Italian man kidnapped in bizarre NY crypto plot
NEW YORK: A cryptocurrency investor has been charged with kidnapping an Italian man for weeks, threatening and torturing him with a gun and a chainsaw in a grisly bid to extort his Bitcoin password, court documents and US media said.
In a plot like a bad Hollywood thriller, New York police told AFP on Sunday that they arrested 37-year-old John Woeltz, a Kentucky man, on Friday in the posh Manhattan flat he was renting.
Woeltz was charged on Saturday with kidnapping, assault and criminal possession of a gun and pleaded not guilty, according to documents seen by AFP. A second person, 24-year-old Beatrice Folchi, is also being held.
The police said the victim, a 28-year-old Italian whose name has not been released, managed to escape and ran up to a traffic agent with a horrific tale of having been held, bound and tortured for weeks before managing to escape from Woeltz's townhouse.
The victim initially went to Woeltz's flat on May 6. The two are believed to have had some previous business connection.
Upon arrival, Woeltz and an unidentified accomplice, who has yet to be named or caught, seized the Italian's passport and electronic devices and demanded the access codes for his Bitcoin accounts.
When he refused, according to the reports, the two men tied him up, struck him with a gun, pointed it at his face, menaced him with a chainsaw and even took him to the fifth floor of the building, threatening to throw him over the edge if he did not relent.
They also reportedly threatened to kill members of his family.
Several details of the story remain murky, including exactly why the victim had agreed to come to the townhouse in an upscale SoHo neighbourhood, and whether he revealed anything of use to the kidnappers.
More details are expected to come out at a court hearing scheduled for May 28.
The grisly tale emerged as the Bitcoin cryptocurrency this week set a new record, at US$109,856.
While cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are said to be highly secure, they have faced numerous cyberattacks seeking to exploit weak spots in exchange platforms.
In February, according to the FBI, North Korean hackers stole a historic US$1.5 billion from the Bybit platform.
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