For months, two cryptocurrency investors pressured their longtime friend to hand over his electronic devices and the passkey to a crypto account worth millions of dollars, according to prosecutors and an internal police report.
The investors, John Woeltz and William Duplessie, asked the man to meet three different times. At the first meeting, outside Manhattan, the investors persuaded the man, Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan, to give them some of his devices and the passkey, prosecutors said.
Then, months later, Mr. Woeltz and Mr. Duplessie invited Mr. Carturan to come to New York City for a second meeting, assuring him that they would return the money. Instead, prosecutors said, they demanded more of his devices and, feeling threatened, Mr. Carturan obliged.
But Mr. Woeltz and Mr. Duplessie wanted even more. Prosecutors said a third meeting, on May 6, led to Mr. Woeltz and Mr. Duplessie kidnapping and torturing Mr. Carturan in ways that included electrocution, pistol whipping and lighting him on fire.
The new details in the criminal case that has captured international attention emerged on Wednesday, when prosecutors unsealed a 12-count indictment charging Mr. Woeltz and Mr. Duplessie with first-degree kidnapping, assault and several other charges. It was the latest development in the sordid case against the investors who are accused of torturing Mr. Carturan for almost three weeks inside a luxury townhouse in Manhattan.
Both men were charged last month with torture and kidnapping in a lower court in Manhattan. The two have since been indicted by a grand jury, though the exact charges in the indictment had remained sealed until Wednesday’s hearing.
Mr. Woeltz and Mr. Duplessie sat in a chilly courtroom in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday morning wearing prison jumpsuits, their wrists cuffed behind their backs. They were seated at the defense table flanked by their lawyers and a ring of New York State court officers, as a gaggle of reporters and photographers looked on from the gallery.
It was the first time that both men had appeared in court together since their arrests in May. They are being held without bail at the Rikers Island jail complex.
During the hearing, prosecutors painted a picture of a yearslong friendship between the three men that devolved into a violent scheme, leaving Mr. Carturan bloody and battered on the streets of downtown Manhattan last month.
But Mr. Woeltz and Mr. Duplessie’s lawyers pushed back on the prosecutors’ account of the events, calling it an “entirely false” narrative and arguing instead that Mr. Carturan had been a willing participant in a three-week bender at the townhouse.
Both lawyers said they had spoken with witnesses who were inside the house at various points, and obtained video showing Mr. Carturan laughing, smiling and “having the time of his life,” including smoking crack cocaine and taking part in a sex orgy.
During his period of captivity, Mr. Carturan had gone to dinners, clubs and church, the lawyers said. At times, they said, he was walking around the neighborhood alone.
He had the opportunity “to say, ‘Hey, I’m being tortured. Hey, I’m being kidnapped,’” Sanford Talkin, Mr. Duplessie’s lawyer, said. “He didn’t because that wasn’t the case.”
The episode, which took place in the heart of NoLIta, one of the city’s busiest and wealthiest neighborhoods, spilled into view last month, when Mr. Carturan fled the luxe townhouse where prosecutors say Mr. Woeltz and Mr. Duplessie had been holding him against his will.
Mr. Carturan and Mr. Woeltz had ties to a crypto hedge fund in New York, according to an internal police report relayed by a law enforcement official. But Mr. Carturan and Mr. Woeltz had a falling out over money, and Mr. Carturan flew to Italy before Mr. Woeltz persuaded him to return to New York on May 6, according to prosecutors and the report.
A New York Police Department detective, who was providing security for the townhouse, drove Mr. Carturan from the airport to the NoLita home, according to two city officials with knowledge of the matter.
The department is investigating the detective, Roberto Cordero, who has also served for years on Mayor Eric Adams’s security detail, and a second detective, Raymond J. Low, who also provided security for the house.
When Mr. Carturan arrived at the home, Mr. Woeltz and Mr. Duplessie took him captive and confiscated his phone, setting off a nearly three-week period during which they urinated on Mr. Carturan, bound him with electrical cords and cut him with a small chain saw, all in an effort to gain access to more of his passwords and money, according to prosecutors and the report.
The men also arranged for Mr. Carturan to be photographed so that it would appear that he was not being held against his will, prosecutors said.
But on May 23, Mr. Carturan escaped.
After weeks of captivity, Mr. Carturan managed to slip out of the house when Mr. Woeltz left the room the men were in, prosecutors said. After fleeing, he ran down the block — barefoot and bleeding from the head — and alerted a traffic agent at the corner of Mulberry and Spring Streets. In surveillance video obtained by NBC 4, he can be seen running down the block in a state of apparent distress.
Mr. Carturan then recounted his harrowing story to the police.
Another person at the townhouse, Beatrice Folchi, 24, was charged by the police with kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment in May, but she was released and her prosecution was deferred, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the matter.
On Tuesday, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced that it was conducting an investigation with the police in Smithland, Ky., in connection with the case.
Federal authorities obtained a search warrant for a home in Smithland where Mr. Woeltz and Mr. Duplessie had been staying earlier this year, according to public records and a law enforcement official. Authorities recovered 16 guns from the property, all of which were legal, the official said.