Sheriff Warns of QR Code Scam in Nancy Guthrie Case

By now you've probably seen Nancy Guthrie's name pop up on your phone. She's the 84-year-old mother of "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie, and she vanished from her home outside Tucson, Arizona, back in the winter. Five months have gone by. Nobody has been arrested. And every few weeks, something new comes out that makes the whole thing harder to explain.

The recent updates are a pile of contradictions. The FBI can't seem to agree with itself. A California man pleaded guilty to messing with the family. Scammers are now using the case to pull money out of strangers online. And a well-known legal reporter dropped a claim that has other investigators shaking their heads. Here's where things actually stand, based on the public record.

The night she disappeared

Nancy Ellen Guthrie was born in Kentucky in 1942 and moved to the Tucson area in the early 1970s. She had lived there for more than fifty years. On the night of January 31 into February 1, she was taken from her home in the Catalina Foothills. She left without her phone and without medications she relied on, which tells you she didn't walk out on her own.

There is video. An armed, masked person tampered with the doorbell camera at her house. Deputies later found blood on her porch, and it was confirmed to be Nancy's. Google was asked to help pull footage from her home cameras. Investigators canvassed homes, businesses, and government buildings for surveillance video, then reviewed thousands of hours of it frame by frame, according to a detailed timeline of the search. Because Tucson sits so close to the border, both U.S. and Mexican officials were told to watch for clues.

Early on, black gloves turned up about two miles from her home. Everyone thought that might be the break. Then the DNA on them came back matching a local restaurant worker who, the Pima County Sheriff's Department said, is not part of this investigation. So that lead went nowhere.

The ransom notes nobody can agree on

This is where the case gets slippery. Purported ransom notes started showing up demanding millions of dollars. One note, reportedly sent February 6, claimed Nancy had died shortly after being taken. Law enforcement asked that the note be kept quiet, and it didn't become public until June 22. A second note sent to media outlets that same month again said she had died.

Then the FBI tangled itself up in public. Reuters reported that an FBI official said none of the ransom notes were believed to be genuine. But the agency's official statement pushed back on that, saying some demands "may potentially be legitimate" and were still being looked at. The FBI wouldn't say how many notes it had received, only "several." Criminologist Casey Jordan said the bureau was hedging its bets. The one thing the FBI kept repeating: this is still being worked as a kidnapping for ransom.

The California man who faked ransom texts

One of the odder characters in all this is Derrick Anthony Callella. The FBI arrested him for sending phony ransom messages to Nancy's family, and he pleaded guilty to two counts of harassment using a telecommunications device.

Here is the part that is tough to wrap your head around. Callella told investigators he got the family's contact information off a website while he was watching TV coverage of the case. He said he just wanted to see if the family would write back. A federal judge ordered him into inpatient substance abuse treatment while he waits to be sentenced on September 10. He faces up to two years in prison on each count and fines of up to $250,000 per count. Investigators have been clear that Callella was not behind the earlier ransom demand sent to local media. That one is still open.

Now there is a QR code scam

In July, the Pima County Sheriff's Department had to stop and issue a public warning about a scam riding on the case. Fake social media posts started showing up with QR codes attached, asking people to send money that would supposedly go toward the investigation. It did not.

The department was blunt about it. "PCSD will never ask for money related to this case, or any investigation," it said. Officials told people not to scan QR codes requesting payment and to report the posts instead of engaging with them. If a stranger online is asking you to fund a police investigation, that is your sign to close the app.

A TV legend's claim about planted evidence

On July 4, TMZ founder Harvey Levin said something on his podcast that spread fast. Levin has a law degree from the University of Chicago and practiced as an attorney in California before he became a legal reporter, so people tend to listen when he talks about a case. About twenty minutes into the episode, he said an FBI insider had once told him the agency suspected a member of the media may have planted evidence early in the case.

That is a heavy thing to put out there. Nobody was ever charged with planting evidence, which suggests investigators never had strong proof it actually happened. Former FBI agent Jennifer Coffindaffer called Levin's remarks troublesome commentary. She said she was relieved the FBI had publicly called it a kidnapping for ransom, because at least that label helped quiet some of the speculation swirling around the case.

The blood on the porch

Retired FBI agent Steve Moore gave maybe the bluntest read of the whole situation. He thinks the FBI's back-and-forth on the ransom label points to real disagreement inside the bureau, right down to the validity of certain pieces of evidence. He noted that opinions can split between field offices and headquarters, and between the agents working the case and the managers above them.

Moore pointed to the bloodstains on Nancy's porch, confirmed to be hers, and the fact that multiple ransom deadlines came and went with no money changing hands. His read: there is a strong chance Nancy did not survive long enough for a real ransom note to ever be written. As he put it, a kidnapper's main reason to stop chasing a payment is when the victim is already gone. You can read his full assessment here. Even so, he said, the FBI still believes it remains a kidnapping regardless of whether the real takers ever sent a note.

Where it stands now

More than five months in, no suspects have been named and no arrests have been made in the actual kidnapping. Along the way, deputies ran a court-authorized search in Rio Rico, Arizona, and detained a man before letting him go. In June, volunteers combed an area after an anonymous tip claimed Nancy had been buried in Mexico. Nothing came of it.

The combined reward for information now stands at $1.2 million. The family offered $1 million on February 24, the FBI put up $100,000, and a local Crime Stoppers affiliate offered up to $102,500, most of that from a single private donor. The FBI is still waiting on DNA evidence, which a forensics expert who worked the Idaho student murders case said could be the thing that finally breaks it open.

Savannah Guthrie stepped away from her broadcasting duties at first, including coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics, then returned to "Today" in April. "I don't know how to come back, but I don't know how not to," she said. The set was filled with yellow flowers, matching the tribute that kept growing outside her mother's home. Anyone with information can call the Pima County Sheriff's Department at 520-351-4900 or the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI. Five months of leads, false notes, and online scams later, the one question that started it all is still unanswered: where is Nancy Guthrie?