Another suspect is arrested in bitcoin kidnapping and torture case

NEW YORK — A third person accused of kidnapping a man and torturing him for nearly three weeks to steal his bitcoin fortune surrendered to the police in New York City on Tuesday morning, Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch said.

The police identified the man, who has connections to Switzerland and Miami, as William Duplessie, 33. He had spent days negotiating his surrender with the Police Department after the arrest Friday of two other suspects, according to two law enforcement officials briefed on the matter.

One of the people arrested Friday, John Woeltz, 37, a cryptocurrency investor, faces kidnapping, assault and firearms charges. The other, Beatrice Folchi, 24, who was initially charged by the police with kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment, was quickly released, and her prosecution was deferred, one of the officials said.

Duplessie “is going to be charged, with Mr. Woeltz, with kidnapping and false imprisonment of an associate,” Tisch said Tuesday in an interview on Fox 5.

Shortly before 11:30 a.m., Duplessie, in handcuffs and flanked by two detectives, was walked out of a precinct house on East 21st Street in Manhattan. Wearing a white polo shirt and black pants, Duplessie did not respond to questions as he was placed in a waiting police cruiser.

The episode burst into public view Friday morning when the victim, an Italian man named Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan, escaped from a lavish, 17-room town house in the Nolita neighborhood of Manhattan, where he was being held captive, and flagged down a traffic agent.

Carturan and Woeltz had ties to a crypto hedge fund in New York, according to an internal police report relayed by a third law enforcement official. But Carturan and Woeltz fell out over money, and Carturan flew to Italy, according to the report. Soon after, Woeltz persuaded him to return to New York.

Carturan arrived at the town house, at 38 Prince St., on May 6, where he was captured and held by Woeltz and Folchi, the report said. They wanted the password to a bitcoin wallet worth millions, the report said.

Carturan was bound with electrical cords and whipped with a gun, according to the report. The attackers also submerged his feet in water and used a Taser gun to jolt him with electricity.

Inside the town house, which was recently listed for rent at $75,000 a month, investigators discovered photographs of Carturan being tortured, several guns, a ballistic vest and broken furniture — much of it on the third floor of the home, the report said.

Carturan said that as he rebuffed his captors’ demands, the assaults escalated, and he was carried to the top of the five-story home and suspended over the ledge.

After his escape, Carturan told the police the harrowing story, according to the report.

Surveillance video published by NBC 4 shows Carturan rushing for help in the moments after he fled the town house Friday. In the video, he lopes barefoot down the sidewalk in apparent distress and approaches a traffic officer who is roaming nearby. Carturan can be seen wearing black athletic shorts, a black polo shirt and clutching a small black bag as he bounds on his heels toward the officer and begins to talk to him.

Duplessie’s lawyer, Sanford Talkin, declined to comment, as did Woeltz’s lawyer, Wayne Ervin Gosnell Jr. Woeltz’s mother also declined to comment.

Efforts to reach a lawyer for Folchi were unsuccessful.

The case comes amid a rash of jarring attacks around the globe in which high-ranking crypto executives and their relatives have been kidnapped or assaulted for ransom.

The “wrench attacks,” so named because of the brutish techniques involved, have become a growing concern in the world of digital currency as more investors store sensitive information on physical devices, instead of digitally, in an effort to avoid hackers.

The trend has become especially troubling in France, where several prominent crypto entrepreneurs have been targeted in the past few months. In January, the father of a crypto influencer was found in the trunk of a car, bound and covered in gasoline, after the family was attacked at their home in eastern France, according to French media reports.

A few weeks later, the founder of French cryptocurrency company was abducted from his home and had one of his fingers cut off by his captors.

Duplessie is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Pangea Blockchain Fund, an investment firm based in Lugano, Switzerland, that he launched with his father, James Duplessie, and another relative, Stephen Duplessie, in 2019, according to archived pages of the company’s website. The fund raised $19 million to invest in tech companies “committed to building impactful blockchain solutions,” according to its LinkedIn page.

Pangea is “currently liquidating its positions,” according to the site, which is now a single page.

William Duplessie roamed from state to state in the past decade, holding addresses in California, Louisiana, Kentucky and Florida, according to public records.

The link between Duplessie and Woeltz is unclear, but public records show that Duplessis spent time in Smithland, Kentucky, about 20 miles from Woeltz’s hometown, Paducah.

Woeltz in 2020 told The Paducah Sun, a local newspaper, that after he graduated from the University of Kentucky, he had moved west and begun to invest in Silicon Valley startups.

His tech career appeared to take off quickly. In 2018, a John Woeltz was part of a winning team at ETHGlobal San Francisco hackathon, according to a post by the organization. He and his teammates built a robot that could cast absentee ballots for college students.

In 2020, Woeltz gave $10,000 to Sprocket, a nonprofit that sought to bring tech companies to the Paducah area, according to the interview with The Sun. At the time, Woeltz said he was the managing director of Silicon River Capital, an investment fund focused on blockchain technology.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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