David Di Rienzo: This Montrealer Just Got Busted for Scamming U.S. Grandparents Outta Mad Bread 💀

The Deets

Okay, so listen up. This guy, David Anthony Di Rienzo, was running a whole operation from Montreal. From 2019 to 2021 he was running a scam where the team were calling up elderly Americans, pretending to be their grandkids, and saying they were in a major pickle and needed bread ASAP.

And it wasn't just a couple of bucks, either. They scammed about 20 grandparents out of over $316,000 USD. Like, that's wild, right? They were straight-up playing on these poor folks' heartstrings.

Here's how it went down: These scammers had lists with all the deets on potential victims – names, addresses, numbers, even how much they probably made. They'd call, put on a whole act, and tell the grandparents to withdraw cash and lie about why they needed it. Shady AF. Di Rienzo was lowkey micromanaging everything – telling them to record calls for "quality control" and straight-up controlling the whole operation. Big yikes.

The scammers even had to pay for these lists of potential victims, and Di Rienzo pocketed a lot of the cash. He's been ordered to pay back almost $90,000, and the whole crew owes the victims almost $200,000 in total. Some other dude named Joshua Sarroino was allegedly managing a "boiler room" for the scam. Di Rienzo even laundered money through jewelers in NYC and Montreal. Sketchy, right?

Now, they're all heading to sentencing. Another guy, Steven Petruzziello, who was driving people and handing out the cash, got community service. This whole situation is just messed up, tbh.