A second crypto investor is charged with kidnapping and torturing a man in a posh NYC apartment
May 27, 2025, 8:41 AM | Updated: 10:54 am
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)
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
(AP Photo/Kava Gorna via AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — A second cryptocurrency investor has surrendered to police in the alleged kidnapping and torture of a man who told authorities he was brutally beaten and held for weeks inside an upscale Manhattan townhouse by captors seeking the password to access his Bitcoin.
William Duplessie, 32, will face charges of kidnapping and false imprisonment, according to New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
Another crypto investor, John Woeltz, was arrested Friday, hours after the victim escaped the posh Soho house and fled, bloodied and barefoot, into the Manhattan street.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Duplesse had an attorney who could speak for him. Court records didn’t list one. Woeltz’s attorney has declined to comment.
At Woeltz’s arraignment Saturday, prosecutors said he and another person spent weeks torturing a 28-year-old Italian man inside an eight-bedroom apartment in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood, one of the most expensive in the city.
The victim, who has not been named, told authorities that his captors shocked him with electric wires, forced him to smoke either crack or cocaine and repeatedly beat him. At one point, he said, they dangled him over a ledge and threatened to kill him if he didn’t share the password.
The man arrived in New York City from Italy in early May and was abducted on May 6, prosecutors said.
He agreed to give up his password on Friday, believing he was about to be shot, according to prosecutors. When the captors went to retrieve his laptop, the man escaped the house and flagged down a traffic agent, who called police.
A search of the townhouse turned up a trove of evidence, prosecutors said, including cocaine, a saw, chicken wire, body armor and 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.
