Another
Suspect Is Charged in Bitcoin Kidnapping and Torture Case
The man,
William Duplessie, surrendered to the police Tuesday morning. Authorities have
said the victim was an Italian man who was tormented in a luxury Manhattan
townhouse for weeks.
By Chelsia
Rose Marcius and Maia Coleman
May 27, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/nyregion/crypto-investor-torture-arrest.html
A third
person accused of kidnapping a man and torturing him for nearly three weeks to
steal his Bitcoin fortune surrendered to the police in New York City on Tuesday
morning, Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch said.
The police
identified the man, who has connections to Switzerland and Miami, as William
Duplessie, 33. He spent days negotiating his surrender with the Police
Department after the arrest on Friday of two other suspects, according to two
law enforcement officials briefed on the matter.
Mr.
Duplessie was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Courthouse on Tuesday night and
charged with kidnapping, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 25 years to
life in prison. He was also charged with assault, unlawful imprisonment and
criminal possession of a weapon. He was held without bail.
One of the
people arrested on Friday, John Woeltz, 37, a cryptocurrency investor, faces
kidnapping, assault and firearms charges. The other, Beatrice Folchi, 24, who
was initially charged by the police with kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment,
was quickly released and her prosecution was deferred, one of the officials
said.
Shortly
before 11:30 a.m., Mr. Duplessie, in handcuffs and flanked by two detectives,
was walked out of a precinct house on East 21st Street in Manhattan. Wearing a
white polo shirt and black pants, Mr. Duplessie did not respond to questions as
he was placed in a waiting police cruiser.
The episode
burst into public view on Friday morning when the victim, an Italian man named
Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan, escaped from a lavish, 17-room townhouse
in the NoLIta neighborhood of Manhattan, where he was being held captive, and
flagged down a traffic agent.
Mr. Carturan
and Mr. Woeltz had ties to a crypto hedge fund in New York, according to an
internal police report relayed by a third law enforcement official. But Mr.
Carturan and Mr. Woeltz fell out over money and Mr. Carturan flew to Italy,
according to the report. Soon after, Mr. Woeltz persuaded him to return to New
York.
Mr. Carturan
arrived at the townhouse, at 38 Prince Street, on May 6, where he was captured
and held by Mr. Woeltz and Ms. Folchi, the report said. They wanted the
password to a Bitcoin wallet worth millions, the report said.
Mr. Carturan
was bound with electrical cords and whipped with a gun, according to the
report. The attackers also submerged his feet in water and used a Taser to jolt
him with electricity. At points they also urinated on him, forced him to smoke
crack cocaine and threatened to kill his family, prosecutors said.
Inside the
townhouse, which was recently listed for rent at $75,000 a month, investigators
discovered photographs of Mr. Carturan being tortured, as well as several guns,
a ballistic vest, chicken wire, broken furniture and traces of blood — much of
it on the third floor of the home, according to the report and prosecutors.
Mr. Carturan
said that as he rebuffed his captors’ demands, the assaults escalated, and he
was carried to the top of the five-story home and suspended over the ledge.
After his
escape, Mr. Carturan told the police the harrowing story, according to the
report.
Surveillance
video aired by NBC 4 shows Mr. Carturan rushing for help in the moments after
he fled the townhouse on Friday. In the video, he lopes barefoot down the
sidewalk in apparent distress and approaches a traffic officer who is roaming
nearby. Mr. Carturan can be seen wearing black athletic shorts and a black polo
shirt and clutching a small black bag as he bounds on his heels toward the
officer.
At the
arraignment, Mr. Duplessie’s lawyer, Sanford Talkin, asked the judge to allow
his client to be released to stay in Florida with his father, James Duplessie,
who sat in the courtroom on Tuesday evening.
“The facts
here are hotly disputed; his involvement is hotly disputed,” Mr. Talkin said.
The judge, Julieta Lozano, denied the request.
Mr. Talkin
and Mr. Duplessie’s father declined to comment after the arraignment.
