Calls made by David Anthony Di Rienzo’s network of fraudsters to elderly people in the U.S. were important to him. So much so they were recorded for quality assurance.
Much like the corporations that greet customers with similar messages before putting them on hold for what often seems like an eternity, Di Rienzo insisted that the scammers who worked for him in the Montreal area record their calls to potential victims, during which they pretended to be grandchildren needing money fast to get out of trouble.
Di Rienzo 32, of Laval, was one of six men who pleaded guilty on Thursday at the Montreal courthouse to playing varying roles in a grandparent fraud scheme that operated between 2019 and 2021 and bilked 20 elderly Americans out of more than US$316,000.
In court, Di Rienzo was described as the network’s leader and a 16-page summary of facts deposited into evidence by prosecutor Erik Cookson-Montin describes Di Rienzo as a controlling micromanager who told the people making the calls to record them in case someone in the U.S. was ever arrested while collecting money from a victim.
Fraudsters who wanted to be part of Di Rienzo’s network had to pay for the lists of potential victims they would call.
“To leave this organization, a member had to pay. One member called ‘Butters’ was told it would cost $50,000,” the Crown wrote in the joint statement of facts summarizing the Sûreté du Québec’s investigation, dubbed Partenariat.
Following Di Rienzo’s guilty plea to four charges, including gangsterism, he was ordered to pay $88,877 in restitution to the victims. It is, by far, the most among the six other men who had a hearing on Thursday. In all, seven men have been ordered to pay $190,195 back to the victims.
The other man who had a court hearing on Thursday, Joshua Sarroino, 31, entered a no-contest plea to the charges against him. This is, in part, because Sarroino is currently detained and awaiting a second trial for a homicide carried out in Brossard in 2019. He was acquitted in his first trial, but the Quebec Court of Appeal ordered a new trial this year.
The Crown alleges Sarroino was the manager of one of Di Rienzo’s so-called boiler rooms. Sarroino’s was based out of an apartment in Laval where he lived during the investigation. During the time the network was being investigated, Sarroino’s boiler room was the busiest. The scammers working under him requested US$594,500 from potential victims.
While using coded language intended to throw off investigators, Di Rienzo referred to the people working under him as “my kids.” His employees would refer to him as Bud or Buddy.
The joint statement of facts describes a dark scenario where, behind those friendly sounding terms, Di Rienzo was a controlling boss and walked around with a firearm.
“The scammers were instructed to record their own calls, to have proof that they executed the fraud properly in case of problems. These recordings were necessary in case of arrests of the recuperation teams, so that the Canadians could prove that the arrests were not due to their poor work,” the prosecution says in the court document.
“When a problem arose, the recordings were given to Di Rienzo, so he could decide who was to blame.
“When the Americans in charge of the recuperation of the packages of money were angry with the arrest of some of their members of a recuperation team, it was Di Rienzo who dealt with the conflict. He insisted a copy of the call to the victim be handed to him to decide who was at fault.”
The SQ investigation turned up one case where Di Rienzo fined one of his scammers, Paul Létourneau, 28, of St-Léonard, $10,000 because an American was arrested while collecting money from one of Létourneau’s victims.
“To execute the implemented fraud scheme, Di Rienzo also acted as the link between the American participants and the transfer of the fraud proceeds back to Canada. Starting in 2018, on numerous occasions, Di Rienzo and his organization laundered the proceeds of crime (funds illegally obtained from American victims) and repatriated property obtained through crime through jewellers based in New York City and Montreal,” such as a St-Laurent businessman who was not charged in the investigation, the Crown wrote.
“The evidence reveals that Di Rienzo had a minimum of three fraud cells working for him. He would decide which days the scammers should take off, usually aligning with American holidays when banks were closed,” the court document adds.
“During the span of the investigation, most of the accused drove multiple luxury cars, lived in fancy apartments or condos, and were seen going to expensive restaurants on a continuous basis.”
All of the people recruited into the network had to be approved by Di Rienzo.
He also demanded control over the people who were gathering money from victims in the U.S. The Americans who picked up the money were ordered to film themselves opening the packages to show Di Rienzo that they weren’t stealing money.
When Di Rienzo was arrested, a video was found on his phone of a person opening a package of money sent in the name of an 85-year-old victim. The person continued to be scammed after the package was sent. On Thursday, Di Rienzo and the other scammers were ordered to return US$18,500 to that victim.
The callers worked from lists of potential victims that included their full name, address, phone number, date of birth and revenue bracket. The people targeted were between 70 and 95 years old. Often, the first request was for $9,000. The caller pretended to be the victim’s grandchild and claimed they needed money for bail.
“The scammer would exploit the stress caused by the fabricated urgency of the situation. The elderly grandparent would feel the need to help their loved one in difficulty. The urgency would prevent the elderly victim from thinking about the situation. The scammer would also make the victim swear not to tell anyone else about the situation, citing shame as well as legal non-disclosure agreements. This was done to minimize the risk of the victim catching on to the scam.”
“The victim was instructed to withdraw money at the bank if they did not have the cash at home. They were also told to lie about the reason for the withdrawal.”
The case against Di Rienzo and four of the other scammers enters the sentencing stage in January. On Thursday, Steven Petruzziello, 32, a man who acted as Di Rienzo’s chauffeur and distributed pay to the callers, received a sentence he can serve in the community.
