A 37-year-old cryptocurrency investor was charged on Saturday with kidnapping a man and beating, shocking and torturing him for weeks inside a luxury townhouse in downtown Manhattan, all in a scheme to get the man’s Bitcoin password, the authorities said.
The crypto investor, John Woeltz, was taken into custody on Friday after the man managed to escape the townhouse and notify the police. Mr. Woeltz was arraigned on Saturday morning in Manhattan criminal court and charged with assault, kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment and criminal possession of a gun. He was ordered held without bail and forced to surrender his passport, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said.
Another person, Beatrice Folchi, was also arrested on Friday and charged with kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment, though her connection to Mr. Woeltz was not immediately clear. A third person, identified only as an “unapprehended male,” was also mentioned as a participant in the abuse during Mr. Woeltz’s arraignment.
Wayne Ervin Gosnell Jr., Mr. Woeltz’s lawyer, declined to comment on Saturday.
Many details of the violent, weekslong episode remained murky on Saturday, including how Mr. Woeltz and the man knew each other and what had brought them to New York City.
But on Friday just after 9:30 a.m., the man, a 28-year-old from Italy, ran out of the townhouse in the NoLIta neighborhood of Manhattan and toward a traffic agent nearby, according to a law enforcement official.
The man, whose name has not been publicly released by the authorities, told the police that he had arrived in the city from Italy on May 6 and had gone to the townhouse. Mr. Woeltz, who is originally from Kentucky, had been renting the eight-bedroom home for at least $30,000 a month, the official said.
But when he arrived at the house, Mr. Woeltz and the “unapprehended male” stole his electronic devices and his passport and demanded that he tell Mr. Woeltz his Bitcoin password so they could steal his cryptocurrency, according to a criminal complaint against Mr. Woeltz.
When the victim refused, the two men took him captive and subjected him to weeks of torture, which included beating him, shocking him with electric wires, hitting him with a gun and pointing the gun at his head. At one point, Mr. Woeltz and his accomplice carried the man to the top of the stairs in the five-story home, suspended him over the ledge and threatened to kill him if he did not give Mr. Woeltz his password, the complaint says.
The two men also bound the victim’s wrists, restraining him, and told him that they would have his family killed, according to the complaint.
The abuse continued for about three weeks until Friday morning, when the man managed to escape and alert the traffic agent.
Police officers from the Fifth Precinct arrived at the townhouse shortly after his escape on Friday and took Mr. Woeltz into custody. The victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition, the police said.
Inside the home, the police found Polaroid pictures showing the man bound and being assaulted, the law enforcement official said. They also found a gun and several other items used for torture inside the house.
Two butlers who worked at the home were also present and agreed on Friday to be interviewed by the police, the official said.
The episode in the upscale Manhattan neighborhood comes on the heels of two other imprisonment cases that have shaken the New York region this spring. Last week, prosecutors in southern New Jersey charged a couple with imprisoning an 18-year-old girl for seven years and locking her in a dog cage. In April, a 32-year-old man who had been held captive in a room by his father and stepmother escaped after setting fire to their home.
Mr. Woeltz’s arrest also follows a spate of jarring attacks against high-ranking crypto executives in the United States and elsewhere in which the victims and their families have been kidnapped or violently assaulted for ransom.
Maia Coleman is a reporter for The Times covering the New York Police Department and criminal justice in the New York area.
Chelsia Rose Marcius is a criminal justice reporter for The Times, covering the New York Police Department.
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