Crypto businessman accused of kidnapping and torture of business partner in SoHo apartment

A man accused of kidnapping and torturing a former crypto business partner for several weeks in an apartment in Soho has been ordered to be detained without bail, NYPD informs.

John Woeltz, 37, was brought to court on Saturday morning after being arrested and charged with assault, kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment and illegal possession of firearms. 

The judge in the case took Woeltz into custody and ordered him to hand over his passport. The next court hearing is scheduled for May 28. 

Police have arrested and charged two people, including Woeltz, in connection with the incident at an apartment in Soho on Friday. 

Officials say Woeltz lived at an address on Prince Street. A second suspect, a woman, was also arrested but has not been charged. According to the NYPD, another male suspect is still at large. 

Police reported that the group lived in an apartment on Prince Street, which turned into a house of horrors after they allegedly lured a former partner in a cryptocurrency business from Italy to get a password to access his cryptocurrency account, and then tortured him for several weeks. 

Woeltz, a crypto entrepreneur, was taken into custody barefoot and in a bathrobe on Friday after the 28-year-old victim escaped in the morning and ran to a traffic warden for help. 

Police arrived at the luxurious brownstone house on Prince Street while detectives tried to make sense of the depraved story they had heard from the victim, who said he had been held captive for weeks. 

The 28-year-old victim told police that he arrived from Italy on May 6 and went to the house on Prince Street. He told detectives that they had taken his passport and tortured him for the past two weeks. 

Police said the group was trying to extort millions from him in cryptocurrency by luring him out of Italy. Investigators said they tied him up with electric cords and tortured him with electric shocks and other types of shock therapy.

They also allegedly tasered him when he kept his feet in the water, beat him with a pistol and threatened to cut off his limbs with an electric chain saw. 

The police said they had taken Polaroids of him being tortured, in one of them he was tied to a chair with a gun to his head. The Polaroids were probably intended to extort money from either the victim or his family in Italy. 

They also allegedly forced him to take drugs such as cocaine and used other psychological torture, telling him he would never escape. 

Police said the victim saw an opportunity to escape on Friday morning, as the men allegedly indicated that this would be the day of his death. 

When the police arrived, they found one resident in the bathroom upstairs, wearing a bathrobe. They took him into custody and are looking for several more people who lived in the house.

The victim sustained numerous cuts on his body from the torture, including one believed from the chainsaw and is being treated at Bellevue Hospital, police said.

Police said the 8-bedroom, 10 bathroom home was rented for $30,000 to $40,000 a month. It sits back from the sidewalk on the busy block of Prince Street in SoHo.