'Crypto king' turned NYC townhouse into torture chamber to gain partner Bitcoin(nbcnewyork.com)
nbcnewyork.com
'Crypto king' turned NYC townhouse into torture chamber to gain partner Bitcoin
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/new-york-city/manhattan-crypto-kidnapping-torture-bitcoin-password/6277345/
42 comments
The guy is worth $100m and torturing someone for their holdings... seems like there is a lot more to this story than what is being reported.
maybe the first 100m was also from torture/killing for passwords.
so, its just a habit now..
Makes you wonder if the story being reported is true, it sounds a bit bizarre and almost like some sort of an experiment.
So you think the police haven't arrested him and charged him? Its an experiment for an NBC affiliate to report complete falsehoods about their local police department and hope the department doesn't call them out on it?
He is likely just not very smart: "Law enforcement sources said they turned up multiple Polaroid pictures of the victim being tied up and tortured"
"The victim told the police Woeltz and the other man beat him, shocked him, hit him with a gun and pointed it at his head, and dangled him from the top of the five-story home, threatening to kill him. They also cut his leg with a saw, he said, threatened to kill his family and forced him to smoke crack cocaine, the New York Daily News reported."
That's not a fun experience.
That's not a fun experience.
[deleted]
Not doing much to break the stereotypes
From the guardian
>Woeltz and two accomplices allegedly detained and tortured the 28-year-old man in the home Woeltz had been renting for roughly $30,000 a month. The alleged victim told the police he arrived in the US on 6 May, when he was kidnapped by Woeltz.
I feel like Woeltz would have been better off simply finding a cheaper apartment. Every month he doesnt live in NY he is up 30k?
>Woeltz and two accomplices allegedly detained and tortured the 28-year-old man in the home Woeltz had been renting for roughly $30,000 a month. The alleged victim told the police he arrived in the US on 6 May, when he was kidnapped by Woeltz.
I feel like Woeltz would have been better off simply finding a cheaper apartment. Every month he doesnt live in NY he is up 30k?
Yesterday I saw a tiktok influencer ad for an new app that professes to be the uber of protective services (bodyguards) - also more and more high net worth individuals in my tech/finance networks are traveling to public events/meetups etc with security. I hope these things need not become trends.
> Law enforcement sources said they turned up multiple Polaroid pictures of the victim being tied up and tortured.
It is so convenient when criminals collect evidence against themselves.
It is so convenient when criminals collect evidence against themselves.
There's a whole class of youtube content around these types of criminals (see lawyer Bruce Rivers and his "stop self-snitching" merch)
Good thing Coinbase just leaked their customer PII so this can become a common story.
Good thing the govt requires KYC to make these things possible.
Imagine being filthy rich and thinking, "You know what? I'm going to risk going to jail to do illegal things because I'm not rich enough."
Why is this so common?
Why is this so common?
I think it's because there's nothing left to do except amass more money and power. Like most billionaires can do whatever they want, but they keep working, or are in the public eye. Why?
Plenty of rich folks keep their head down, bribe politicians (call it lobbying), and just keep getting what they want quietly.
Rich mafia bosses also kill people. It's their lifestyle.
I don't think it is common, plenty of rich folks out there who do just fine.
We just hear about the bad ones.
I grew up in a smaller town in the midwest. There were some neighbors, bunch of old guy friends living in post WWII era baby boomer houses just down a few blocks. Nice guys, they were small town attorneys, politicians, small businessmen who ran some very humble businesses, and etc. They all drove 10 year old basic cars, golfed together on men's night, mowed their own lawns until they couldn't anymore.
It wasn't until I was older that I realized that they were all on the board of a local community bank that they started long ago. Over the years the bank grew, absorbed other banks.
Everyone of them was worth somewhere in the dozens of millions of dollars.
You would never know it.
We just hear about the bad ones.
I grew up in a smaller town in the midwest. There were some neighbors, bunch of old guy friends living in post WWII era baby boomer houses just down a few blocks. Nice guys, they were small town attorneys, politicians, small businessmen who ran some very humble businesses, and etc. They all drove 10 year old basic cars, golfed together on men's night, mowed their own lawns until they couldn't anymore.
It wasn't until I was older that I realized that they were all on the board of a local community bank that they started long ago. Over the years the bank grew, absorbed other banks.
Everyone of them was worth somewhere in the dozens of millions of dollars.
You would never know it.
In the US, there are 800 billionaires. There are 5.5 million people that millionaires by liquid assets alone, and at least another 17 million by net value from things like retirement accounts or home value.
Odds are pretty decent you know one of them, or know someone who does, and probably don't even realize it.
Odds are pretty decent you know one of them, or know someone who does, and probably don't even realize it.
Did he get the crypto?
Or did the Hostage disprove xkcd?
Or did the Hostage disprove xkcd?
