Anna Sorokin says she received hundreds of death threats over bunnies abandoned in Brooklyn park

NBC News

13 hours ago

Anna "Delvey" Sorokin says she's received hundreds of death threats in the days since was was accused of dumping pet rabbits she posed with for a photoshoot in a Brooklyn park.
The fake German heiress who stole tens of thousands of dollars from banks posed alongside three bunnies on the streets of Manhattan's posh Tribeca neighborhood last week. The bunnies were recognized and discovered in Brooklyn's Prospect Park days later, prompting fierce online backlash.
But the headline-making New York City socialite — who vehemently denied responsibility for the discarded bunnies — said in an interview with NBC News that she's particularly shocked by the strong reaction over the incident.
'It just seems to me like everything I do is just wrong," Sorokin, 34, said in a phone call with NBC News. "I can never do right by these people.'
Sorokin shared screenshots of dozens of hateful messages she's received within the last few days to her Instagram — which she called "unusable" — with NBC News. Some of them suggest that she she should be killed or take her own life, including one that advises Sorokin to get someone to "make a carpet out of your skin."
'It seems like a lot of these people, just because they're engaged in animal rescue, they feel like they're entitled to insult you or talk to you or say anything because they're hiding behind this thing that they're doing,' she said.
The 34-year-old, whose life was depicted in Netflix's hit 2022 series "Inventing Anna," took the photoshoot with the bunnies on August 3 to create content for her Instagram account, which has more than 1.1 million followers.
Shortly before the shoot, she posted on Instagram story asking if any of her followers in the New York City metropolitan area had a pet rabbit she could borrow for the shoot, Sorokin said.
Christian Batty, a 19-year-old hair stylist Sorokin met briefly last year, reached out to her and offered what he described as a friend's rabbits, she said.
Sorokin added that she paid Batty to provide the rabbits and for his Uber to return the rabbits to their owner in Yonkers — or so she thought. A screenshot of the Uber receipt Sorokin shared with NBC News show the ride's drop off location was just south of Prospect Park, where the rabbits were later spotted.
Days later, she said she started receiving messages on social media about the rabbits being spotted in Prospect Park. A Facebook user posted images of the domesticated bunnies in the park to a public Facebook group dedicated to rabbits, House Rabbit Society, and other users connected them to Sorokin's photos.
Sorokin initially thought the posts were fake, but the flood of messages did not stop.
At first, Batty denied dumping the rabbits in the park, according to screenshots of text messages between Sorokin, Batty and photographer Jasper Soloff that Sorokin posted on her Instagram story and shared with NBC News.
"Jasper had no knowledge or input as to how the bunnies were obtained or what happened to them after the photo shoot," Soloff's attorney, Gary Adelman, said in a statement.
Batty did not immediately return a request for comment.
Hours later, Batty confessed that he did dump the rabbits and absolved Sorokin of any involvement, according to a statement he posted to his Instagram account, which has since been taken down.
"When I realized the rabbits were being surrendered to me, I panicked," Batty said in the statement, screenshots of which were provided by Sorokin. "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," he added.
Sorokin pushed back on the notion that Batty's age was an issue.
"He's old enough to move to New York and live on his own, he should have enough common sense to handle rabbits," Sorokin said. "We're not like asking him to do anything that requires high IQ from him. I just don't know what to say."
Sorokin said that she was concerned about how the incident might affect her pending immigration case.
Sorokin was convicted by a Manhattan jury in April 2019 on four counts of theft services, three counts of grand larceny and one count of attempted grand larceny after being accused of defrauding banks and friends of tens of thousands of dollars.
Prosecutors said that Sorokin convinced friends and businesses to loan her money to afford a lavish lifestyle under the guise that she was the daughter of a oil baron or diplomat, worth tens of millions of dollars.
In 2021, Sorokin was released on parole while she fights deportation. She has been forced to wear an electronic ankle monitor and cannot leave a 75-mile house arrest radius based in New York.
"This time, I've done nothing wrong," she said. "And I had the best intentions and it's really frustrating."
The New York Times reported that the rabbits were rescued by blogger Terry Chao, who spotted the rabbits in the park. Chao could not immediately be reached for comment.
Sorokin said she donated $1,000 to the group All About Rabbits Rescue in the aftermath of the scandal. She also denied harming the rabbits by putting them in leashes, as some have suggested online.
"I don't know, I'm not a bunny professional. I didn't know the leashes were such a big deal," she said. "We would put them down for, I don't know, a minute or two, take a picture and pick them up. We were not walking them by any means. And they seemed to be happy."