Mr. Woeltz’s
lawyer, Wayne Ervin Gosnell Jr., and Mr. Woeltz’s mother also declined to
comment on the case. Efforts to reach a lawyer for Ms. Folchi were
unsuccessful.
The case
comes amid a rash of jarring attacks around the globe in which high-ranking
crypto executives and their relatives have been kidnapped or assaulted for
ransom.
The “wrench
attacks,” so named because of the brutish techniques involved, have become a
growing concern in the world of digital currency, as more investors store
sensitive information on physical devices, instead of digitally, in an effort
to avoid hackers.
The trend
has become especially troubling in France, where several prominent crypto
entrepreneurs have been targeted in the past few months. In January, the father
of a crypto influencer was found in the trunk of a car, bound and covered in
gasoline, after the family was attacked at their home in eastern France,
according to French media reports.
A few weeks
later, the founder of a French cryptocurrency company was abducted from his
home and had one of his fingers cut off by his captors.
Mr.
Duplessie is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Pangea Blockchain Fund, an
investment firm based in Lugano, Switzerland, that he launched with his father
and another relative, Stephen Duplessie, in 2019, according to archived pages
of the company’s website. The fund raised $19 million to invest in tech
companies “committed to building impactful blockchain solutions,” according to
its LinkedIn page.
Pangea is
“currently liquidating its positions,” according to the site, which is now a
single page.
William
Duplessie roamed from state to state in the past decade, holding addresses in
California, Louisiana, Kentucky and Florida, according to public records.
His arrest
on Tuesday is not his first brush with the court system.
Complaints
against Mr. Duplessie in Connecticut and in Miami hint at a life of luxury
underpinned by recklessness and debt. In one complaint from 2023, a car leasing
company sued Mr. Duplessie for failing to make the $3,690-a-month payments on a
2018 Lamborghini Huracan. In another complaint from that year, he was sued for
failing to pay rent on a furnished home in Miami and then leaving it in a state
of disrepair.
This
December, Mr. Duplessie was also sued for “violently” rear-ending another car
while driving a 2016 Porsche Cayman in Miami. He has also received eight
traffic violations in Miami since December 2021, according to public records.
The link
between Mr. Duplessie and Mr. Woeltz is unclear, but public records show that
Mr. Duplessie spent time in Smithland, Ky., about 20 miles from Mr. Woeltz’s
hometown, Paducah.
Mr. Woeltz
in 2020 told The Paducah Sun, a local newspaper, that after he graduated from
the University of Kentucky, he moved west and begun to invest in Silicon Valley
startups.
His tech
career appeared to take off quickly. In 2018, a John Woeltz was part of a
winning team at the ETHGlobal San Francisco hackathon, according to a post by
the organization. He and his teammates built a robot that could cast absentee
ballots for college students.
In 2020, Mr.
Woeltz gave $10,000 to Sprocket, a nonprofit, that sought to bring tech
companies to the Paducah area, according to the interview with The Sun. At the
time, Mr. Woeltz said he was the managing director of Silicon River Capital, an
investment fund focused on blockchain technology.
“When I grew
up in Paducah, there just wasn’t a clear path for me locally in tech,” Mr.
Woeltz said in the interview. “After graduating from U.K., I packed my bags and
headed for Silicon Valley, because that’s what you had to do then to succeed in
the industry.”
In recent
years, Kentucky has become a player in the cryptocurrency mining industry, and
Mr. Woeltz was tapped to join a working group under its state office of
technology.
The group
was set up by Kentucky lawmakers to use blockchain technology to protect
natural gas pipelines, telecommunications and other infrastructure, according
to its 2024 annual report. But Mr. Woeltz’s interactions with the group in
recent years were limited. In interviews with The New York Times, two
participants said that Mr. Woeltz served only as an advisory member.
Cassidy
Jensen, Tracey Tully, Jefferson Siegel and Matthew Haag contributed reporting.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Chelsia Rose
Marcius is a criminal justice reporter for The Times, covering the New York
Police Department.
Maia Coleman
is a reporter for The Times covering the New York Police Department and
criminal justice in the New York area.
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