How a Fraudster Used a Tesla App and a Fake Job Contract to Trap His Wife

Key points

• Enrico Pucci was convicted of 30 domestic violence-related offences in Australia and sentenced to two years in prison in September 2026.
• Pucci used a Tesla app to remotely slow Ergashova's car, lock her out of climate controls, and disable charging as tools of surveillance and control.
• He forged an employment contract offering a salary of nearly $250,000 to trick Ergashova into turning down real work and handing over $100,000 in savings.
• Pucci is among the first people in Australia to be jailed under coercive control laws, a new criminal offence introduced in July 2024.
• A separate woman, known online as Lady Whistleblow, is still owed $490,000 that a court ordered Pucci to repay in 2021.

Narghiza Ergashova thought her partner was saving her. By the time she understood what he had actually done, he had taken her job, her savings, her car controls, and years of her life.

Enrico Pucci, an Australian businessman with a trail of failed companies behind him, was sentenced last week to two years in prison after pleading guilty to 30 domestic violence-related offences. With time already served, he will be eligible for parole in February 2027. He is appealing the sentence.

How did this abuse actually work?

Pucci used a mix of physical violence and technological control that most people would not immediately recognise as abuse. He logged into Ergashova's Tesla app, which is the smartphone software that connects to a Tesla electric car and lets an owner adjust settings remotely, and used it to slow her vehicle to 40 kilometres per hour on main roads, manipulate the heating and air conditioning, and cut off the car's charging. He also stole her smartwatch to track her location and installed parental controls, the kind normally used to restrict a child's device, to lock her out of her own car's app.

At the same time, he made repeated anonymous calls and emails to her employer until she was dismissed. He then presented her with a forged consulting contract promising a salary of nearly a quarter of a million dollars, set up fake email addresses to make the job feel real, and watched while she turned down genuine accountancy work waiting for a paycheque that never came. Shortly after, he asked her for $100,000, promised to return it within a week, and she transferred her life savings.

"Unemployed at home, surveilled through my car, through my watch, from my computer," Ergashova said. "I was completely vulnerable."

What did the court say?

Judge Stuart Devine described Pucci's behaviour as "sustained and deliberate", saying he used repeated surveillance and economic manipulation to entrench power and compliance over Ergashova. Pucci also strangled her twice, once until she lost consciousness, broke her finger, sent her written death threats, and made anonymous reports to police suggesting she had attacked him, which kept her too afraid to seek help.

He is one of the first people in Australia to serve prison time specifically for coercive control, a pattern of behaviour designed to dominate a partner that became a criminal offence in July 2024.

Pucci also defrauded a second woman, known publicly as Lady Whistleblow, out of $490,000 while simultaneously engaged to her, married, and in a relationship with Ergashova. A court ordered repayment in 2021. He declared bankruptcy. She has not been paid.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the government body that regulates companies, found Pucci had engaged in illegal phoenixing, which is a scheme where a director deliberately collapses a company to escape its debts and then starts a new one, across three failed firms. He is banned from managing companies for five years.

Should people in similar situations watch for anything specific?

Yes. The pattern here is recognisable even if the tools change. First reporting by The Age noted Ergashova only understood the full scale of what had happened when she read the evidence gathered for the coercive control charge.

If a partner controls access to your finances, car, phone, or workplace, that is abuse, not helpfulness. If you are in Australia, the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service is reachable at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732). The Men's Referral Service is on 1300 766 491.

Ergashova has since moved interstate and returned to accounting. "I'm back in my power," she said.

The failure mode here is not that the technology was exotic. It is that surveillance tools built into ordinary products, a car app, a smartwatch, a parental control menu, require no technical skill to weaponise. Any connected device a partner controls is a potential leash.