Italian man kidnapped in bizarre NY crypto plot

NEW YORK: A cryptocurrency investor has been charged with kidnapping an Italian man for weeks, threatening and torturing him with a gun and a chainsaw in a grisly bid to extort his Bitcoin password, court documents and US media said.

In a plot like a bad Hollywood thriller, New York police told AFP on Sunday that they arrested 37-year-old John Woeltz, a Kentucky man, on Friday in the posh Manhattan apartment he was renting.

Woeltz was charged on Saturday with kidnapping, assault and criminal possession of a gun and pleaded not guilty, according to documents seen by AFP. A second person, 24-year-old Beatrice Folchi, is also being held.

The police said the victim, a 28-year-old Italian whose name has not been released, managed to escape and ran up to a traffic agent with a horrific tale of having been held, bound and tortured for weeks before managing to escape from Woeltz´s townhouse.