Fake Heiress Accused of Dumping Bunnies in New York Park after Photo Shoot
Anna Delvey — the fake heiress who scammed New York’s elite — was accused of dumping rabbits that she used for a photo shoot in a park.
Delvey, a con artist who has reinvented herself as an influencer, posed for a photo shoot last weekend on the streets of New York City, which featured her holding bunnies.
In the images — that were shot by photographer Jasper Soloff — Delvey was seen wearing her ankle monitor, which she is required to wear as part of her house arrest, and holding two bunnies on a hot pink leash.
Bunnies Used for Props, Then Dumped
However, on August 4 — one day after Delvey posted the photos on Instagram — the two rabbits were found abandoned in a nearby urban park. Terry Chao, a vegan influencer and blogger, spotted the bunnies and recognized them from a Facebook adoption group.
According to The New York Times, Chao says she spotted the rabbits near a cardboard box she had seen on Delvey’s Instagram, bearing a Yonkers address possibly linked to the family offering the bunnies. She says the real giveaway was that photo shoot assistant Christian Batty had contacted her earlier to ask about finding rabbits.
“They went and got those bunnies for the shoot, basically as props, and then dumped them,” Chao says. “They don’t have any survival mechanisms like wild rabbits do.”
Batty, the assistant on the independent shoot, at first denied that the abandoned rabbits were the same ones used in the shoot. But Batty reportedly later admitted in an Instagram story that he had left the bunnies in Prospect Park, saying Delvey had no knowledge of it and that he had sourced the animals himself.
“When I realized the rabbits were being surrendered to me, I panicked. At 19, with no experience caring for animals, no pet-friendly housing, and no knowledge of available resources, I felt overwhelmed and made the worst possible choice,” Batty writes in the Instagram story, which is no longer available. “Believing, mistakenly, that there were existing rabbits in that area, I released them there, thinking that was my best option.”
‘Ashamed and Embarassed’
Delvey tells The New York Times that she was “horrified” to learn the rabbits had been released. She says that she was not involved in any arrangements and that Batty had offered to get the bunnies.
“I felt ashamed and embarrassed to be associated with it,” Delvey says.
She adds: “Usually, when you collaborate with a photographer, you kind of let them direct you, because it’s also their creative work.”
However, photographer Jasper Soloff’s lawyer disputed Delvey’s account. He says that Soloff had simply been hired to photograph Delvey and “had no knowledge or input as to how the bunnies were obtained or what happened to them after the photo shoot.”
“This was not Jasper’s photo shoot, and he did not arrange any of the details surrounding it,” the photographer’s lawyer Gary Adelman tells the news outlet.
After Chao made the news of the abandoned bunnies public, Delvey also shared screenshots of her texts with Batty on her Instagram story, according to The Daily Beast. Delvey insisted she was innocent, and posted a photo of a $1,000 donation to a rabbit rescue nonprofit.
“I’m pretty sure they’re all pretty complicit, and if they had wanted to do the right thing, they could have, and they didn’t,” Chao tells The Daily Beast in a further statement.
Delvey, who posed as a wealthy German heiress in the 2010s, spent nearly four years in prison for defrauding New York’s elite and another 18 months in immigration detention for overstaying her visa. She has since reinvented herself as a celebrity, doing photo shoots and appearing on Dancing With the Stars.
Image credits: Header photo via Instagram/@annadelvey.
