In a deeply fucked up story that National Zero failed to pick up last week, two crypto industry douchebags – John Woeltz, 37 and William Duplessie, 32, stand accused of torturing an Italian national for 17 days in a luxury Manhattan townhouse, tying him up and repeatedly beating him, electrocuting him, dangling him over the edge of a five-story staircase shaft, and forcing him to smoke crack in order to force his crypto wallet passwords out of him so they could steal $30 million of the digital Monopoly money. The man escaped shortly afterward and Woeltz was arrested at the scene. Duplessie partied in the Hamptons all weekend before turning himself in on Tuesday.
And it gets more fucked up: WNBC reports that the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau is investigating a detective on Mayor Eric Adams’s personal security detail who also moonlighted as protection for Woeltz. While that in and of itself is not alarming as the practice is fairly common in the NYPD and the department has a process for cops to register such off-hours work, WNBC’s report mentions that the IAB is looking into whether the detective had picked the unnamed Italian man from the airport and drove him to Woeltz’s townhouse. It’s not clear yet whether the detective ever sought approval to work for Woeltz, but either way this story was already pretty dark before that part.
Now it’s getting awfully close to the “New York’s Finest Taxi Service” bit from The Usual Suspects.