NEW YORK (AP) — A cryptocurrency investor has been arrested and charged with kidnapping a person and preserving him locked up for weeks in an upscale Manhattan condo, the place authorities say he was overwhelmed, shocked and led to imagine that his household was in peril if he didn’t hand over his Bitcoin password.
John Woeltz, 37, was arrested Friday night time after the sufferer escaped from the eight-bedroom city home and flagged down a visitors officer on the road for assist, in response to prosecutors.
Woeltz was arraigned Saturday on expenses of kidnapping, assault, illegal imprisonment and legal possession of a firearm, court docket data present. He was ordered held with out bail, a spokesperson for the Manhattan district legal professional’s workplace confirmed Saturday.
His lawyer, Wayne Gosnell, mentioned Saturday in an electronic mail that he had no remark.
The 28-year-old sufferer arrived in New York Metropolis from Italy in early Could, a regulation enforcement official advised The Related Press. The official was not approved to talk publicly in regards to the ongoing investigation and did so on situation of anonymity.
It’s not clear how or if the 2 knew one another, however the district legal professional’s workplace mentioned in an electronic mail that prosecutor Michael Mattson advised a choose Saturday that the sufferer, whose identify has not been launched, was kidnapped on Could 6.
Mattson mentioned others had been concerned within the scheme to empty the sufferer’s Bitcoin pockets. That features a individual referred to in court docket data as an “unapprehended male.”
The sufferer mentioned he was certain by the wrists and tortured for weeks contained in the condo. His captors, in response to prosecutors, drugged him, used electrical wires to shock him, hit him within the head with a firearm and, at one level, carried him to the highest of a flight of stairs the place they dangled him over a ledge and threatened to kill him if he didn’t share his Bitcoin password.
Believing that he was about to be shot, the sufferer was capable of escape Friday after telling Woeltz that he would hand over his password, which was saved on his laptop computer in one other room. When the suspect turned his again, Mattson mentioned, the sufferer ran out of the condo.
The sufferer was taken to a hospital and handled for accidents that Mattson mentioned had been constant along with his descriptions of being certain and assaulted.
A search of the city home turned up a trove of proof, Mattson mentioned, together with cocaine, a noticed, hen wire, physique armor and night time imaginative and prescient goggles, ammunition and polaroid photographs of the sufferer with a gun pointed to his head.
Woeltz was ordered Saturday to give up his passport. Prosecutors mentioned he has the means to flee, together with a personal jet and a helicopter. He’s due again in Manhattan legal court docket subsequent week.
Yamat reported from Las Vegas. Related Press writers Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, and Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, contributed to this report.