Crypto Investor Charged with Kidnapping and Torturing Man for Weeks

Summary

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 ...