returning to the warehouse with two gas canisters. Diaz, according to prosecutors, then left driving Lopez’s vehicle. Two days later, Los Angeles police found Lopez’s charred body inside the car, according to a medical examiner’s report.
Diaz, 52, suffered burns to her arm and stomach while trying to incinerate the car and was soon charged with Lopez’s murder, according to a court transcript and a criminal complaint.
The grisly killing, authorities now say, was set in motion after Diaz, Lopez and Yepez were involved in a car crash and got into a dispute over money they received from a lawsuit.
Authorities have not spelled out Yepez’s alleged role in the plot, but the intervention of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has complicated efforts to prosecute her and another man allegedly involved in the killing. One defendant in the case was ordered removed by an immigration judge and departed before trial, while Yepez was detained by ICE as the Los Angeles Police Department closed in.
Yepez has pleaded not guilty, and her attorney, Justin Rodriguez, said “she’s done nothing wrong.”
“She’s being put out as the fall guy,” Rodriguez said. “I’m confident she’s going to be exonerated when all this is said and done.”
Diaz’s attorney, Matthew Barhoma, also maintained that his client is innocent — and blamed ICE for letting the people he accused of being the real killers get away with it.
“We are left to defend Sandra against a murder charge while the people we believe actually committed this crime are beyond reach,” he said in an email to The Times. “That is an injustice — not only to Sandra, but to the memory of Soledad Lopez, whose family deserves answers, not a convenient arrest.”
A taco empire, a crash and a $11,500 check
The taco stand where Lopez and Diaz worked together was in some ways the embodiment of the American dream.
Yepez and her husband, who is from Guatemala, got their start working inside one of Roy Choi’s Kogi BBQ trucks, serving up the short rib burritos that became an exemplar of Korean-Mexican fusion in the city.
Ricos Tacos Naomi employees grill meats at one of the stand’s 11 locations around the city.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Building off the success of the original Ricos Tacos Naomi spot in Panorama City, Yepez and her partner found a following despite lacking flair. Two stands visited recently by Times reporters didn’t even have a sign displaying the name of the business. Still, customers have lined up across L.A. County.
“There’s a new street taco stand quickly taking over Los Angeles,” L.A. Taco’s Memo Torres wrote in a 2022 review.
But authorities believe there were tensions between Yepez and her employee who was killed, according to a prosecutor’s statements in court and a police report reviewed by The Times.
After reporting Lopez missing last September, Lopez’s daughter told a detective that Yepez had been mistreating her mother at work, the police report said.
One of Yepez’s relatives then told Lopez’s daughter that her mother “went missing because she had allegedly stolen money from the business,” according to the police report.
The fight over finances allegedly stemmed from a January 2025 car crash. As Yepez drove Diaz and Lopez home from work one night, their vehicle was rear-ended at a red light, according to Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor turned civil attorney who represented the three women in their claim against the motorist who hit them.
All three suffered “soft tissue injuries,” but Yepez refused to see a doctor so Rahmani said he had to drop her case. Lopez received a settlement check for approximately $11,500, according to Rahmani, while Diaz got about $10,000.
A month before she went missing, Lopez’s daughter said her mother gave Yepez her insurance check and asked her to cash it, according to the police report reviewed by The Times.
Rahmani said the funds earmarked for Lopez were deposited into a Chase bank account on Aug. 28. The check was endorsed by Yepez, according to Rahmani. Lopez, however, was “never paid the funds,” the police report said.
Yepez’s lawyer denied any wrongdoing by his client.
“Everything I’ve seen tends to show her innocence and her lack of involvement in any of the allegations,” Rodriguez said.
Police asked prosecutors in September to immediately charge Yepez in connection with Lopez’s killing, but the L.A. County district attorney’s office initially sent the case back for further investigation, according to an agency spokeswoman.
But while police continued to piece together the case, Yepez was detained by federal immigration agents. And she wasn’t the only suspect in the case to be pulled out of the LAPD’s reach by immigration enforcement.
An order of removal and a ‘suspect’ detained by ICE
The surveillance footage that captured Lopez and Diaz entering the warehouse used by Ricos Tacos Naomi also showed a third person accompanying them, according to the transcript of the November court hearing, in which prosecutors fought a defense effort to lower Diaz’s bail.
