{"id":384196,"date":"2026-07-02T22:17:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T22:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/384196\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T22:17:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T22:17:09","slug":"california-man-pleads-guilty-to-faking-nancy-guthrie-ransom-note-us-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/384196\/","title":{"rendered":"California man pleads guilty to faking Nancy Guthrie ransom note | US crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

A California man is facing up to two years in prison or a $250,000 fine after pleading guilty to sending Nancy Guthrie\u2019s family a phoney ransom note, federal authorities announced<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of the Today Show host Savannah Guthrie, was last seen on 31 January at her residence outside Tucson, Arizona<\/a>. Inside the home, authorities observed her cellphone, medication and other basic essentials. Law enforcement officers also found drops of her blood near the porch.<\/p>\n

After KOLD, a CBS affiliate in Tucson, reported<\/a> that it had received a ransom demand with a bitcoin wallet address, the Guthrie family posted a video on 4 February, imploring Nancy\u2019s abductors to contact them.<\/p>\n

Derrick Callella, a 42-year-old resident of Hawthorne, a neighborhood in the greater Los Angeles area, had followed details of Guthrie\u2019s disappearance on TV, according to a February complaint filed with the Arizona district court.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the family\u2019s public plea, Callella obtained the numbers of Nancy\u2019s daughter, Annie Guthrie, and her son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni, and sent each a text: \u201cDid you get the bitcoin were waiting on our end for the transaction,\u201d per court documents.<\/p>\n

Law enforcement officials tracked down an email address with Callella\u2019s name that was registered to the number behind the texts.<\/p>\n

The text messages are unrelated to the ransom demand that KOLD received. According to federal authorities, Callella was seeking to gain information about the investigation.<\/p>\n

The FBI continues to investigate extortion notes that may be legitimate related to Guthrie\u2019s disappearance, the agency announced on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Callella is scheduled to be sentenced on 10 September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A California man is facing up to two years in prison or a $250,000 fine after pleading guilty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-384196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}