Tag: kidnappings

The Rise And Fall Of Two Crypto Traders Who Tortured A Bitcoin Millionaire For His Password

A shocking crypto kidnapping case involving two self-styled traders has rocked New York. On May 23, Italian crypto millionaire Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan escaped from a luxury townhouse in New York’s upscale SoHo neighbourhood, running barefoot onto a city street and flagging down a traffic officer, according to The New York Post. Carturan told police he had been kidnapped and held captive for nearly three weeks by John Woeltz and William Duplessie.

Prosecutors alleged that during his captivity, Carturan was tortured with a chainsaw and tased while standing in water, and at one point was hung off a roof ledge in a bid to force him to reveal the password to his Bitcoin wallet, reportedly worth $30 million.

According to ABC News, prosecutors said Woeltz and Duplessie lured Carturan to New York by threatening to have his family killed. Once he arrived, they allegedly stripped him of his passport and electronics, bound his wrists, beat him, shocked his feet, struck him in the head with a gun, cut his leg with a saw, urinated on him, and forcibly made him smoke crack cocaine.

Prosecutors said Carturan eventually escaped after convincing his captors to retrieve his laptop so he could access his Bitcoin wallet. When Woeltz left to get the laptop, Carturan ran out and sought help.

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Crypto investor allegedly tortured captive Italian businessman with a chainsaw for weeks in luxe NYC pad in sadistic scheme to gain password: sources

A cryptocurrency investor from Kentucky is suspected of torturing an Italian businessman with a chainsaw in a sadistic, weeks-long extortion attempt to gain the password for his accounts at a ritzy Manhattan apartment – before the captive made a daring escape, police sources said.

John Woeltz, 37, was arrested after the bloodied and bruised businessman – a 28 year-old man – broke out of the SoHo house of horrors Friday morning, ran to a police officer and said he’d been held prisoner for more than two weeks, the sources said.

Cops rushed to the luxurious Prince Street pad – which Woeltz was allegedly renting for roughly $30,000 to $40,000 a month – and discovered multiple Polaroid photos showing the businessman being tied up with electrical wire and tortured, including one of him bound to a chair with a gun pointed at his head, according to the sources.

Since being taken captive, the businessman had been bound with an electric cord, Tased while his feet were put in water, pistol-whipped, forced to take cocaine and threatened to have his limbs cut off with an electric chainsaw, the sources said.

The nightmare erupted from a dispute over cryptocurrency, in which the suspect allegedly tried to extort millions of dollars from the man by unleashing a litany of horrific tortures, according to sources.

The man was rushed to Bellevue Hospital for treatment, while cops arrested Woeltz, who was expected to face an assault charge, the sources said.

Woeltz was charged Friday night with two counts of second-degree assault, first-degree kidnapping, first-degree, first degree unlawful imprisonment and criminal possession of a weapon.

A second person — 24-year-old Beatrice Folchi of Manhattan — was also arrested and charged with first-degree kidnapping and first-degree unlawful imprisonment.

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Colombian woman sentenced in Florida to 20 years in prison for kidnapping, drugging two US soldiers in Bogotá

A Colombian national has been sentenced to over 20 years in federal prison for her role in the drugging, kidnapping, and robbery of two US military service members in Bogotá, Colombia.

Kenny Julieth Uribe Chiran, 35, was sentenced in the Southern District of Florida to 262 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. She was also ordered to pay $24,115 in restitution. In March 2025, she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to kidnap internationally protected persons.

According to the US Justice Department, the incident occurred on the evening of March 5, 2020. The two US soldiers, on temporary duty in Bogotá, had visited a local pub in an entertainment district after watching a soccer match. There, Uribe Chiran and a co-conspirator approached them and secretly drugged their drinks with benzodiazepines. Once incapacitated, the soldiers were kidnapped, robbed of valuables and financial information, and later abandoned in separate locations across the city.

“Uribe Chiran and her co-defendants mercilessly preyed on US soldiers when they drugged their drinks, stole their valuables, and left them incapacitated on the street,” said Matthew R. Galeotti, Head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “Kidnapping and assaulting two US military service members is deplorable, and the Criminal Division will continue to prioritize protecting our service members through these prosecutions.”

US Attorney Hayden P. O’Byrne for the Southern District of Florida echoed that sentiment: “Kidnappings and assaults against US service members will not be tolerated. To those who would dare commit such reprehensible acts against America’s heroes, know this: We will identify you; we will find you; and we will prosecute you as aggressively as the law permits.”

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Jewish ‘cult’ leaders sentenced for kidnap of 2 NY kids, including a child bride, in twisted sex scheme

Leaders of a Jewish fundamentalist cult were sentenced to more than a decade behind bars for kidnapping two kids— including a child bride – then smuggling them into Mexico, prosecutors said.