Context: https://xkcd.com/538/
5$ wrench attack
i guess underworld types don't have wrenches within easy reach - knives is their thing in Europe.
see https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/05/we-have-reached-the...
see https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/05/we-have-reached-the...
jaakl(1)
jrflowers(2)
This tragic, horrifying, and truly disgusting story is now going to be my go-to whenever I have to rebut all those people on HN who insist that if the perpetrator successfully acquired the bitcoin, 1) he in no way "stole" it, 2) he morally and legally owns it now, 3) his other actions don't forfeit his title of ownership, 4) any attempt by an authority to recover the bitcoin is unjust, and 5) the Ledger is the infallible source of Truth and, thence, Morality.
I’ve never heard anyone claim any of those things to be true.
Really?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43569009
> Blockchain is a perfect, transparent trustless global ledger that can't be hacked, so it's a misnomer to characterise these transactions as "cheating", "crimes" or "theft".
> What laws are a North Korean subject to that they have broken? Who decides when a transaction was cheating or stealing without a central authority and enforcer?
> To add to the other comments: do you really have a right to whatever it is that the bits unlocked by that key represent? Who granted you that? AFAICT, it's the systems running the blockchain that grants you that, and it's not governed by any contract outside the blockchain.
> I'm sorry, on the Blockchain we don't recognize legacy concepts like dead-tree nation state laws or ancient superstitions purporting to define morality. The future is all about registering ownership information in digital ledgers.
> I thought this was one of crypto's primary use cases? A kind of "anything goes, anything you can get away with is allowed" sort of approach.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43681658
> He did not steal anything. He beat the fund (Indexed Finance) at their own game. He has not stolen anybody's password, has not modified DeFI code - simply executed a set of financial transactions according to the rules (expressed as DeFI smart contracts) and profited from it.
> This. If you believe in cryptocurrencies, you can't run to the courts when people use them as designed, even if they didn't use them as intended.
> Yup. Exactly. "The code is law". Well, sometimes you learn you're not as good at code as you thought you were.
> If what is written on the blockchain is not the law in the context of anything involving blockchains and DeFi, then the whole idea of blockchains and decentralized finance is pointless.
> My personal belief is that this was not fraud and "Code is Law" works.
> Court was outside its jurisdiction here. The fact that the case went forward shows that he was about to be railroaded by corrupt authorities.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43569009
> Blockchain is a perfect, transparent trustless global ledger that can't be hacked, so it's a misnomer to characterise these transactions as "cheating", "crimes" or "theft".
> What laws are a North Korean subject to that they have broken? Who decides when a transaction was cheating or stealing without a central authority and enforcer?
> To add to the other comments: do you really have a right to whatever it is that the bits unlocked by that key represent? Who granted you that? AFAICT, it's the systems running the blockchain that grants you that, and it's not governed by any contract outside the blockchain.
> I'm sorry, on the Blockchain we don't recognize legacy concepts like dead-tree nation state laws or ancient superstitions purporting to define morality. The future is all about registering ownership information in digital ledgers.
> I thought this was one of crypto's primary use cases? A kind of "anything goes, anything you can get away with is allowed" sort of approach.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43681658
> He did not steal anything. He beat the fund (Indexed Finance) at their own game. He has not stolen anybody's password, has not modified DeFI code - simply executed a set of financial transactions according to the rules (expressed as DeFI smart contracts) and profited from it.
> This. If you believe in cryptocurrencies, you can't run to the courts when people use them as designed, even if they didn't use them as intended.
> Yup. Exactly. "The code is law". Well, sometimes you learn you're not as good at code as you thought you were.
> If what is written on the blockchain is not the law in the context of anything involving blockchains and DeFi, then the whole idea of blockchains and decentralized finance is pointless.
> My personal belief is that this was not fraud and "Code is Law" works.
> Court was outside its jurisdiction here. The fact that the case went forward shows that he was about to be railroaded by corrupt authorities.
[flagged]
Yes, my intention was to point to the host of comments taking the most extreme postures. If they are weak strawman arguments, that's their own doing, not mine.
GP said they had never seen any of these, so a cherry pick is exactly what was asked for.
I cannot understand how you misread my post as a claim that there is widespread support for torture on HN.
> I doubt anyone sane who defended the guy in your latter HN post link would also justify imprisoning someone in a homemade dungeon to mutilate them until they give you their private keys.
Thanks. You are making my argument for me. I wish all 11 people I quoted earlier could hear this.
GP said they had never seen any of these, so a cherry pick is exactly what was asked for.
I cannot understand how you misread my post as a claim that there is widespread support for torture on HN.
> I doubt anyone sane who defended the guy in your latter HN post link would also justify imprisoning someone in a homemade dungeon to mutilate them until they give you their private keys.
Thanks. You are making my argument for me. I wish all 11 people I quoted earlier could hear this.