Judge denies bail to crypto investor charged with kidnapping and torturing man in posh NYC townhouse

Key Points

• A grand jury has indicted crypto investor John Woeltz for allegedly kidnapping and torturing a man in a luxury SoHo townhouse to steal the victim’s Bitcoin password.
• The victim was held for 17 days, during which he was beaten, drugged, shocked with electrical wires and threatened at gunpoint before surrendering his computer password.
• A Manhattan judge denied bail for Woeltz, rejecting a $2 million bond request despite his attorney’s arguments about his clean record and tech-industry success.
• Woeltz’s alleged accomplice, William Duplessie, has surrendered and awaits indictment, and police found weapons, body armor, night-vision goggles and photos of the bound victim during a search.

NEW YORK (AP) — A grand jury has indicted a cryptocurrency investor who was charged with kidnapping and torturing a man for weeks in an upscale Manhattan townhouse in order to gain access to his Bitcoin.

John Woeltz, 37, has been jailed since his arrest Friday outside the luxury rental, where an Italian national told police he was severely beaten, drugged, shocked with electrical wires and dangled over a ledge by captors seeking the password to his digital assets.

Woeltz’s alleged accomplice, William Duplessie, surrendered to police Tuesday and is awaiting his own indictment.

At the hearing Thursday, an attorney for Woeltz requested his client be released on a $2 million bond, citing his lack of criminal record, philosophy degree and professional accomplishments.

“He’s been very successful in the technology world,” the attorney, Wayne Gosnell, told a Manhattan judge, adding that his client “has every intention to fight this case.”

The judge denied bail for Woeltz, who did not appear in court.

Gosnell also requested that Woeltz not be required to turn over firearms that he legally owns in Kentucky. And he disputed the prosecutor’s earlier claims that his client owned a private jet and helicopter.

“He has no means to flee,” Gosnell said.

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

Authorities have said Woeltz and Duplessie, another cryptocurrency investor, knew the victim personally.

On May 6, they lured the man — whose name has not been released by officials — to a posh townhouse in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood, one of the city’s most expensive, by threatening to kill his family.

The man said he was then held captive for 17 days, as the two investors tormented him with electrical wires, forced him to smoke from a crack pipe and at one point dangled him from a staircase five stories high.

He eventually agreed to hand over his computer password Friday morning, then managed to flee the home as his captors went to retrieve the device. The victim made it onto the street, bloodied and shoeless, according to police.

A search of the townhouse turned up cocaine, a saw, chicken wire, body armor, night vision goggles, ammunition and polaroid photos of the victim with a gun pointed to his head, according to prosecutors.