Diaz’s attorney says that man was Oscar Villafranca, another employee of the taco stand.
According to Rahmani, the lawyer who represented the three women after their car crash, Villafranca and Diaz were romantically involved.
In the November bail hearing, a prosecutor referenced Lopez and Diaz meeting up with “another man” at the warehouse where police believe the killing occurred. But Villafranca isn’t mentioned by name and the surveillance footage described in court did not appear to capture what happened inside the warehouse, according to the hearing transcript. During the hearing, the prosecutor did not say if Yepez was present on the night of the killing.
Investigators believe Lopez died before the car was set on fire, but were unable to determine her exact cause of death or who killed her, because of the extreme fire damage her body suffered, according to the coroner’s report. Her death was ruled a homicide.
Villafranca, a Honduran national, left the U.S. on Sept. 21, two weeks after the killing, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said. Villafranca was first ordered removed from the country by an immigration judge during the Biden administration in August 2024. It was not clear if police were aware of Villafranca’s alleged involvement in the conspiracy to kill Lopez at the time he left the country.
The day after Villafranca departed the country, immigration agents came for Yepez.
She was arrested on Sept. 22, according to a DHS spokesperson, who declined to answer questions about the nature of her arrest.
A high-ranking Los Angeles law enforcement official, who requested anonymity to discuss an active case, said Yepez had already been identified as a “suspect” in the murder conspiracy investigation at the time. The official said this was “not the first time” ICE had intercepted someone who was the target of an LAPD investigation in the past year, making it more difficult for local authorities to investigate and prosecute suspected crimes. The official blamed the confusion on California’s “sanctuary state” law, which limits cooperation between ICE and local police.
The DHS spokesperson would not say if ICE knew of Villafranca or Yepez’s alleged links to Lopez’s death, or comment on agents’ potential interference in a murder conspiracy case.
“Under President Trump and [DHS] Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin, if you break the law, you will face the consequences,” the spokesperson said. “Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”
The district attorney’s office filed conspiracy to commit murder charges against Yepez and Villafranca in April, eight months after Yepez was grabbed by ICE and Villafranca left the U.S. under threat of deportation. Villafranca’s alleged role in Lopez’s killing is unclear.
ICE transferred Yepez back to L.A. County custody on June 2, and she remains jailed in lieu of $2 million as the case proceeds.
Yepez’s attorney said his client will be exonerated.
“We are confident that once all the dust settles that she’s going to be vindicated,” Rodriguez said. “She has the support of her family and the community, and we aim to prove her innocence, and we’re taking every step in that direction as we speak.”
Prosecutors will seek to extradite Villafranca, according to the district attorney’s office spokeswoman, who would not say if prosecutors have any idea where he is.
Lopez’s killing is not the first consequential criminal investigation that ICE’s immigration enforcement blitz has disrupted in Southern California.
Earlier this year, a Times investigation revealed ICE deported an informant who had turned against two of his co-defendants in a meth smuggling case. Without his testimony, federal prosecutors lost at trial. A man facing a lengthy prison sentence for what authorities have called the largest jewel heist in U.S. history was also deported to Ecuador late last year before he could stand trial in Los Angeles.
While Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman has been sparing in criticism of ICE, he previously told The Times those who commit crimes on American soil should face consequences for their actions in L.A. before their immigration situation is sorted out.
“I don’t want anyone deported until I’ve got them sentenced. And if their sentence is jail or state prison, I want them to serve their sentence,” he said in an interview last year. “That is the punishment they receive for committing crimes in my county.”
Mariana Yepez climbed the ranks of the Los Angeles street food scene before building her own taco empire.
A native of Sonora, Mexico, Yepez and her husband toiled at various food trucks and restaurants until 2018, when they launched a series of stands named after their daughter: Ricos Tacos Naomi.
Serving up heaps of fatty cabeza and sizzling al pastor, it grew to nearly a dozen locations spanning from Long Beach to L.A. to the Antelope Valley, drawing praise from prominent food critics.
But now, Yepez sits in jail — accused of plotting to kill one of her employees.
Yepez, 43, and aworkers at Ricos Tacos Naomi are charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the death of Soledad Lopez, who was last seen alive around 2 p.m. on Sept. 7. A second employee faces murder charges.