Three brothers, who are members of the Lev Tahor sect, allegedly forced the girl back into the arms of her adult “husband” in a sickening and sophisticated sex scheme.

Yakov Weingarten, 34; Smiel Weingarten, 28; and Yoil Weingarten, 36; were sentenced Tuesday for snatching the children from their upstate New York home in 2018 after their mother fled Lev Tahor, a group of zealots who practice stomach-churning habits like child marriages, underage sex and family separations, US Attorney Damian Williams said Wednesday.

The brothers — who live in Guatemala — used a variety of disguises, aliases, drop phones, fake travel documents and encrypted apps to pull off the 3 a.m. kidnapping that December day, then smuggle the brother and sister across the border, the feds said.

Local, federal and international authorities launched a massive three-week search that eventually found Yante Teller, 14, and Chaim Teller, 12, and returned them to their mother.

In March, a federal jury convicted the trio of child sexual exploitation and kidnapping charges.

As punishment, US District Judge Nelson Román has sentenced Yakov and Smiel to 14 years in prison, and Yoil to 12 years, the feds said.

“The sentencing of the Weingarten brothers holds them accountable for kidnapping children from their mother in the middle of the night, including for the purpose of coercing a child into a sexual relationship with an adult,” Williams said in a statement.

“This Office will do everything in its power to protect children and use every available tool to investigate and prosecute those who sexually exploit them.”

The twisted saga began in 2017, when Lev Tahor leaders arranged for Yante — then just 12-years-old –to marry an 18-year-old man, the feds said.

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Appeals Court Hammers Prosecution About FBI Conduct In Whitmer Kidnap Plot

The much-anticipated appeal hearing was held Thursday for Barry Croft and Adam Fox, the alleged “ringleaders” of the 2020 militia conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Croft and Fox were convicted of plotting to kidnap Whitmer after their second trial in late 2022. At their first trial earlier that year, a jury acquitted two other men while failing to reach a verdict for Croft and Fox.

The two men appealed their convictions on multiple grounds. Thursday’s hearing focused largely on the conduct of FBI informants and their handling agents.

Croft’s attorney, Timothy Sweeney, argued that his client should get a retrial because he wasn’t allowed to introduce numerous text messages that showed improper conduct by the FBI.

Those text messages showed how FBI informants were pressuring Fox and Croft to formulate a plan against Whitmer. A list of the texts can be found in this document.

Representing the government, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler argued that the FBI text messages were irrelevant because Fox and Croft were already predisposed to committing an act of terrorism.

“All the [FBI] statements identified by defense go to inducement. If jury found they were predisposed [to kidnapping Whitmer], none of that matters,” Kessler said. “This court has held that entrapment can only happen if the government plants an idea in an innocent persons’ head.”

The appeals justices expressed skepticism about Kessler’s argument. One justice disagreed with the prosecutor’s reading of the law.

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Inside The FBI-Tainted Whitmer ‘Kidnap Plot’ You’ve Heard Almost Nothing About

In a fiery exchange last month, CNN anchorwoman Abby Phillip told GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy that there was “no evidence” to support his claim that federal agents abetted protesters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Ramaswamy shot back that the FBI conspicuously has never denied that law enforcement agents were on duty in the crowd. He argued that federal officials have repeatedly “lied” to the American people about not only that investigation but one that has gotten much less attention: the alleged failed plot to kidnap and kill Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan in 2020.

“It was entrapment,” Ramaswamy said. “FBI agents putting them up to a kidnapping plot that we were told was true but wasn’t.”

His zeroing in on the Michigan case highlighted an uncharacteristic development in contemporary politics, where progressives vigorously defend law enforcement power while conservatives view it with deep suspicion. Further, Ramaswamy’s linking of Jan. 6 and the Whitmer plot resonated with many on the right who want similarities between the two episodes exposed to the general public, especially the FBI’s reliance on informants and other paid operatives.

On Oct. 8, 2020, Whitmer announced the shocking arrests of several men accused of planning to kidnap and possibly assassinate her. The case produced alarming headlines just weeks before Election Day; Democrats, including Whitmer, used news of the plot to blame Trump for inciting violence.

Joe Biden commended the FBI for thwarting the abduction plan and, in a written statement issued the same day, claimed that “there is a through line from President Trump’s dog whistles and tolerance of hate, vengeance, and lawlessness to plots such as this one.” Biden continued that line of attack during campaign speeches in Michigan, a swing state that voted for Trump in 2016, and one Biden needed to capture to win the presidency.

In the years since the election, the national press has given little attention to the case since the initial arrests, even though court documents have recast the episode as something more sinister. Instead of a heroic effort by the FBI to safeguard the country from domestic terrorists, it now appears to have been a broad conspiracy by law enforcement to entrap American citizens who held unpopular political views.

