California man accused of sending phony ransom texts to Savannah Guthrie’s family about her missing mother has been arrested and charged, according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday.
Derrick Callella, who is in his mid-forties, messaged Guthrie’s daughter, Annie, and son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni about the ailing 84-year-old on Wednesday, according to the complaint filed in Arizona federal court.
“Did you get the bitcoin were [sic] waiting on our end for the transaction,” his message, sent to both Annie and Cioni, allegedly read.
Approximately three minutes after sending the texts, data obtained by authorities showed Callella also made a nine-second-long call to an unidentified family member of Nancy Guthrie, according to the court docs, which didn’t name the relative he allegedly called.
Someone with Callella’s same name and birth year was charged with stealing almost $10,000 in unemployment benefits between May 6, 2020, and Jan. 20, 2022, while serving as a case department of health services intermediate clerk in the county.
That person was one of 13 LA County employees who were charged with felony grand theft for stealing a combined $437,383 in state unemployment benefits between 2020 and 2023, according to a Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office news release from October.
The timeline of the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mom:
The status of that case wasn’t immediately clear.
Callella’s alleged sick messages to Guthrie relatives came soon after the “Today” co-host and her siblings released an emotional video pleading for their mother’s possible abductors to send a proof of life, the complaint said.
The relatives reported the chilling messages to police, who tracked the number to Callella’s residence in California, the court docs state.
Here’s the latest on Savannah Guthrie’s missing mom
There, Callella confessed to officers that he had been following along with the case on TV and he sent the two text messages after pulling the Guthries’ contact information from a website.
“He said … he was trying to see if the family would respond,” the complaint said.
Callella’s charges include two counts of transmitting communication containing a demand or request for ransom in exchange for the release of a kidnapped person, the docs state.
His messages have not been connected to the alleged ransom note sent to an Arizona news outlet on Feb. 2, which listed millions of dollars in bitcoin in exchange for Nancy’s safe return, according to the complaint.
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