Video surveillance showed the 47-year-old Lopez leaving work at one of the taco stands with her coworker, Sandra Romo Diaz. The pair then went to a warehouse related to the business, according to a transcript of a November court hearing.
Lopez never emerged from the building. Prosecutors say Diaz was seen leaving and returning to the warehouse with two gas canisters. Diaz, according to prosecutors, then left driving Lopez’s vehicle. Two days later, Los Angeles police found Lopez’s charred body inside the car, according to a medical examiner’s report.
Diaz, 52, suffered burns to her arm and stomach while trying to incinerate the car and was soon charged with Lopez’s murder, according to a court transcript and a criminal complaint.
The grisly killing, authorities now say, was set in motion after Diaz, Lopez and Yepez were involved in a car crash and got into a dispute over money they received from a lawsuit.
Authorities have not spelled out Yepez’s alleged role in the plot, but the intervention of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has complicated efforts to prosecute her and another man allegedly involved in the killing. One defendant in the case was ordered removed by an immigration judge and departed before trial, while Yepez was detained by ICE as the Los Angeles Police Department closed in.
Yepez has pleaded not guilty, and her attorney, Justin Rodriguez, said “she’s done nothing wrong.”
“She’s being put out as the fall guy,” Rodriguez said. “I’m confident she’s going to be exonerated when all this is said and done.”
Diaz’s attorney, Matthew Barhoma, also maintained that his client is innocent — and blamed ICE for letting the people he accused of being the real killers get away with it.
“We are left to defend Sandra against a murder charge while the people we believe actually committed this crime are beyond reach,” he said in an email to The Times. “That is an injustice — not only to Sandra, but to the memory of Soledad Lopez, whose family deserves answers, not a convenient arrest.”
A taco empire, a crash and a $11,500 check
The taco stand where Lopez and Diaz worked together was in some ways the embodiment of the American dream.
Yepez and her husband, who is from Guatemala, got their start working inside one of Roy Choi’s Kogi BBQ trucks, serving up the short rib burritos that became an exemplar of Korean-Mexican fusion in the city.
Ricos Tacos Naomi employees grill meats at one of the stand’s 11 locations around the city.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Building off the success of the original Ricos Tacos Naomi spot in Panorama City, Yepez and her partner found a following despite lacking flair. Two stands visited recently by Times reporters didn’t even have a sign displaying the name of the business. Still, customers have lined up across L.A. County.
“There’s a new street taco stand quickly taking over Los Angeles,” L.A. Taco’s Memo Torres wrote in a 2022 review.
But authorities believe there were tensions between Yepez and her employee who was killed, according to a prosecutor’s statements in court and a police report reviewed by The Times.
After reporting Lopez missing last September, Lopez’s daughter told a detective that Yepez had been mistreating her mother at work, the police report said.
One of Yepez’s relatives then told Lopez’s daughter that her mother “went missing because she had allegedly stolen money from the business,” according to the police report.
The fight over finances allegedly stemmed from a January 2025 car crash. As Yepez drove Diaz and Lopez home from work one night, their vehicle was rear-ended at a red light, according to Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor turned civil attorney who represented the three women in their claim against the motorist who hit them.
All three suffered “soft tissue injuries,” but Yepez refused to see a doctor so Rahmani said he had to drop her case. Lopez received a settlement check for approximately $11,500, according to Rahmani, while Diaz got about $10,000.
A month before she went missing, Lopez’s daughter said her mother gave Yepez her insurance check and asked her to cash it, according to the police report reviewed by The Times.
Rahmani said the funds earmarked for Lopez were deposited into a Chase bank account on Aug. 28. The check was endorsed by Yepez, according to Rahmani. Lopez, however, was “never paid the funds,” the police report said.
Yepez’s lawyer denied any wrongdoing by his client.
“Everything I’ve seen tends to show her innocence and her lack of involvement in any of the allegations,” Rodriguez said.
Police asked prosecutors in September to immediately charge Yepez in connection with Lopez’s killing, but the L.A. County district attorney’s office initially sent the case back for further investigation, according to an agency spokeswoman.
But while police continued to piece together the case, Yepez was detained by federal immigration agents. And she wasn’t the only suspect in the case to be pulled out of the LAPD’s reach by immigration enforcement.
