At the beginning of the year, I wrote about a really awful kidnapping incident that happened in France, where a gang of somewhere between 20 and 40 thugs burst into the country home of a crypto firm's founder. Insult to injury, the fellow didn't even work there anymore, but no matter. They hauled him and his wife away, cut off one of his fingers to send to a business associate (!) with a ransom demand, and waited for the money to come in. Luckily, a French tactical police unit figured out where they were and got them both out safely.

If only they were outliers in France. Apparently, crypto kidnappings are the in-thing. 

French Crypto Chiefs Step Up Security After String of Violent Kidnappings

Big players in the crypto sector argue that new European cryptocurrency rules may be enabling recent abductions and are demanding changes and more security.

In fact, just two weeks ago, kidnappers were filmed trying to snatch the pregnant daughter of a crypto executive along with her two-year-old right off a Paris city street in broad daylight.  

Kidnapping businessmen and moguls for ransom has always kind of struck me as a uniquely European or South American problem. It's almost always some sort of organized crime or drug cartel doing it, and you rarely, if ever, hear of such things in the States - certainly never on the scale seen elsewhere.

I might be due for a reassessment, though, after what happened in New York City a week ago. Things could be changing.

In case you missed it when I posted it in our headlines, let me share what the New York Post had in bold, black print when this first broke. 

It's a pretty shocking headline for one of our American newspapers.

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

 I mean, this isn't something that happens every day here.

And when you read the story, it was as if The Silence of the Lambs and The Bonfire of the Vanities had collided and had some sort of demented hybrid spawn. 

Filthy rich elites suffer a reversal of fortune, which threatens their lifestyle, instinctively react with kidnapping, and then metaphorically torture someone in the derelict basement well of an isolated cottage for weeks.

Only this was a $40,000-a-month crib in the middle of Manhattan.

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.

IT PUTS THE PASSWORDS IN THE BASKET

...The ordeal began May 6, when the businessman arrived in New York City from Italy and went to meet Woeltz, with whom he apparently had past business dealings, according to sources.

But when the man went to the posh pad, the crypto bigshot snatched his passport and tied him up, sources said.

The man suffered days of torture that were documented by Polaroids – which likely were intended to be used to extort money, either from the victim or his family back in Italy, according to sources.

Police found the photos scattered throughout the blood-soaked makeshift torture chamber, along with several implements of terror – broken glass, night vision goggles, a bulletproof vest and a gun – in plain sight, sources said.

The man had a wound on his arm that is believed to be a cut from the chainsaw, according to the sources.

Here's the video of the moment as the poor guy runs up to an NYPD officer after escaping from the House of Horrors.