The 37-year-old Crypto dealer accused of kidnapping a 28-year-old Italian man inside an expensive SoHo condo repeatedly shocked his sufferer with electrical wires, held him the other way up from the highest of a staircase, lower his leg with a noticed and threatened to kill the sufferer’s household — all to get the password to the person’s Bitcoin account, prosecutors stated Saturday.
Manhattan Felony Court docket Choose Eric Schumacher ordered John Woeltz held with out bail on assault and kidnapping costs as police continued to seek for his confederate. He additionally issued a restraining order towards Woeltz, so if he does get out of jail, he can’t go wherever close to his sufferer.
A second alleged confederate, a 24-year-old girl, was arrested late Friday however prosecutors declined to carry costs. Detectives on Saturday have been nonetheless going by way of the Soho dwelling, bringing out giant paper proof baggage.
Prosecutors stated the sufferer arrived within the U.S. on Could 6 and visited Woeltz. The 2 males share pursuits in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, cops stated.
The extortion plot was uncovered after Woeltz’s sufferer managed to flee his swanky Prince and Mulberry Sts. dwelling in SoHo Friday morning and wave down an NYPD site visitors enforcement agent, who referred to as police.
Responding officers discovered Woeltz within the $30,000-a-month, eight-bedroom condo swaddled in a luxurious white bathrobe.
“The guy comes out in a white bathrobe, barefoot, hands cuffed behind his back, got into a police car,” Ciaran Tully, 64, a vendor who sells pictures on Prince St., informed the Each day Information Friday. “He didn’t look concerned. He didn’t look worried or anything like that.”
Buying and selling in his gown for a white T-shirt, black pants and black and white-striped Adidas slides, Woeltz stated nothing as Assistant District Legal professional Jillian Shartrand laid out the case towards him.
“Upon arriving at the home, [Woeltz and his accomplice] took all of the victim’s electronics and his passport, rendering the victim unable to call for help,” Shartrand stated.
The 2 sure their sufferer’s wrists and over the subsequent three weeks subjected him to “beatings including but not limited to the use of electric wires to shock him, using a firearm to hit him on the head, and pointing the firearm at his head on several occasions,” Shartrand defined. “[They] used a saw to cut his leg, urinated on the victim, forced him to smoke crack cocaine by holding him down and forcing it into his mouth.”
The duo additionally “tied an airtag around his neck with a chain or wire,” Shartrand stated. “They [said they] would kill his family and they would find the victim if he left.”
After apprehending Woeltz, cops discovered disturbing Polaroid pictures of him and his confederate torturing their sufferer and holding a gun to his head.
Someday in the course of the sufferer’s seize, Woeltz and his confederate managed to get printed T-shirts of the sufferer smoking crack. The shirts have been discovered within the dwelling, together with physique armor, evening imaginative and prescient goggles, ammunition and ballistic helmets, officers stated.
The crypto dealer refused to speak to police after he was arrested.
“He lawyered up immediately,” a police supply stated.
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