An order of removal and a ‘suspect’ detained by ICE
The surveillance footage that captured Lopez and Diaz entering the warehouse used by Ricos Tacos Naomi also showed a third person accompanying them, according to the transcript of the November court hearing, in which prosecutors fought a defense effort to lower Diaz’s bail.
Diaz’s attorney says that man was Oscar Villafranca, another employee of the taco stand.
According to Rahmani, the lawyer who represented the three women after their car crash, Villafranca and Diaz were romantically involved.
In the November bail hearing, a prosecutor referenced Lopez and Diaz meeting up with “another man” at the warehouse where police believe the killing occurred. But Villafranca isn’t mentioned by name and the surveillance footage described in court did not appear to capture what happened inside the warehouse, according to the hearing transcript. During the hearing, the prosecutor did not say if Yepez was present on the night of the killing.
Investigators believe Lopez died before the car was set on fire, but were unable to determine her exact cause of death or who killed her, because of the extreme fire damage her body suffered, according to the coroner’s report. Her death was ruled a homicide.
Villafranca, a Honduran national, left the U.S. on Sept. 21, two weeks after the killing, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said. Villafranca was first ordered removed from the country by an immigration judge during the Biden administration in August 2024. It was not clear if police were aware of Villafranca’s alleged involvement in the conspiracy to kill Lopez at the time he left the country.
The day after Villafranca departed the country, immigration agents came for Yepez.
She was arrested on Sept. 22, according to a DHS spokesperson, who declined to answer questions about the nature of her arrest.
A high-ranking Los Angeles law enforcement official, who requested anonymity to discuss an active case, said Yepez had already been identified as a “suspect” in the murder conspiracy investigation at the time. The official said this was “not the first time” ICE had intercepted someone who was the target of an LAPD investigation in the past year, making it more difficult for local authorities to investigate and prosecute suspected crimes. The official blamed the confusion on California’s “sanctuary state” law, which limits cooperation between ICE and local police.
The DHS spokesperson would not say if ICE knew of Villafranca or Yepez’s alleged links to Lopez’s death, or comment on agents’ potential interference in a murder conspiracy case.
“Under President Trump and [DHS] Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin, if you break the law, you will face the consequences,” the spokesperson said. “Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”
The district attorney’s office filed conspiracy to commit murder charges against Yepez and Villafranca in April, eight months after Yepez was grabbed by ICE and Villafranca left the U.S. under threat of deportation. Villafranca’s alleged role in Lopez’s killing is unclear.
ICE transferred Yepez back to L.A. County custody on June 2, and she remains jailed in lieu of $2 million as the case proceeds.
Yepez’s attorney said his client will be exonerated.
“We are confident that once all the dust settles that she’s going to be vindicated,” Rodriguez said. “She has the support of her family and the community, and we aim to prove her innocence, and we’re taking every step in that direction as we speak.”
Prosecutors will seek to extradite Villafranca, according to the district attorney’s office spokeswoman, who would not say if prosecutors have any idea where he is.
Lopez’s killing is not the first consequential criminal investigation that ICE’s immigration enforcement blitz has disrupted in Southern California.
Earlier this year, a Times investigation revealed ICE deported an informant who had turned against two of his co-defendants in a meth smuggling case. Without his testimony, federal prosecutors lost at trial. A man facing a lengthy prison sentence for what authorities have called the largest jewel heist in U.S. history was also deported to Ecuador late last year before he could stand trial in Los Angeles.
While Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman has been sparing in criticism of ICE, he previously told The Times those who commit crimes on American soil should face consequences for their actions in L.A. before their immigration situation is sorted out.
“I don’t want anyone deported until I’ve got them sentenced. And if their sentence is jail or state prison, I want them to serve their sentence,” he said in an interview last year. “That is the punishment they receive for committing crimes in my county.”
Mariana Yepez climbed the ranks of the Los Angeles street food scene before building her own taco empire.
A native of Sonora, Mexico, Yepez and her husband toiled at various food trucks and restaurants until 2018, when they launched a series of stands named after their daughter: Ricos Tacos Naomi.
Serving up heaps of fatty cabeza and sizzling al pastor, it grew to nearly a dozen locations spanning from Long Beach to L.A. to the Antelope Valley, drawing praise from prominent food critics.
But now, Yepez sits in jail — accused of plotting to kill one of her employees.