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Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping Case: Bombshell New Theory Proposes Aviator Staged Abduction After Medical Experiments Killed His Son

Anew theory gaining ground about the notorious 1930s Lindbergh kidnapping suggests aviator Charles Lindbergh volunteered his child for medical research and staged the crime to cover up the baby’s death.

The true crime author and retired judge passionately promoting this idea says an innocent man was executed for the crime, Knewz.com has learned.

The high-profile New Jersey kidnapping-turned-murder has been a closed case since Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German native who lived in New York illegally, was convicted of the crime. Hauptmann maintained his innocence until the day he was sent to the electric chair.

Now, nearly a century later, “respected Bay Area historians are proposing a new, macabre theory about the case,” according to a Tuesday, January 2 report by The San Francisco Chronicle.

“A lot of leads weren’t followed, about a dozen state witnesses likely committed perjury, and the prosecution had 90,000 pages of investigation they didn’t let Hauptmann or his defense see,” retired judge and award-winning true crime author and filmmaker Lise Pearlman told The Chronicle. “The wrong man was executed, and my hope is that Hauptmann will be posthumously exonerated. And I am certainly not the only one who wants that.”

Pearlman believes Lindbergh was responsible for staging the kidnapping, and is pushing for New Jersey officials to release evidence from the case’s archives that may confirm these suspicions.

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‘He made it up’: Police say George Santos lied about Chinese communists kidnapping

During a series of phone calls with a New York Times journalist, Rep. George Santos (R-NY) claimed that his extended family was victimized by the Chinese Communist government which was behind the brief kidnapping of his niece.

According to a police official: it never happened.

In an extensive piece for the Times, journalist Grace Ashford detailed a history of receiving calls from the embattled lawmaker at all hours, where he alternately defended himself and complained about the turn his life has taken since entering Congress, one time claiming, “I literally threw my entire life into the toilet and flushed it to get elected.”

In the midst of those calls, he claimed his niece had been abducted in Queens and hinted the Chinese Communist government was possibly behind it.

According to Ashford, Santos was complaining about the threats he has faced when he confessed to her, “I’ll give you one, I’ll give you one story that nobody talks about,” she wrote before adding that he related, “… how his 5-year-old niece disappeared from a playground in Queens, only to be located 40 minutes later on a surveillance camera with two Chinese men. He said the incident was the subject of an active police investigation, implying heavily that it might have been in retaliation for his vocal stance against the Chinese Communist Party.”

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Disgraced Detective Arrested for Kidnapping Young Black Girls and Forcing Them into Sex Slave Ring

On Monday, the Department of Justice announced myriad charges against former Kansas City Police Department detective Roger Golubski and three other men – Cecil Brooks, LeMark Roberson and Richard Robinson. The group of men is alleged to have been kidnapping young Black girls and holding them in involuntary sex servitude.

The disturbing crimes are alleged to have taken place from 1996 to 1998 at a location in Kansas City. The four men held multiple young women as sex slaves at several units within Delevan Apartments, according to the DoJ.

“One of those units was a ‘relaxed’ area, where young girls used alcohol and drugs with the defendants, and another was ‘working house,’ where some girls were compelled to perform sexual services for adult men who visited Delevan,” the indictment says.

According to the indictment, Brooks, Roberson, and Robinson “provided drugs to the girls in the ‘working house,’ who were addicts.” They also allegedly “beat and threatened to beat girls who did not agree to provide sexual services in exchange for shelter, drugs, or clothes.”

Golubski used his badge to provide cover for the human trafficking operation and eventually became involved in the operation. Once he fully submersed himself in the criminal operation, Golubski allegedly had an affinity for young Black girls, according to authorities.

“At Delevan, Defendant ROGER GOLUBSKI primarily chose young Black girls, ranging in age from 13 to 17 years old, to submit to sex and to provide sexual services to him,” the indictment says.

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Body Found in Tennessee Confirmed as Missing Heiress Eliza Fletcher

Memphis police confirmed Tuesday that they found the remains of teacher Eliza “Liza” Fletcher, who was reportedly abducted last week

The police department wrote on Twitter that “the deceased victim that was located yesterday in the 1600 block of Victor [street] has been identified as 34-year-old Eliza Fletcher, a teacher who was also the heiress to the Orgill Inc. hardware fortune.

The development comes after Cleotha Abston, a 38-year-old male, was charged in connection to Fletcher’s kidnapping and with tampering with evidence. His DNA was found on a pair of sandals near her disappearance, police said.

Authorities wrote Tuesday that Abston now faces additional charges, including first-degree murder and first-degree murder in perpetration of kidnapping. Previously he was charged with aggravated kidnapping and evidence.

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