A second crypto investor is charged with kidnapping and torturing a man in a posh NYC apartment

New York police officers arrest John Woeltz, Friday, May 23, 2025, in New York, who was charged with kidnapping, assaulting and holding a man against his will for several weeks in an upscale Manhattan town house.(AP Photo/Kava Gorna via AP)

NEW YORK — A second cryptocurrency investor surrendered to police Tuesday in the alleged kidnapping of a man who said he was tortured for weeks inside an upscale Manhattan townhouse by captors seeking the password to his Bitcoin account.

William Duplessie, 32, faces charges of kidnapping, assault, unlawful imprisonment and criminal possession of a weapon, according to police.

His arrest comes four days after the alleged victim -- a 28-year-old Italian national -- escaped, bloodied and barefoot, from a lavish townhouse where he said he had been severely beaten, drugged, shocked with electrical wires and threatened with death for nearly three weeks.

On Friday morning, shortly after the man’s escape, the crypto investor John Woeltz, 37, was taken into custody and charged in the alleged kidnapping scheme.

Attorneys for Duplessie and Woeltz declined requests for comment.

The episode comes amid a spike in crypto theft, including a recent wave of violence directed at wealthy holders of digital currency.

Both Duplessie and Woeltz appear to be entrepreneurs focused on cryptocurrency. In online profiles, Duplessie is listed as the co-founder and head of sourcing at Pangea Blockchain Fund and an investor in other blockchain-based companies. An email seeking comment was sent to Pangea.

Woeltz has described himself in interviews as a blockchain investor who spent time in Silicon Valley before becoming involved in Kentucky’s burgeoning crypto-mining industry.

Authorities said Duplessie and Woeltz lured the victim into an eight-bedroom townhouse in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood, one of the most expensive in the city, on May 6 to steal his Bitcoin fortune.

Over the next 17 days, the man told police he was bound by the wrists, shocked with electrical wires, pistol-whipped, cut on the leg with a saw and forced to smoke from a crack pipe. At one point, he said, he was dangled from the home’s top flight of stairs.

Believing he would soon be killed, the victim said he agreed Friday morning to give the men access to the password.

But as the men went to retrieve his computer, the victim was able to escape from the home and flag down a traffic agent on the street outside.

A search of the townhouse turned up a trove of evidence, prosecutors said, including cocaine, a saw, chicken wire, body armor, night vision goggles, ammunition and polaroid photos of the victim with a gun pointed to his head and a crack pipe in his mouth.

The victim was hospitalized with injuries to his wrists consistent with being bound, cuts to his face and other injuries, authorities said.

Earlier this month in Paris, the father of a crypto entrepreneur was rescued by police after attackers cut off one of his fingers. In a separate case, criminals tried but failed to abduct a crypto entrepreneur’s daughter off a street in broad daylight.

Last August in Danbury, Connecticut, a couple was forced out of their car, beaten and put into a van in a ransom plot targeting their son, who authorities allege was involved in a US$240 million crypto heist the week before.

A recent FBI report tallied $16.6 billion in reported losses linked to internet crime in 2024, up nearly a third compared with the previous year. Victims of cryptocurrency theft reported the greatest losses, an amount that totaled more than $6.5 billion.

Jake Offenhartz, The Associated Press