Yepez, 43, and aworkers at Ricos Tacos Naomi are charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the death of Soledad Lopez, who was last seen alive around 2 p.m. on Sept. 7. A second employee faces murder charges.
Video surveillance showed the 47-year-old Lopez leaving work at one of the taco stands with her coworker, Sandra Romo Diaz. The pair then went to a warehouse related to the business, according to a transcript of a November court hearing.
Lopez never emerged from the building. Prosecutors say Diaz was seen leaving and returning to the warehouse with two gas canisters. Diaz, according to prosecutors, then left driving Lopez’s vehicle. Two days later, Los Angeles police found Lopez’s charred body inside the car, according to a medical examiner’s report.
Diaz, 52, suffered burns to her arm and stomach while trying to incinerate the car and was soon charged with Lopez’s murder, according to a court transcript and a criminal complaint.
The grisly killing, authorities now say, was set in motion after Diaz, Lopez and Yepez were involved in a car crash and got into a dispute over money they received from a lawsuit.
Authorities have not spelled out Yepez’s alleged role in the plot, but the intervention of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has complicated efforts to prosecute her and another man allegedly involved in the killing. One defendant in the case was ordered removed by an immigration judge and departed before trial, while Yepez was detained by ICE as the Los Angeles Police Department closed in.
Yepez has pleaded not guilty, and her attorney, Justin Rodriguez, said “she’s done nothing wrong.”
“She’s being put out as the fall guy,” Rodriguez said. “I’m confident she’s going to be exonerated when all this is said and done.”
Diaz’s attorney, Matthew Barhoma, also maintained that his client is innocent — and blamed ICE for letting the people he accused of being the real killers get away with it.
“We are left to defend Sandra against a murder charge while the people we believe actually committed this crime are beyond reach,” he said in an email to The Times. “That is an injustice — not only to Sandra, but to the memory of Soledad Lopez, whose family deserves answers, not a convenient arrest.”
A taco empire, a crash and a $11,500 check
The taco stand where Lopez and Diaz worked together was in some ways the embodiment of the American dream.
Yepez and her husband, who is from Guatemala, got their start working inside one of Roy Choi’s Kogi BBQ trucks, serving up the short rib burritos that became an exemplar of Korean-Mexican fusion in the city.
Ricos Tacos Naomi employees grill meats at one of the stand’s 11 locations around the city.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Building off the success of the original Ricos Tacos Naomi spot in Panorama City, Yepez and her partner found a following despite lacking flair. Two stands visited recently by Times reporters didn’t even have a sign displaying the name of the business. Still, customers have lined up across L.A. County.
“There’s a new street taco stand quickly taking over Los Angeles,” L.A. Taco’s Memo Torres wrote in a 2022 review.
But authorities believe there were tensions between Yepez and her employee who was killed, according to a prosecutor’s statements in court and a police report reviewed by The Times.
After reporting Lopez missing last September, Lopez’s daughter told a detective that Yepez had been mistreating her mother at work, the police report said.
One of Yepez’s relatives then told Lopez’s daughter that her mother “went missing because she had allegedly stolen money from the business,” according to the police report.
The fight over finances allegedly stemmed from a January 2025 car crash. As Yepez drove Diaz and Lopez home from work one night, their vehicle was rear-ended at a red light, according to Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor turned civil attorney who represented the three women in their claim against the motorist who hit them.
All three suffered “soft tissue injuries,” but Yepez refused to see a doctor so Rahmani said he had to drop her case. Lopez received a settlement check for approximately $11,500, according to Rahmani, while Diaz got about $10,000.
A month before she went missing, Lopez’s daughter said her mother gave Yepez her insurance check and asked her to cash it, according to the police report reviewed by The Times.
Rahmani said the funds earmarked for Lopez were deposited into a Chase bank account on Aug. 28. The check was endorsed by Yepez, according to Rahmani. Lopez, however, was “never paid the funds,” the police report said.
Yepez’s lawyer denied any wrongdoing by his client.
“Everything I’ve seen tends to show her innocence and her lack of involvement in any of the allegations,” Rodriguez said.
Police asked prosecutors in September to immediately charge Yepez in connection with Lopez’s killing, but the L.A. County district attorney’s office initially sent the case back for further investigation, according to an agency spokeswoman.
