A third person accused of kidnapping a man and torturing him for nearly three weeks to steal his Bitcoin fortune surrendered to the police in New York City on Tuesday morning, Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch said.
The police identified the man, who has connections to Switzerland and Miami, as William Duplessie, 33. He spent days negotiating his surrender with the Police Department after the arrest on Friday of two other suspects, according to two law enforcement officials briefed on the matter.
Mr. Duplessie was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Courthouse on Tuesday night and charged with kidnapping, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison. He was also charged with assault, unlawful imprisonment and criminal possession of a weapon. He was held without bail.
One of the people arrested on Friday, John Woeltz, 37, a cryptocurrency investor, faces kidnapping, assault and firearms charges. The other, Beatrice Folchi, 24, who was initially charged by the police with kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment, was quickly released and her prosecution was deferred, one of the officials said.
Shortly before 11:30 a.m., Mr. Duplessie, in handcuffs and flanked by two detectives, was walked out of a precinct house on East 21st Street in Manhattan. Wearing a white polo shirt and black pants, Mr. Duplessie did not respond to questions as he was placed in a waiting police cruiser.
The episode burst into public view on Friday morning when the victim, an Italian man named Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan, escaped from a lavish, 17-room townhouse in the NoLIta neighborhood of Manhattan, where he was being held captive, and flagged down a traffic agent.
Mr. Carturan and Mr. Woeltz had ties to a crypto hedge fund in New York, according to an internal police report relayed by a third law enforcement official. But Mr. Carturan and Mr. Woeltz fell out over money and Mr. Carturan flew to Italy, according to the report. Soon after, Mr. Woeltz persuaded him to return to New York.
Mr. Carturan arrived at the townhouse, at 38 Prince Street, on May 6, where he was captured and held by Mr. Woeltz and Ms. Folchi, the report said. They wanted the password to a Bitcoin wallet worth millions, the report said.
Mr. Carturan was bound with electrical cords and whipped with a gun, according to the report. The attackers also submerged his feet in water and used a Taser to jolt him with electricity. At points they also urinated on him, forced him to smoke crack cocaine and threatened to kill his family, prosecutors said.
Inside the townhouse, which was recently listed for rent at $75,000 a month, investigators discovered photographs of Mr. Carturan being tortured, as well as several guns, a ballistic vest, chicken wire, broken furniture and traces of blood — much of it on the third floor of the home, according to the report and prosecutors.
Mr. Carturan said that as he rebuffed his captors’ demands, the assaults escalated, and he was carried to the top of the five-story home and suspended over the ledge.
After his escape, Mr. Carturan told the police the harrowing story, according to the report.
Surveillance video aired by NBC 4 shows Mr. Carturan rushing for help in the moments after he fled the townhouse on Friday. In the video, he lopes barefoot down the sidewalk in apparent distress and approaches a traffic officer who is roaming nearby. Mr. Carturan can be seen wearing black athletic shorts and a black polo shirt and clutching a small black bag as he bounds on his heels toward the officer.
At the arraignment, Mr. Duplessie’s lawyer, Sanford Talkin, asked the judge to allow his client to be released to stay in Florida with his father, James Duplessie, who sat in the courtroom on Tuesday evening.
“The facts here are hotly disputed; his involvement is hotly disputed,” Mr. Talkin said. The judge, Julieta Lozano, denied the request.
Mr. Talkin and Mr. Duplessie’s father declined to comment after the arraignment.
Mr. Woeltz’s lawyer, Wayne Ervin Gosnell Jr., and Mr. Woeltz’s mother also declined to comment on the case. Efforts to reach a lawyer for Ms. Folchi were unsuccessful.
The case comes amid a rash of jarring attacks around the globe in which high-ranking crypto executives and their relatives have been kidnapped or assaulted for ransom.
The “wrench attacks,” so named because of the brutish techniques involved, have become a growing concern in the world of digital currency, as more investors store sensitive information on physical devices, instead of digitally, in an effort to avoid hackers.
The trend has become especially troubling in France, where several prominent crypto entrepreneurs have been targeted in the past few months. In January, the father of a crypto influencer was found in the trunk of a car, bound and covered in gasoline, after the family was attacked at their home in eastern France, according to French media reports.
A few weeks later, the founder of a French cryptocurrency company was abducted from his home and had one of his fingers cut off by his captors.
Mr. Duplessie is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Pangea Blockchain Fund, an investment firm based in Lugano, Switzerland, that he launched with his father and another relative, Stephen Duplessie, in 2019, according to archived pages of the company’s website. The fund raised $19 million to invest in tech companies “committed to building impactful blockchain solutions,” according to its LinkedIn page.
Pangea is “currently liquidating its positions,” according to the site, which is now a single page.
William Duplessie roamed from state to state in the past decade, holding addresses in California, Louisiana, Kentucky and Florida, according to public records.
His arrest on Tuesday is not his first brush with the court system.
Complaints against Mr. Duplessie in Connecticut and in Miami hint at a life of luxury underpinned by recklessness and debt. In one complaint from 2023, a car leasing company sued Mr. Duplessie for failing to make the $3,690-a-month payments on a 2018 Lamborghini Huracan. In another complaint from that year, he was sued for failing to pay rent on a furnished home in Miami and then leaving it in a state of disrepair.
This December, Mr. Duplessie was also sued for “violently” rear-ending another car while driving a 2016 Porsche Cayman in Miami. He has also received eight traffic violations in Miami since December 2021, according to public records.
The link between Mr. Duplessie and Mr. Woeltz is unclear, but public records show that Mr. Duplessis spent time in Smithland, Ky., about 20 miles from Mr. Woeltz’s hometown, Paducah.
Mr. Woeltz in 2020 told The Paducah Sun, a local newspaper, that after he graduated from the University of Kentucky, he had moved west and begun to invest in Silicon Valley startups.
His tech career appeared to take off quickly. In 2018, a John Woeltz was part of a winning team at the ETHGlobal San Francisco hackathon, according to a post by the organization. He and his teammates built a robot that could cast absentee ballots for college students.
In 2020, Mr. Woeltz gave $10,000 to Sprocket, a nonprofit, that sought to bring tech companies to the Paducah area, according to the interview with The Sun. At the time, Mr. Woeltz said he was the managing director of Silicon River Capital, an investment fund focused on blockchain technology.
“When I grew up in Paducah, there just wasn’t a clear path for me locally in tech,” Mr. Woeltz said in the interview. “After graduating from U.K., I packed my bags and headed for Silicon Valley, because that’s what you had to do then to succeed in the industry.”
In recent years, Kentucky has become a player in the cryptocurrency mining industry, and Mr. Woeltz was tapped to join a working group under its state office of technology.
The group was set up by Kentucky lawmakers to use blockchain technology to protect natural gas pipelines, telecommunications and other infrastructure, according to its 2024 annual report. But Mr. Woeltz’s interactions with the group in recent years were limited. In interviews with The New York Times, two participants said that Mr. Woeltz served only as an advisory member.
Cassidy Jensen, Tracey Tully, Jefferson Siegel and Matthew Haag contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Chelsia Rose Marcius is a criminal justice reporter for The Times, covering the New York Police Department.
Maia Coleman is a reporter for The Times covering the New York Police Department and criminal justice in the New York area.
The post Another Suspect Is Charged in Bitcoin Kidnapping and Torture Case appeared first on New York Times.
