Alejandra Arriaza, 39, of Miami, faces a federal kidnapping charge along with her boyfriend, Angel Ponce, 37, and his nephew, Joel Boza, 29.

A criminal complaint says Arriaza hatched the scheme to get money from her ex-husband. She took her
17-year-old son to a South Florida Wal-Mart Thursday to buy an iPhone and left the door to her white Honda Civic unlocked, allowing a masked Ponce to slip into the back seat with a fake handgun and thick tape. After Arriaza and her son returned to the car, Ponce sat up, announced the kidnapping and covered the teenager's eyes with the tape.

He ordered Arriaza to drive to Ponce's trailer in the 1600 block of Southwest 127th Court in Miami, where the boy was tied to a chair with shrink wrap and tape. ''His head was wrapped in thick tape from the top of his head down to the tip of his nose,'' the complaint states.

The bound child was then placed inside a closet overnight. At one point a blow torch was placed close enough to the phone so the father could hear it. Finally, Boza placed the lit blow torch near the boy's leg, just close enough to burn the hair off.

Finally, on Friday evening, investigators tracked the location of the trailer and rescued the boy and, presumably, his mother.

Ponce was arrested first and quickly revealed that Arriaza was in on the whole abduction, but the son was not. Arriaza later corroborated his account, according to the complaint.