But while police continued to piece together the case, Yepez was detained by federal immigration agents. And she wasn’t the only suspect in the case to be pulled out of the LAPD’s reach by immigration enforcement.
An order of removal and a ‘suspect’ detained by ICE
The surveillance footage that captured Lopez and Diaz entering the warehouse used by Ricos Tacos Naomi also showed a third person accompanying them, according to the transcript of the November court hearing, in which prosecutors fought a defense effort to lower Diaz’s bail.
Diaz’s attorney says that man was Oscar Villafranca, another employee of the taco stand.
According to Rahmani, the lawyer who represented the three women after their car crash, Villafranca and Diaz were romantically involved.
In the November bail hearing, a prosecutor referenced Lopez and Diaz meeting up with “another man” at the warehouse where police believe the killing occurred. But Villafranca isn’t mentioned by name and the surveillance footage described in court did not appear to capture what happened inside the warehouse, according to the hearing transcript. During the hearing, the prosecutor did not say if Yepez was present on the night of the killing.
Investigators believe Lopez died before the car was set on fire, but were unable to determine her exact cause of death or who killed her, because of the extreme fire damage her body suffered, according to the coroner’s report. Her death was ruled a homicide.
Villafranca, a Honduran national, left the U.S. on Sept. 21, two weeks after the killing, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said. Villafranca was first ordered removed from the country by an immigration judge during the Biden administration in August 2024. It was not clear if police were aware of Villafranca’s alleged involvement in the conspiracy to kill Lopez at the time he left the country.
The day after Villafranca departed the country, immigration agents came for Yepez.
She was arrested on Sept. 22, according to a DHS spokesperson, who declined to answer questions about the nature of her arrest.
A high-ranking Los Angeles law enforcement official, who requested anonymity to discuss an active case, said Yepez had already been identified as a “suspect” in the murder conspiracy investigation at the time. The official said this was “not the first time” ICE had intercepted someone who was the target of an LAPD investigation in the past year, making it more difficult for local authorities to investigate and prosecute suspected crimes. The official blamed the confusion on California’s “sanctuary state” law, which limits cooperation between ICE and local police.
The DHS spokesperson would not say if ICE knew of Villafranca or Yepez’s alleged links to Lopez’s death, or comment on agents’ potential interference in a murder conspiracy case.
“Under President Trump and [DHS] Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin, if you break the law, you will face the consequences,” the spokesperson said. “Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”
The district attorney’s office filed conspiracy to commit murder charges against Yepez and Villafranca in April, eight months after Yepez was grabbed by ICE and Villafranca left the U.S. under threat of deportation. Villafranca’s alleged role in Lopez’s killing is unclear.
ICE transferred Yepez back to L.A. County custody on June 2, and she remains jailed in lieu of $2 million as the case proceeds.
Yepez’s attorney said his client will be exonerated.
“We are confident that once all the dust settles that she’s going to be vindicated,” Rodriguez said. “She has the support of her family and the community, and we aim to prove her innocence, and we’re taking every step in that direction as we speak.”
Prosecutors will seek to extradite Villafranca, according to the district attorney’s office spokeswoman, who would not say if prosecutors have any idea where he is.
Lopez’s killing is not the first consequential criminal investigation that ICE’s immigration enforcement blitz has disrupted in Southern California.
Earlier this year, a Times investigation revealed ICE deported an informant who had turned against two of his co-defendants in a meth smuggling case. Without his testimony, federal prosecutors lost at trial. A man facing a lengthy prison sentence for what authorities have called the largest jewel heist in U.S. history was also deported to Ecuador late last year before he could stand trial in Los Angeles.
While Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman has been sparing in criticism of ICE, he previously told The Times those who commit crimes on American soil should face consequences for their actions in L.A. before their immigration situation is sorted out.
“I don’t want anyone deported until I’ve got them sentenced. And if their sentence is jail or state prison, I want them to serve their sentence,” he said in an interview last year. “That is the punishment they receive for committing crimes in my county.”
Mariana Yepez climbed the ranks of the Los Angeles street food scene before building her own taco empire.
A native of Sonora, Mexico, Yepez and her husband toiled at various food trucks and restaurants until 2018, when they launched a series of stands named after their daughter: Ricos Tacos Naomi.
