NEW YORK – Two men pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to expenses they kidnapped a person for 3 weeks in Manhattan’s upscale SoHo neighborhood, shocked him with electrical wires and dangled him over a staircase to attempt to get him to surrender his bitcoin password.
John Woeltz, 37, and William Duplessie, 33, have been detained since their arrests final month on kidnapping and different expenses. Each defendants withstand life in jail if convicted.
Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Lawyer’s workplace stated Duplessie and Woeltz on Could 6 took a man’s electronics and password and demanded that he share his password so they may steal his cryptocurrency.
When the person refused to share his password, Duplessie and Woeltz started a sequence of brutal beatings over three weeks in a luxurious townhouse till the person managed to flee, prosecutors stated. Duplessie and Woeltz tied the person’s wrists, hit him on the top with a gun and threatened to kill his household, in keeping with prison complaints towards the 2 men filed in court docket.
Justice Gregory Carro ordered the 2 defendants to be detained with out bail a minimum of till their subsequent listening to on July 15.
Native media have referred to as Woeltz a cryptocurrency investor and described the alleged sufferer as an Italian man. Each Woeltz and the alleged sufferer had ties to a crypto hedge fund in New York, the New York Occasions reported, citing an inner police report described by a regulation enforcement official.
The alleged incident comes as three cryptocurrency-linked kidnappings or kidnapping makes an attempt have taken place in France thus far this yr. The fast rise in the worth of bitcoin and different cryptocurrencies in current years has created a brand new group of rich traders who may very well be tempting targets for criminals, in keeping with safety consultants. REUTERS
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