(NewsNation) — Convicted con artist Anna Sorokin says she has gotten “hundreds of death threats” after rabbits she used in a photoshoot were dumped in a New York City park.
The rabbits were found in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park days after she posed for photos with them in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood.
Sorokin, 34, denied dumping the animals after the August 3 photoshoot but she told NBC News she’s still been flooded with hateful messages.
“This time, I’ve done nothing wrong,” she said. “And I had the best intentions, and it’s really frustrating.”
Sorokin rose to some prominence after she was the subject of a Netflix series, “Inventing Anna,” wherein a journalist investigated Sorokin’s journey from a magazine intern to a convicted criminal for swindling New York socialites, banks and hotels out of $275,000.
Using the name “Anna Delvey,” she passed herself off as the daughter of a German diplomat or an oil baron and lied about having a $67 million bankroll overseas to create the impression that she could cover her debts, prosecutors said at her trial.
In 2019, Sorokin was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison but was released on parole in 2021.
Sorokin reportedly asked her followers before the shoot if they had any bunnies she could borrow. She said she paid for an Uber for the person who provided the animals to return them to the owner in Yonkers. Instead, Uber records provided by Sorokin show the vehicle stopping near Prospect Park.
“It just seems to me like everything I do is just wrong,” Sorokin told the outlet. “I can never do right by these people.”
“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 added.
Sorokin told NBC News she donated $1,000 to All About Rabbits Rescue after the ordeal. The New York Times reported that the rabbits have been rescued by a blogger.