John Woeltz made headlines on Friday following his arrest in New York Metropolis for allegedly kidnapping and torturing a person in a bid to get entry to his Bitcoin password. Previous to that, the 37-year-old Woeltz as soon as held a really completely different repute as a rising star within the crypto world.
Woeltz, also referred to as the “crypto king of Kentucky,” was apprehended on Friday after a person escaped from his luxurious NoLIta residence and flagged down a visitors agent who known as police, in accordance with the New York Occasions. The sufferer, a 28-year-old Italian citizen named Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan, was allegedly held within the 17-room townhouse for 3 weeks.
Prosecutors allege that whereas in the home Woeltz and his alleged confederate, William Duplessie, who was arrested on Tuesday, tortured Carturan by pistol-whipping him, surprising him with a taser gun, forcing him to smoke crack cocaine and slicing his leg with a noticed, in accordance with CBS Information. Carturan instructed police that he was even suspended over a ledge on the high of the five-story house, in accordance with the New York Occasions.
The ordeal ensued after Carturan, a enterprise accomplice of Woeltz, arrived on the townhouse on Could 6. Woeltz and his confederate confiscated Carturan’s passport and digital gadgets, threatening to hurt him if he didn’t present the password to his Bitcoin pockets that held hundreds of thousands of {dollars} price of crypto.
Attorneys for Woeltz didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. Attorneys for Duplessie declined to remark when contacted by Fortune.
Woeltz grew up in Paducah, Kentucky, about 140 miles outdoors of Nashville, in accordance with an interview he gave to an area newspaper in 2020. After graduating from the College of Kentucky, Woeltz moved west to spend money on tech startups.
He entered the crypto house round 2018, when he served as a part of the profitable crew at ETHGlobal San Francisco hackathon, an annual occasion placed on by an Ethereum-focused group. He then went on to change into the managing director of Silicon River Capital and blockchain-based funding fund, in accordance with his interview within the native paper.
Extra lately, Woeltz grew to become concerned with the Bitcoin mining trade in Kentucky. He was chosen by the state workplace of expertise to hitch a working group targeted on utilizing blockchain expertise for “crucial infrastructure, public utilities, telecommunications, emergency companies,” in accordance with the group’s annual report.
Woeltz has been charged with kidnapping, assault, illegal imprisonment and legal possession of a firearm, in accordance with courtroom paperwork.
The New York Metropolis saga comes as simply the most recent in an epidemic 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 reveals bandits scheming to defeat excessive tech safeguards by hitting the sufferer with a wrench.
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
