Last October, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced the arrests of more than a dozen county employees involved in a sprawling overtime theft case. Among the names listed for allegedly stealing roughly $10,000 in overtime he didn’t earn was Derrick Callella.
On Thursday, Callella was hit with new federal charges connected to what the FBI called an “imposter” ransom scam after he reached out to the family members of missing grandmother Nancy Guthrie, the mother of “Today” show host Savanah Guthrie.
Callella, according to a criminal complaint, first sent a text message to Annie Guthrie, Savannah’s sister, and her husband Tommaso Cioni that read: “Did you get the bitcoin were [sic] waiting on our end for the transaction.” Approximately three minutes after sending the texts, cellphone 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…