Another High-Profile Judge Carro Case: Crypto Defendant Accused in SoHo Torture Plot Set for Bond After Year at Rikers
Another High-Profile Judge Carro Case: Crypto Defendant Accused in SoHo Torture Plot Set for Bond After Year at Rikers
By Michele Evans
New York City, New York
5/27/2026
Category: Courts / Criminal Justice / Advocacy
New York City, New York - A Manhattan criminal case involving alleged kidnapping, torture, cryptocurrency, a luxury SoHo townhouse, and a year at Rikers Island is back in the news, and once again, Justice Gregory Carro is at the center of a case drawing public attention.
According to the New York Post, William Duplessie, one of two men charged in the alleged kidnapping and torture of Italian crypto trader Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan, is expected to be released on reduced bond after roughly a year at Rikers Island.
The case is disturbing even by New York tabloid standards.
Prosecutors have alleged that Duplessie and co-defendant John Woeltz held Carturan captive in a SoHo townhouse in an effort to obtain access to cryptocurrency. Earlier reporting described allegations of beatings, threats, forced drug use, weapons, humiliation, and torture. Both defendants have pleaded not guilty, and their attorneys have disputed the prosecution’s version of events.
The latest development is not a verdict. It is not a finding of guilt. It is a bail decision.
But bail decisions in violent, high-profile cases are never just technical events. They reveal how the criminal court system weighs liberty, danger, wealth, delay, pretrial punishment, and the constitutional presumption of innocence.
That is where this case becomes larger than the lurid allegations.
Duplessie has reportedly spent about a year at Rikers while awaiting trial. The Post reported that his bond was reduced to $250,000, while Woeltz was previously released on a $1 million bond. Both men remain accused, not convicted. Both are entitled to due process. At the same time, the allegations are so severe that the public reaction is predictable: how does someone accused in a kidnapping and torture case walk out on bond?
That tension is the heart of bail.
New York’s bail system sits at the collision point between two realities. On one side, pretrial detention can become punishment before trial, especially when a case drags on and a defendant sits at Rikers for months or years without a conviction. On the other side, judges are also asked to assess risk, seriousness, resources, possible flight, community safety, and whether conditions such as electronic monitoring and home confinement can realistically protect the process.
In a case involving alleged crypto wealth, international connections, a private-property-backed bond, and claims of extraordinary violence, those questions become even sharper.
The crypto element also adds a modern layer to an old criminal pattern. Prosecutors have long dealt with robbery, extortion, kidnapping, and coercion. Cryptocurrency changes the mechanics. A password can be worth millions. A digital wallet can become the target. A luxury townhouse can allegedly become the crime scene. Wealth can be portable, hidden, encrypted, or difficult to trace.
That gives the story its contemporary edge.
But the courtroom question is older and more basic: who stays locked up before trial, who gets released, and what does the public learn from the way those decisions are made?
Justice Gregory Carro is already presiding over another case under national scrutiny: the state prosecution of Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Carro recently ruled that key evidence, including a gun and notebook recovered after a later search of Mangione’s backpack, may be used at trial, while suppressing other items from an earlier unlawful search.
Carro was also my judge.
That history is one reason I follow his courtroom closely. Not because every ruling is the same, and not because every case should be collapsed into one personal lens, but because a judge’s courtroom does not exist only inside one file. Judges develop public records through the cases they handle, the defendants they face, the discretion they exercise, and the pressure points that appear again and again.
In the Mangione case, the pressure point is evidence: what police can use, what must be excluded, and how a court handles a case carrying enormous public emotion.
In the alleged crypto torture case, the pressure point is pretrial liberty: how long a person can be held at Rikers before trial, what level of bond is sufficient, and whether strict conditions can replace jail in a case involving shocking accusations.
Both cases sit in the same broader public conversation about New York criminal courts.
The public often sees outcomes first: released, detained, evidence admitted, evidence suppressed, charges reduced, trial delayed. But the courtroom process underneath those outcomes is where power lives. That is where a judge decides what the jury will hear, what the public will never see, and whether a person waits for trial in a jail cell or under monitored release.
The Duplessie bond decision will anger some people. It will make others point to the dangers of extended pretrial detention. It will likely be used by different sides of New York’s bail debate to argue opposite conclusions.
But the more useful question is not whether outrage or sympathy wins the day.
The more useful question is whether the public is watching the machinery closely enough.
A man accused of grotesque violence is still presumed innocent. A person held at Rikers for a year without conviction has already experienced a severe deprivation of liberty. An alleged victim’s account deserves serious public attention. A court must balance all of those realities without turning bail into punishment, wealth into immunity, or delay into leverage.
That is the pressure point.
This is not only a crypto crime story.
It is a story about how New York courts manage shocking allegations before trial. It is a story about Rikers as a pretrial holding place, not only a jail for people already convicted. It is a story about money, risk, technology, and judicial discretion. And it is another reminder that the most important action in a courtroom often happens long before a jury ever hears the case.
When Justice Carro appears in another headline, I pay attention.
New Yorkers should too.
*Michele Evans is an independent journalist, author, and former ESPN technical producer whose work has appeared in The New York Times.
Michele got her start in 2001 covering the NBA and NFL.
She now covers New York City courts, criminal-justice procedure, NYPD, FDNY, domestic-violence systems, media accountability, public safety, advocacy efforts, and New York civic life through courthouse observation, public records, legal analysis, and lived-experience reporting.
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