Man charged in New York with 3-week kidnapping to try to steal Bitcoin

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -A grand jury has indicted a 37-year-old cryptocurrency investor accused of kidnapping a business partner in Manhattan's upscale Soho neighborhood for three weeks, shocking him with electric wires, and dangling him over a staircase to try to get him to give up his Bitcoin password, prosecutors said on Wednesday. 

John Woeltz was arrested on May 23, court records show. According to a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan criminal court, an unnamed man told New York City police that Woeltz and another man, William Duplessie, on May 6 took his electronic devices and passport demanded he give up his password so they could steal his cryptocurrency. 

Woeltz and Duplessie, 33, have not yet entered pleas. Their lawyers declined to comment. 

Local media have called Woeltz a cryptocurrency investor and described the alleged victim as an Italian man. Both had ties to a crypto hedge fund in New York, the New York Times reported, citing an internal police report described by a law enforcement official.  

When the man refused to share his password, Woeltz and Duplessie allegedly began a series of brutal beatings until the man managed to escape weeks later. They tied his wrists, hit him on the head with a gun, and threatened to kill his family, according to the complaints against the two men. 

Duplessie was arrested on Tuesday and is due in court for a preliminary hearing on Friday. Judges have ordered both men detained. 

Woeltz is due to be arraigned on June 11.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Alistair Bell)