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The FBI on Wednesday denied a report that it has ruled out all Nancy Guthrie ransom notes — but acknowledged that many of them turned out to be dead-ends.
“The FBI and its task force partners have received several ransom notes over the course of this investigation. Some have been deemed to be extortion attempts without legitimacy,” the FBI’s Phoenix field office said.
“Other ransom demands may potentially be legitimate and are still being investigated as such.”
Reuters reported on Tuesday that the emails — which demanded cash for the body of the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie — had been determined to be illegitimate.
The Reuters story referred to an unfinished internal document and the legitimacy of some of the messages is still being investigated, law enforcement sources confirmed to The Post Wednesday.
Numerous ransom notes were sent to TV stations, TMZ and the Guthrie family in the days after Nancy’s disappearance Jan. 31 — most were immediately ruled out, but two or three that made specific claims what what the grandmother was wearing and about her house were thought to possibly be legitimate.
The first ransom demanded $4 million deposited into a Bitcoin wallet in exchange for her safe return, and a follow-up claimed Guthrie had died but the family could still pay for her remains.
A third, more recent email claimed to know the identities of the kidnappers.
But while the agency has questioned the veracity of the letters for months, it hasn’t reached a final conclusion on whether or not they’re bogus, The Post’s source said.
FBI director Kash Patel declined to comment when asked about the matter during a Wednesday press conference.
“I’m not going to comment on that. We are continuing to assist that investigation. We’ve always been in an assist role. It’s a state matter being led by the state authorities,” Patel told reporters.
The ransom letters — among more than a dozen sent to law enforcement and media after the kidnapping — received special attention because they correctly identified details that hadn’t been revealed to the public, including a broken security light on Guthrie’s house and the Apple Watch she had been wearing.
Investigators sent a small transaction to the sender’s Bitcoin wallet to determine its credibility.
But the wallet showed no further activity and the letter-writers didn’t acknowledge receipt, casting doubt on whether the would-be kidnappers actually had Guthrie and were willing to make a trade.
Furthermore, a suspect caught trying and failing to disable Guthrie’s doorbell camera on the morning of her disappearance seemed to be a bumbling amateur, not the sort of person who would engineer a sophisticated crypto ransom scheme — at least, not without help.
And anyone smart enough to pull off a Bitcoin ransom would be smart enough not to attempt a celebrity kidnapping in the first place, attorney Todd Spodek, who specializes in cyber crime.
“An actual, sophisticated operation wouldn’t have gotten involved in a kidnapping conspiracy-turned-homicide. That alone says it’s rookie s–t,” Spodek, who represents alleged $16 million fraudster Ronald Spektor, told The Post.
Meanwhile, the task force is still trying to track the ransom notes’ authors by following the chain of proxy servers that the sender, or senders, used to protect their identities.
Authorities also detained and released several persons of interest, canvassed Tucson-area gun stores, and analyzed potential DNA evidence — all to no avail as the investigation enters its fifth month.
English (US)