The latest crime thriller gripping New York is the alleged kidnapping of a wealthy Italian man whose captors attempted to torture the crypto millionaire into giving up his bitcoin password.
It began amid the backdrop of wild parties, immortalised in pop culture through films like “The Wolf of Wall Street,” in a posh Manhattan nightclub where the nouveau riche and flashy Wall Street bros congregate.
It ended on the morning of May 23, when a man ran to a police officer near Mulberry and Prince streets in the Soho district of Manhattan
The barefoot man claimed he had just escaped a luxurious apartment where he was held captive for 17 days after entering the United States.
Police arrived at the scene and arrested John Woeltz, 37, dubbed “the crypto king of Kentucky” by tabloids, who is facing charges of kidnapping, criminal possession of weapons, assault and unlawful imprisonment.
Woeltz’s 24-year-old assistant was also detained but does not face the same charges.
A second man, William Duplessie, 33, who is the founder of the startup Pangea Blockchain International, turned himself in on Tuesday and was charged similarly to Woeltz.
Duplessie, who originally hails from Miami, appeared in court Friday wearing a jail uniform.
– Philosophy degree –
According to details reported by local media, the presumed victim is Italian cryptocurrency entrepreneur Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan, who visited John Woeltz’s rented home — which goes for $30,000 a month — upon arriving from Italy on May 6.
Once there, Woeltz and Duplessie confiscated his electronic devices and passport, and demanded the access code to his bitcoin assets, police said.
After his refusal, the two men allegedly tortured Carturan, striking him with a rifle, pointing the weapon in his face and taking him to the building’s fifth floor, where they threatened to throw him out the window, local media reported.
“He’s a 37-year-old man with no prior criminal record. He’s a college graduate with a degree in philosophy. He has been very successful in the technology world,” Woeltz’s lawyer Wayne Ervin Gosnell said during a court hearing Thursday.
The defence requested Woeltz’s conditional release in the state of New York in exchange for a $2 million bond.
Gosnell also noted that it has been said Woeltz “owns a private jet, he owns a helicopter. That is not true.”
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– Lavish lifestyle –
Though Woeltz has neither a jet nor a helicopter, he leads an exceedingly lavish lifestyle, according to the New York Post and TMZ, which published racy images of the suspects partying at The Box, a New York nightclub.
The Post also mentioned frequent parties at the Soho apartment, which is the scene of the alleged kidnapping.
In recent months, cases of kidnappings or attempted abductions in the cryptocurrency world have multiplied globally as bitcoin, the most capitalised cryptocurrency, has grown to historical peaks.
For Adam Healy, CEO of Station70, a firm specialising in crypto protection, these crimes are not new — he worked on a case years ago when an American travelling to Egypt was kidnapped for his crypto assets.
“I think that the frequency and the ruthlessness are increasing,” Healy said.
In the last six to eight months, he has seen “a significant uptick in those that are known to hold crypto or executives at crypto firms, things along those lines, getting targeted by a wide range of different criminals.”
Healy attributed part of the uptick in crime to the rising price of bitcoin.
“It’s a bigger target,” he said, and they are boosted by the ease with which massive payloads can be transferred with no oversight — as long as the crypto user can log in.
“Historically, if you wanted to kidnap something that was high net worth and they had, I don’t know, ten million dollars in their JP Morgan account, it was kind of hard to get to,” Healy said.
“You couldn’t just go to the bank and get a million dollars out.” AFP
