The 37-year-old Crypto trader accused of kidnapping a 28-year-old Italian man inside a luxurious SoHo apartment repeatedly shocked his victim with electric wires, held him upside down from the top of a staircase, cut his leg with a saw and threatened to kill the victim’s family — all to get the password to the man’s Bitcoin account, prosecutors said Saturday.

Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Eric Schumacher ordered John Woeltz held without bail on assault and kidnapping charges as police continued to search for his accomplice. He also issued a restraining order against Woeltz, so if he does get out of jail, he can’t go anywhere near his victim.

A second alleged accomplice, a 24-year-old woman, was arrested late Friday but prosecutors declined to bring charges. Detectives on Saturday were still going through the Soho home, bringing out large paper evidence bags.

Prosecutors said the victim arrived in the U.S. on May 6 and visited Woeltz. The two men share interests in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, cops said.

The extortion plot was uncovered after Woeltz’s victim managed to escape his swanky Prince and Mulberry Sts. home in SoHo Friday morning and wave down an NYPD traffic enforcement agent, who called police.

Responding officers found Woeltz in the $30,000-a-month, eight-bedroom apartment swaddled in a plush white bathrobe.

“The guy comes out in a white bathrobe, barefoot, hands cuffed behind his back, got into a police car,” Ciaran Tully, 64, a vendor who sells photographs on Prince St., told the Daily News Friday. “He didn’t look concerned. He didn’t look worried or anything like that.”

Trading in his robe for a white T-shirt, black pants and black and white-striped Adidas slides, Woeltz said nothing as Assistant District Attorney Jillian Shartrand laid out the case against him.

“Upon arriving at the home, [Woeltz and his accomplice] took all of the victim’s electronics and his passport, rendering the victim unable to call for help,” Shartrand said.

The two bound their victim’s wrists and over the next three weeks subjected him to “beatings including but not limited to the use of electric wires to shock him, using a firearm to hit him on the head, and pointing the firearm at his head on several occasions,” Shartrand explained. “[They] used a saw to cut his leg, urinated on the victim, forced him to smoke crack cocaine by holding him down and forcing it into his mouth.”

The duo also “tied an airtag around his neck with a chain or wire,” Shartrand said.  “They [said they] would kill his family and they would find the victim if he left.”

After apprehending Woeltz, cops found disturbing Polaroid photos of him and his accomplice torturing their victim and holding a gun to his head.

Sometime during the victim’s capture, Woeltz and his accomplice managed to get printed T-shirts of the victim smoking crack. The shirts were found in the home, along with body armor, night vision goggles, ammunition and ballistic helmets, officials said.

The crypto trader refused to talk to police after he was arrested.

“He lawyered up immediately,” a police source said.

Originally Published: May 24, 2025 at 1:00 PM EDT