One more white-collar crypto investor has been arrested in connection to a weird and violent felony case involving an Italian crypto millionaire.
Final week, Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan, 28, reportedly broke unfastened from a ritzy condo in Manhattan’s Nolita neighborhood and alerted a visitors agent to his imprisonment and torture on the residence over a interval of roughly two weeks. The ordeal he later described to cops seemed like one thing out of a horror film: Carturan claimed to have been entrapped within the 17-room townhouse, the place he was tied up with electrical tape, pistol whipped, shocked with a taser whereas his toes have been positioned in water, and even threatened with a chainsaw. He additionally claims his captors dangled him off the roof of the constructing. Police sources say that Carturan’s account is basically backed up by Polaroids that have been taken of the crimes and left on the scene. The obvious motive for placing Carturan by means of all of this was to get the important thing to his crypto account, which was value hundreds of thousands of {dollars}, in response to a criminal complaint.
This week, 33-year-old William Duplessie, of Florida, turned himself in to police for his alleged function in that violent episode, the New York Occasions reported. He has been described as a crypto investor. Duplessie’s arrest follows the arrest of 37-year-old John Woeltz, who was taken into custody final week for his alleged function within the alleged kidnapping and torture of Carturan. Woeltz, described as a crypto investor from Kentucky, was reportedly renting the $30k-a-month condo the place Carturan’s grisly ordeal is alleged to have taken place.
A 24-year-old girl named Beatrice Folchi was additionally arrested final week and was equally charged with kidnapping and illegal imprisonment. Nevertheless, Folchi was launched after the Manhattan DA’s Workplace declined to prosecute her pending additional investigation, the New York Put up reported. Folchi was later seen out on the streets of New York and denied to reporters that she had been arrested. It’s unclear what her precise connection to Woeltz and Duplessie is. She has alternately been described as an “actress,” a advertising specialist, and Woeltz’s assistant.
New York Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch subsequently stated that Duplessie could be “charged, with Mr. Woeltz, with kidnapping and false imprisonment of an affiliate.”
A swell of violent crime has swept the crypto group over the previous 12 months. Kidnappings, assaults, and murders have focused high-profile HODLers, as organized (and never so organized) felony teams have smelled alternative within the offline holdings of crypto buyers.
