A man charged with being part of a multimillion-dollar scheme on Amazon that collected more than $15 million from consumers threatened to harm himself in his Plymouth home, prompting a face-to-face encounter with police during a standoff that ended peacefully several hours later, authorities said Monday.
Matthew Tieva, 43, brought police from several agencies to his home starting shortly before 7 p.m. Sunday after he threatened suicide, Plymouth police said. He was found nearby at about 10:45 a.m. Monday and was taken to North Memorial Medical Center for observation, according to emergency dispatch audio.
Matthew and Jessie Conners Tieva, along with their company Sellers Playbook, were named in a recent complaint filed in federal court by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Minnesota Attorney General's Office.
The Tievas promoted a business model for merchandising products on Amazon.com's third-party sales platform. Sellers Playbook made "false and unsubstantiated" claims, including that its customers could make $20,000 a month and a potential net profit of $1.29 million by selling on Amazon, the charges said.
Few if any of Sellers Playbook's customers achieved such results, and the defendants had no basis for making such profit claims, according to the complaint filed in federal court in Minneapolis.
In 2004, Jessie Tieva was a contestant during the inaugural season of Donald Trump's "The Apprentice" show on NBC. She was 21 when she auditioned for the show as one of 215,000 applicants.
The turmoil in the family's home in the 5200 block of Black Oaks Lane began at about 6:50 p.m. Sunday, when Jessie Tieva called her father and said her husband had been drinking and talking about suicide, the emergency audio revealed.
Matthew Tieva got a gun and locked himself in a room, the audio continued.