NEW YORK CITY, NY – On Tuesday, May 27th, a second cryptocurrency investor was arrested in the alleged kidnapping of a man who said he was tortured for weeks inside an upscale Manhattan townhouse by captors seeking the password to his Bitcoin account.
According to the Associated Press (AP), the second suspect has been identified as 32-year-old William Duplessie. He has been charged with kidnapping, assault, unlawful imprisonment, and criminal possession of a weapon. His arrest comes four days after the alleged victim, a 28-year-old Italian national, escaped the townhouse.
When he escaped, he was bloodied and barefoot, and said he had been severely beaten, drugged, shocked with electrical wires, and threatened with death for nearly three weeks.
The next day, crypto investor 37-year-old John Woeltz was arrested and charged with the alleged kidnapping scheme. Authorities said that Duplessie and Woeltz lured the victim into an eight-bedroom townhouse in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, one of the most expensive in the city, to steal his Bitcoin fortune.
They said the men did this on May 6th and then over the following 17 days, the victim said he was bound by his wrists, shocked with electrical wires, pistol-whipped, cut on the leg with a saw and forced to smoke from a crack pipe.
At one point, he told police he was dangled from the home’s top flight of stairs. Believing he would soon be killed, the victim said he agreed on Friday morning, May 23rd, to give the men access to the password.
As the men went to retrieve his computer, the victim was able to escape from the home and flag down a traffic agent on the street outside. Prosecutors said that a search of the townhouse turned up a trove of evidence, including cocaine, a saw, chicken wire, body armor, night vision goggles, ammunition, and polaroid photos of the victim with a gun pointed to his head and a crack pipe in his mouth.
The victim was taken to the hospital with injuries to his wrists consistent with being bound, cuts to his face, and other injuries. The episode comes amid a spike in crypto theft, including a recent wave of violence directed at wealthy holders of digital currency.
Earlier this month in Paris, the father of a crypto entrepreneur was rescued by police after attackers cut off one of his fingers. In a separate case, criminals tried but failed to abduct a crypto entrepreneur’s daughter off a street in broad daylight. In August 2024, in Danbury, Connecticut, a couple was forced out of their car, beaten and put into a van in a ransom plot targeting their son, who authorities allege was involved in a $240 million crypto heist the week before.
A recent FBI report tallied $16.6 billion in reported losses linked to internet crime in 2024, up nearly a third compared with the previous year. Victims of cryptocurrency theft reported the greatest losses, an amount that totaled more than $6.5 billion.
Both Duplessie and Woeltz appear to be entrepreneurs focused on cryptocurrency. In online profiles, Duplessie is listed as the co-founder and head of sourcing at Pangea Blockchain Fund and an investor in other blockchain-based companies. Woeltz has described himself in interviews as a blockchain investor who spent time in Silicon Valley before becoming involved in Kentucky’s burgeoning crypto-mining industry.
