John Woeltz made headlines on Friday following his arrest in New York Town for allegedly kidnapping and torturing a person in a bid to get get admission to to his Bitcoin password. Previous to that, the 37-year-old Woeltz as soon as held an overly other popularity as a emerging celebrity within the crypto global.
Woeltz, sometimes called the “crypto king of Kentucky,” was once apprehended on Friday after a person escaped from his luxurious NoLIta condominium and flagged down a visitors agent who known as police, in step with the New York Instances. The sufferer, a 28-year-old Italian citizen named Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan, was once allegedly held within the 17-room townhouse for 3 weeks.
Prosecutors allege that whilst in the home Woeltz and his alleged partner, William Duplessie, who was once arrested on Tuesday, tortured Carturan through pistol-whipping him, surprising him with a taser gun, forcing him to smoke crack cocaine and slicing his leg with a noticed, in step with CBS Information. Carturan informed police that he was once even suspended over a ledge on the most sensible of the five-story house, in step with the New York Times.
The ordeal ensued after Carturan, a industry spouse of Woeltz, arrived on the townhouse on Would possibly 6. Woeltz and his partner confiscated Carturan’s passport and digital gadgets, threatening to hurt him if he didn’t give you the password to his Bitcoin pockets that held hundreds of thousands of greenbacks price of crypto.
Legal professionals for Woeltz didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. Legal professionals for Duplessie declined to remark when contacted through Fortune.
Woeltz grew up in Paducah, Kentucky, about 140 miles outdoor of Nashville, in step with an interview he gave to a neighborhood newspaper in 2020. After graduating from the College of Kentucky, Woeltz moved west to put money into tech startups.
He entered the crypto house round 2018, when he served as a part of the successful staff at ETHGlobal San Francisco hackathon, an annual tournament placed on through an Ethereum-focused group. He then went directly to develop into the managing director of Silicon River Capital and blockchain-based funding fund, in step with his interview within the native paper.
Extra lately, Woeltz changed into concerned with the Bitcoin mining business in Kentucky. He was once selected through the state workplace of generation to enroll in a operating staff eager about the usage of blockchain generation for “crucial infrastructure, public utilities, telecommunications, emergency products and services,” in step with the crowd’s annual report.
Woeltz has been charged with kidnapping, attack, illegal imprisonment and felony ownership of a firearm, in step with court docket paperwork.
The New York Town saga comes as simply the most recent in a plague of violent kidnappings of wealth crypto homeowners, a phenomenon that has led some to buy “wrench assault” insurance coverage—a coverage whose names come from a meme that presentations bandits scheming to defeat prime tech safeguards through hitting the sufferer with a wrench.
This tale was once firstly featured on Fortune.com
