Second crypto investor charged in alleged kidnapping, torture for Bitcoin access

A second person has been arrested in connection with the kidnapping and torture of a man held for weeks over access to his Bitcoin password. 

The arrest of 32-year-old William Duplessie on Tuesday comes after police say a 28-year-old Italian national escaped from weeks of captivity in a New York City apartment. Prosecutors said the victim was bound at the wrists, beaten, shocked with electric wires, drugged, hit in the head with a firearm and dangled over the top of stairs while being held, all to gain access to his Bitcoin password. 

New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told “Good Day New York” that Duplessie turned himself in. 

Another cryptocurrency investor, John Woeltz, was arrested Friday and pleaded not guilty on Saturday to the charges he faces, including kidnapping, assault, unlawful imprisonment and criminal possession of a firearm. He is being held without bail. 

Tisch said the two suspects are currently the only ones that the department is looking at, but “there may be others.” 

Duplessie is charged with two counts of kidnapping and one count each of assault, unlawful imprisonment and criminal possession of a weapon, according to the complaint against him. 

The Associated Press reported that authorities said the two suspects lured the victim into an eight-bedroom townhouse in the Soho neighborhood of Manhattan. 

The complaint states that the defendants also pointed a gun at the victim’s head and threatened to kill him and his family if he did not provide the Bitcoin password.

The victim eventually gave his password to the men on Friday as he believed he would soon be killed and took an opportunity to escape and flag down a traffic officer when they went to get his computer. 

The Manhattan district attorney’s office also confirmed that a third individual, Beatrice Folchi, was arrested in connection with the situation, but the office declined to prosecute her at this time “pending further investigation.” 

The Hill has reached out to the New York City Police Department for additional information. 

Folchi told The New York Post in an interview she’s “not arrested” and “everything is going to be told but with a lawyer.”

This story was updated at 10:47 a.m. on May 28.