ST. LOUIS • Fitness company mogul Todd Beckman was in custody Friday on a federal kidnapping charge alleging that he and others held a man against his will, beat him and shocked him with a Taser over the course of three days.

“It’s one of the nastiest kidnappings I’ve ever seen,” U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan said Friday.

Court documents said that they released the victim Nov. 23 after collecting a $27,000 ransom from his parents, and that during some of their calls to his mother in Florida she could hear him screaming in the background.

The woman told authorities she had heard Beckman saying that if she did not pay, “She would never see her son come Thanksgiving.”

Neither the documents nor authorities provided an explanation for why the man, a resident of Maplewood, was targeted.

Beckman is the president and CEO of BAM Brands, which owns Tanco, Xist Fitness, Massage Luxe and “age management company” LifeXist, according to the BAM website.

He and three others were arrested Thursday and appeared Friday morning in U.S. District Court in St. Louis on a single kidnapping charge.