On May 31st, Nancy Nápoles and her sister were the victims of a kidnapping right in front of the mayor’s house in Tenancingo, Mexico. Three armed men forced Nápoles into their vehicle right as she was walking toward her house. Luckily, eye-witnesses quickly alerted the police, and patrol cars started scouring the area in search of the mayor.

Nancy Nápoles was quickly found on a deserted road after she asked passers-by to call her husband, but this was not the end of the story, but rather the beginning of a nationwide scandal involving embezzled municipal funds, political intrigue and fake-kidnapping allegations.

Mexican investigators spent the last three months searching for the three kidnappers and trying to figure out how they pulled off their daring plan. After questioning the victim, her family, and the kidnappers, who were eventually captured by police, investigators started noticing a number of inconsistencies.

Nápoles herself told police that the kidnappers threatened to kill her and her family if she didn’t cooperate. She claimed that they asked her to pay “40 million pesos in exchange for her freedom” and even advised her to “take it from the city council’s resources,” if she didn’t have the money. She added that she took advantage of her captors’ carelessness to escape.

That was an unusual piece of advice from the kidnappers, but investigators soon learned that the mayor’s husband and brother were the ones who contacted the kidnappers and paid them to stage her abduction. Their alleged plan was to “pay” the 40 million pesos ($2.3 million) ransom from municipal funds to cover up an embezzlement scheme that Nápoles herself had allegedly orchestrated.

The kidnappers’ testimonies make up the main arguments of the prosecution in this case, but they are backed up by other cold, hard facts. The mayor’s husband and her brother had allegedly been in contact with the kidnappers around 150 times before Nápoles’ abduction, and they are now missing and presumed fugitives. During one of these phone calls, Nápoles’ husband offers the kidnappers $28,000 to pull off the job.

Nancy Nápoles continues to deny any wrongdoing and insists that this is all part of a conspiracy to ruin her political career. She was summoned to testify in this controversial case on July 9th, but no charges have been brought against her yet.

“I categorically deny it,” Nápoles recently told reporters. “There is no such thing, as the municipality is financially sound.”

If found guilty, Nápoles and her accomplices risk spending up to 16 years behind bars.