Unbelievable: Guthrie Ransom Hoax Scammer Won’t Spend a Day Behind Bars | Derrick Callella

Just days after Nancy Guthrie vanished, a fake Bitcoin ransom scammer tried to exploit her family’s worst nightmare. Five months later, on July 2, Derrick Callella, a 42-year-old man from Hawthorne, California, pleaded guilty after prosecutors said he sent Bitcoin-related ransom messages to Nancy Guthrie’s family after she vanished and after an earlier ransom demand had already been made. Derrick Callella is expected to receive 5 years probation, not prison, when he is sentenced on Sept. 10.

In this episode of Drop Dead Serious, Ashleigh Banfield is joined by former homicide prosecutor Matt Murphy, author of The Book of Murder and host of the podcast In The Well on MK True Crime, to discuss whether this punishment fits the crime and what the case could mean for scammers who target grieving families during active criminal investigations.