Serving up heaps of fatty cabeza and sizzling al pastor, it grew to nearly a dozen locations spanning from Long Beach to L.A. to the Antelope Valley, drawing praise from prominent food critics.
But now, Yepez sits in jail — accused of plotting to kill one of her employees.
Yepez, 43, and aworkers at Ricos Tacos Naomi are charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the death of Soledad Lopez, who was last seen alive around 2 p.m. on Sept. 7. A second employee faces murder charges.
Video surveillance showed the 47-year-old Lopez leaving work at one of the taco stands with her coworker, Sandra Romo Diaz. The pair then went to a warehouse related to the business, according to a transcript of a November court hearing.
Lopez never emerged from the building. Prosecutors say Diaz was seen leaving and returning to the warehouse with two gas canisters. Diaz, according to prosecutors, then left driving Lopez’s vehicle. Two days later, Los Angeles police found Lopez’s charred body inside the car, according to a medical examiner’s report.
Diaz, 52, suffered burns to her arm and stomach while trying to incinerate the car and was soon charged with Lopez’s murder, according to a court transcript and a criminal complaint.
The grisly killing, authorities now say, was set in motion after Diaz, Lopez and Yepez were involved in a car crash and got into a dispute over money they received from a lawsuit.
Authorities have not spelled out Yepez’s alleged role in the plot, but the intervention of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has complicated efforts to prosecute her and another man allegedly involved in the killing. One defendant in the case was ordered removed by an immigration judge and departed before trial, while Yepez was detained by ICE as the Los Angeles Police Department closed in.
Yepez has pleaded not guilty, and her attorney, Justin Rodriguez, said “she’s done nothing wrong.”
“She’s being put out as the fall guy,” Rodriguez said. “I’m confident she’s going to be exonerated when all this is said and done.”
Diaz’s attorney, Matthew Barhoma, also maintained that his client is innocent — and blamed ICE for letting the people he accused of being the real killers get away with it.
“We are left to defend Sandra against a murder charge while the people we believe actually committed this crime are beyond reach,” he said in an email to The Times. “That is an injustice — not only to Sandra, but to the memory of Soledad Lopez, whose family deserves answers, not a convenient arrest.”
A taco empire, a crash and a $11,500 check
The taco stand where Lopez and Diaz worked together was in some ways the embodiment of the American dream.
Yepez and her husband, who is from Guatemala, got their start working inside one of Roy Choi’s Kogi BBQ trucks, serving up the short rib burritos that became an exemplar of Korean-Mexican fusion in the city.
Ricos Tacos Naomi employees grill meats at one of the stand’s 11 locations around the city.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Building off the success of the original Ricos Tacos Naomi spot in Panorama City, Yepez and her partner found a following despite lacking flair. Two stands visited recently by Times reporters didn’t even have a sign displaying the name of the business. Still, customers have lined up across L.A. County.
“There’s a new street taco stand quickly taking over Los Angeles,” L.A. Taco’s Memo Torres wrote in a 2022 review.
But authorities believe there were tensions between Yepez and her employee who was killed, according to a prosecutor’s statements in court and a police report reviewed by The Times.
After reporting Lopez missing last September, Lopez’s daughter told a detective that Yepez had been mistreating her mother at work, the police report said.
One of Yepez’s relatives then told Lopez’s daughter that her mother “went missing because she had allegedly stolen money from the business,” according to the police report.
The fight over finances allegedly stemmed from a January 2025 car crash. As Yepez drove Diaz and Lopez home from work one night, their vehicle was rear-ended at a red light, according to Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor turned civil attorney who represented the three women in their claim against the motorist who hit them.
All three suffered “soft tissue injuries,” but Yepez refused to see a doctor so Rahmani said he had to drop her case. Lopez received a settlement check for approximately $11,500, according to Rahmani, while Diaz got about $10,000.
A month before she went missing, Lopez’s daughter said her mother gave Yepez her insurance check and asked her to cash it, according to the police report reviewed by The Times.
Rahmani said the funds earmarked for Lopez were deposited into a Chase bank account on Aug. 28. The check was endorsed by Yepez, according to Rahmani. Lopez, however, was “never paid the funds,” the police report said.
Yepez’s lawyer denied any wrongdoing by his client.
