Con artist Anna Sorokin claims she’s received hundreds of death threats after she was accused of abandoning bunnies she posed with during a photoshoot in New York.
The 34-year-old so-called fake heiress, who was convicted of grand larceny in 2019 for defrauding banks, hotels, and her friends out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, posted photos to her Instagram account last week capturing her posing in the Big Apple with two bunnies on red leashes.
Someone later reported seeing the same rabbits roaming in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Since posting the photos on her account, which boasts 1.1 million followers, Sorokin said she’s been bombarded with death threats. She claims to have had nothing to do with the logistics of the photoshoot.
“I am deeply alarmed by the death threats and hundreds of vile, harassing messages flooding my social media,” she wrote in a statement on Instagram Tuesday.
The Independent has asked the NYPD if Sorokin has informed police about the alleged death threats.
Sorokin posted a series of photos and videos last week from the photoshoot. Dressed in a blue mini dress and matching heels — an ensemble that allowed her ankle monitor to be on full display — Sorokin holds her long blonde locks in one hand and holds the red bunny leashes with the other outside a Subway station in downtown Manhattan.
Sorokin served almost four years in prison over duping Manhattan’s elite and spent another 18 months in immigration detention for overstaying her U.S. visa. She is now required to wear an ankle monitor as part of the terms of her house arrest.
Terry Chao, a blogger, saw one of the rabbits in Prospect Park hiding in a bush, the New York Times reported. She told the outlet that she had recognized the bunny from a Facebook group, where some bunnies had recently been listed for adoption.
“They went and got those bunnies for the shoot, basically as props, and then dumped them,” Chao told the paper. “They don’t have any survival mechanisms like wild rabbits do.”
Sorokin shared screenshots from a text exchange that suggest a person named Christian Batty ditched the rabbits in the park. The Independent has made attempts to contact Batty.
Chao said in an Instagram statement that Batty had reached out to her before the photoshoot to scout for bunnies. He later showed up and helped her rescue a bunny from the shoot, she said.
Batty apologized in a since-deleted Instagram post, which was reposted by Sorokin and Chao.
“When I realized the rabbits were being surrendered to me, I panicked,” the post read. “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. Believing, mistakenly, that there were existing rabbits in that area, I released them there, thinking that was my best option.”
Sorokin said she had nothing to do with the planning of the photoshoot.
She said she had agreed to pose for the photographer, Jasper Egan Soloff. His lawyer disputed Sorokin’s claims.
“This was not Jasper’s photo shoot, and he did not arrange any of the details surrounding it,” he told the NYT, noting his client had been hired to take photos of Sorokin. “Jasper had no knowledge or input as to how the bunnies were obtained or what happened to them after the photo shoot.”
In a statement on Instagram on Tuesday, Sorokin said she donated $1,000 to the nonprofit All About Rabbits Rescue.
The Independent has reached out to the nonprofit to confirm that it had received a donation from Sorokin.
