It was a scene befitting of a millennial influencer: the fake heiress known as Anna Delvey posing outside a TriBeCa subway station with two bunnies on leashes — and an ankle monitor on her tanned leg.
But not long after, some bunnies that had been procured for the photo shoot with the would-be socialite were abandoned in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, unleashing a torrent of backlash toward the real Anna Sorokin, who in an interview with The New York Times on Monday said that she was not responsible for procuring the rabbits and was “horrified” when she learned that they had been ditched.
“I felt ashamed and embarrassed to be associated with it,” Ms. Sorokin, 34, said.
Ms. Sorokin, who pretended to be a wealthy German heiress and landed in prison for nearly four years for swindling Manhattan’s elite, spent 18 months behind bars in immigration detention for overstaying her visa. She has filled her time lately with photo shoots, publicity stunts and a stint on “Dancing With the Stars.”
On Aug. 3, Ms. Sorokin posted the photo shoot with the bunnies on a New York City sidewalk. The bunny cradled in Ms. Sorokin’s arms was a year-and-a-half-old Harlequin lop named Parker.
But the next day, Terry Chao, a blogger and vegan influencer from Crown Heights, spotted Parker in Prospect Park, recognizing the rabbit from a Facebook group where some bunnies had recently been listed as available for adoption.
Parker had been hiding in the bushes near the Endale Arch on Aug. 4, not far from a cardboard box, said Ms. Chao, the online sleuth who helped rescue the rabbit and care for two others that had been part of the photo shoot. She and several other people used a pen with wire gates to help corral the bunnies.
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The post The Fake Heiress, the Instagram Shoot and the Abandoned Bunnies appeared first on New York Times.