“Everything I’ve seen tends to show her innocence and her lack of involvement in any of the allegations,” Rodriguez said.
Police asked prosecutors in September to immediately charge Yepez in connection with Lopez’s killing, but the L.A. County district attorney’s office initially sent the case back for further investigation, according to an agency spokeswoman.
But while police continued to piece together the case, Yepez was detained by federal immigration agents. And she wasn’t the only suspect in the case to be pulled out of the LAPD’s reach by immigration enforcement.
An order of removal and a ‘suspect’ detained by ICE
The surveillance footage that captured Lopez and Diaz entering the warehouse used by Ricos Tacos Naomi also showed a third person accompanying them, according to the transcript of the November court hearing, in which prosecutors fought a defense effort to lower Diaz’s bail.
Diaz’s attorney says that man was Oscar Villafranca, another employee of the taco stand.
According to Rahmani, the lawyer who represented the three women after their car crash, Villafranca and Diaz were romantically involved.
In the November bail hearing, a prosecutor referenced Lopez and Diaz meeting up with “another man” at the warehouse where police believe the killing occurred. But Villafranca isn’t mentioned by name and the surveillance footage described in court did not appear to capture what happened inside the warehouse, according to the hearing transcript. During the hearing, the prosecutor did not say if Yepez was present on the night of the killing.
Investigators believe Lopez died before the car was set on fire, but were unable to determine her exact cause of death or who killed her, because of the extreme fire damage her body suffered, according to the coroner’s report. Her death was ruled a homicide.
Villafranca, a Honduran national, left the U.S. on Sept. 21, two weeks after the killing, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said. Villafranca was first ordered removed from the country by an immigration judge during the Biden administration in August 2024. It was not clear if police were aware of Villafranca’s alleged involvement in the conspiracy to kill Lopez at the time he left the country.
The day after Villafranca departed the country, immigration agents came for Yepez.
She was arrested on Sept. 22, according to a DHS spokesperson, who declined to answer questions about the nature of her arrest.
A high-ranking Los Angeles law enforcement official, who requested anonymity to discuss an active case, said Yepez had already been identified as a “suspect” in the murder conspiracy investigation at the time. The official said this was “not the first time” ICE had intercepted someone who was the target of an LAPD investigation in the past year, making it more difficult for local authorities to investigate and prosecute suspected crimes. The official blamed the confusion on California’s “sanctuary state” law, which limits cooperation between ICE and local police.
The DHS spokesperson would not say if ICE knew of Villafranca or Yepez’s alleged links to Lopez’s death, or comment on agents’ potential interference in a murder conspiracy case.
“Under President Trump and [DHS] Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin, if you break the law, you will face the consequences,” the spokesperson said. “Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”
The district attorney’s office filed conspiracy to commit murder charges against Yepez and Villafranca in April, eight months after Yepez was grabbed by ICE and Villafranca left the U.S. under threat of deportation. Villafranca’s alleged role in Lopez’s killing is unclear.
ICE transferred Yepez back to L.A. County custody on June 2, and she remains jailed in lieu of $2 million as the case proceeds.
Yepez’s attorney said his client will be exonerated.
“We are confident that once all the dust settles that she’s going to be vindicated,” Rodriguez said. “She has the support of her family and the community, and we aim to prove her innocence, and we’re taking every step in that direction as we speak.”
Prosecutors will seek to extradite Villafranca, according to the district attorney’s office spokeswoman, who would not say if prosecutors have any idea where he is.
Lopez’s killing is not the first consequential criminal investigation that ICE’s immigration enforcement blitz has disrupted in Southern California.
Earlier this year, a Times investigation revealed ICE deported an informant who had turned against two of his co-defendants in a meth smuggling case. Without his testimony, federal prosecutors lost at trial. A man facing a lengthy prison sentence for what authorities have called the largest jewel heist in U.S. history was also deported to Ecuador late last year before he could stand trial in Los Angeles.
While Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman has been sparing in criticism of ICE, he previously told The Times those who commit crimes on American soil should face consequences for their actions in L.A. before their immigration situation is sorted out.
“I don’t want anyone deported until I’ve got them sentenced. And if their sentence is jail or state prison, I want them to serve their sentence,” he said in an interview last year. “That is the punishment they receive for committing crimes in my county.”
