The convicted Russian con woman known as Anna Delvey, sporting a strapless sundress, white pumps, and an ankle monitor, posed glamorously in a recent photoshoot on the streets of New York City, holding two rabbits on a hot pink leash. Then, the rabbits were abandoned in a nearby urban park.
The SoHo scammer, who is currently serving house arrest for defrauding banks, hotels, and New York City elites by posing as a German heiress, can now add animal negligence to the controversies she is associated with.
After Delvey posted her photoshoot, Terry Chao, a vegan influencer and blogger, realized that Delvey’s rabbits were the same rabbits she rescued earlier that week, whom Chao named Moon and Parker.
After receiving an alert from her neighborhood Facebook group, Chao teamed up with two other Brooklyn locals to rescue the rabbits from Prospect Park, as she explained in an Instagram post. After seeing Delvey’s post, Chao contacted Christian Batty, who Delvey had credited as her rabbit scout in the photo caption. Coincidentally, Batty had previously reached out to Chao to ask if they could borrow her pet rabbit for the photoshoot.
A heated back-and-forth ensued. Batty insisted to Chao that the rabbits were safe, even sending her what appeared to be a forged text exchange to “prove” it, Chao wrote.
As outraged animal rights defenders flooded Delvey’s comment section, Delvey responded with anger in equal proportion. ”I will find and sue dimwits like yourself who simply refuse to accept that the bunnies that were borrowed for our shoot are safe at home with their owners,” Delvey replied to one commenter.
By Sunday, the jig was up. Batty issued a public apology for the incident and stated that Delvey had no part in the rabbit dump or the failed cover-up.
“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 wrote. “Believing, mistakenly, that there were existing rabbits in that area, I released them there, thinking that was my best option.”
Batty also helped Chao rescue a third lost rabbit, whom Chao named Joaquin. All three rabbits are now in foster care until they find a permanent home, according to Chao, who is also raising donations for the rescued pets.
In a written statement to the Daily Beast, Delvey wrote that Batty, whom she knew only tangentially, claimed he “knew someone who could lend us bunnies for a few hours.”
“I later discovered that, instead of borrowing animals from a legitimate source, he had obtained them via Facebook Marketplace and intended to release them into Prospect Park, a plan of which I had no knowledge,” she added.
“I do not eat meat, and I had no involvement in the acquisition, transport, or return of these animals. I would never condone these actions,” Delvey wrote.
Delvey posted screenshots of text exchanges on her Instagram story throughout Monday to proclaim her innocence after Chao made her complaints public, and screenshot a picture of a $1,000 donation to a rabbit rescue nonprofit.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Batty for comment.
“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 told the Daily Beast on Monday.
Jenna Goins, who helped Chao rescue the rabbits, claims that the animal mistreatment started during Delvey’s photoshoot. “Bunnies should not be kept on leashes like that. And then in another photo, she had the bunny upside down on its back,” Goins said, explaining that placing rabbits in that position unnecessarily puts them into a state of fear and induces an involuntary state of paralysis.
Chao added that rabbits are “one of the most abused animals,” and that Delvey’s photoshoot controversy illuminates how pets can be mistreated out of ignorance. “It’s never okay to dump your pet, ever.”
“This is the best possible outcome out of a heinous action that happened,” Chao said.
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