A crypto investor was allegedly held hostage in New York Metropolis and tortured for weeks in an effort to steal his Bitcoin (BTC) holdings.
In accordance with a brand new Related Press report, crypto investor John Woeltz, 37, allegedly kidnapped one other investor, holding him in a Manhattan house, the place he was overwhelmed and had his household’s lives threatened to get him to surrender his Bitcoin pockets passphrase.
Woeltz was arrested after the sufferer escaped and flagged down a visitors officer on the road for assist. He’s now dealing with prices of kidnapping, assault, illegal imprisonment and legal possession of a firearm.
Woeltz is being held with out bail, after prosecutors mentioned he was a flight danger as a result of proudly owning a personal jet and a helicopter. Woeltz’s lawyer, Wayne Gosnell, declined to remark.
The sufferer, whose identify has not been launched, not too long ago arrived in New York Metropolis from Italy. It isn’t clear how the sufferer knew the alleged kidnapper. The kidnapping is assumed to have occurred on Might sixth.
It seems others have been concerned within the scheme, together with an unnamed unapprehended male.
The sufferer was allegedly sure by the wrists and tortured for weeks contained in the house, together with being drugged, shocked with electrical energy, hit within the head with a firearm and dangled over a flight of stairs – all to get him to disclose his Bitcoin pockets passphrase so the suspect might steal his digital property.
The sufferer was reportedly capable of flee when the suspect turned his again to retrieve the person’s laptop computer in one other room after he mentioned he would surrender the password when he thought the suspect was going to shoot him.
When authorities searched the house, they mentioned they discovered cocaine, a noticed, rooster wire, physique armor and evening imaginative and prescient goggles, ammunition and Polaroid images of the sufferer with a gun pointed to his head.
Woeltz is due again in Manhattan legal court docket subsequent week.
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