2 NYPD detectives on leave in connection with crypto torture case

SOHO, New York City -- Two New York Police Department detectives were placed on modified duty after the department learned they had a prior connection to the Manhattan townhouse where an Italian businessman was allegedly held and tortured.

One off-duty detective drove the victim from the airport to the SoHo townhouse on May 6, sources told ABC News.

The 20-year veteran detective has been assigned to the NYPD's Executive Protection Unit, which handles the mayor's security, since December 2021.

The detective works as part of the advance team, which checks out locations before the mayor arrives.

He was allegedly working an off-duty security job, employed by one of the two crypto suspects at the time when he drove the victim to the townhome, sources said.

A second detective was also reportedly paid by one of the suspects, as off-duty security.

The Internal Affairs investigation is underway into how long the two were employed by the crypto suspects and whether the employment had been approved internally.

MORE | What we know about the NYC crypto kidnapping and torture case

NYPD members are not permitted to work for private security without going through a strict series of approvals.

Officials said the two detectives had no knowledge of illegal or inappropriate behavior at the townhome and that the mayor also had no knowledge or connection to the two crypto suspects.

"Every city employee is expected to follow the law, including our officers, both on and off duty. We are disturbed by these allegations, and as soon as it came to our attention, the officers were placed on modified duty," a statement from the mayor's office said.

Also on Thursday, a grand jury indicted a cryptocurrency investor who was charged with kidnapping and torturing a man for weeks in an upscale Manhattan townhouse in order to gain access to his Bitcoin.

John Woeltz, 37, has been jailed since his arrest Friday outside the luxury rental, where an Italian national told police he was severely beaten, drugged, shocked with electrical wires and dangled over a ledge by captors seeking the password to his digital assets.

Woeltz's alleged accomplice, William Duplessie, surrendered to police Tuesday and is awaiting his own indictment.

At the hearing Thursday, an attorney for Woeltz requested his client be released on a $2 million bond, citing his lack of criminal record, philosophy degree and professional accomplishments.

"He's been very successful in the technology world," the attorney, Wayne Gosnell, told a Manhattan judge, adding that his client "has every intention to fight this case."

The judge denied bail for Woeltz, who did not appear in court.

Gosnell also requested that Woeltz not be required to turn over firearms that he legally owns in Kentucky. And he disputed the prosecutor's earlier claims that his client owned a private jet and helicopter.

"He has no means to flee," Gosnell said.

Woeltz has described himself in interviews as a blockchain investor who spent time in Silicon Valley before returning to Kentucky's burgeoning crypto-mining industry.

Authorities have said Woeltz and Duplessie, another cryptocurrency investor, knew the victim personally.

On May 6, they are accused of luring the man, whose name has not been released by officials, to a posh townhouse in Manhattan's Soho neighborhood, one of the city's most expensive, by threatening to kill his family.

The man said he was then held captive for 17 days, as the two investors allegedly tormented him with electrical wires, forced him to smoke from a crack pipe and at one point dangled him from a staircase five stories high.

He eventually agreed to hand over his computer password Friday morning, then managed to flee the home as his captors went to retrieve the device. The victim made it onto the street, bloodied and shoeless, according to police.

A search of the townhouse turned up cocaine, a saw, chicken wire, body armor, night vision goggles, ammunition and Polaroid photos of the victim with a gun pointed to his head, according to prosecutors.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.