Vigilant Vegan Saves Anna Delvey’s Abandoned Bunnies in Prospect Park

By Michael Gonik

Anna Delvey, the scammer who posed as a German heiress in an elaborate grift of NYC’s upper crust, is somehow back in local headlines, and it’s all thanks to some bunnies that were recently found in Prospect Park.

It’s a weird, wild, and twisted tale, but we’ll do our best to lay it out cleanly here. Essentially, an abandoned bunny was found near the Grand Army Plaza entrance of the park on Monday, August 4. Vegan blogger Terry Chao, who documented the entirety of this bunny saga on Instagram, spotted a post about the animal’s discovery on a local Facebook channel. Chao then helped rescue the bunny and affectionately named it “Parker.” When a second rabbit (now named “Moon”) was found later in the week, Chao aided the rescue effort for that hopper as well.

In most cases, this would be the end, not the beginning, of this story—bunnies found and saved and everyone wins. But then Anna Delvey (hilariously sporting the ankle monitor she was court-ordered to wear for the eight counts of theft she was found guilty on in 2019,) posts a few photos to Instagram with a couple of bunnies on a leash, and suddenly, Chao is getting inundated with tips claiming the bunnies she helped save looked oddly similar to those Delvey had in tow in the caroussel of photos she posted on main Friday, August 8 (see below). Delvey’s comment section quickly lit up with accusations of her team abandoning the bunnies after the shoot, which both she and her photographer’s assistant Christian Batty denied. “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 wrote. Batty backed Delvey’s account, claiming “It isn’t the same bunny, as that bunny is located in Yonkers. And as you said you found 4 bunnies in prospect park, we only had 2. One so happens to look like one of the ones you found in the park and now it’s Anna’s fault?”

Batty, however, eventually fessed up when Chao realized they had actually reached out to her to scout some of the bunnies she already owned and cared for before Parker and Moon came into the picture, reporting as much to those tracking the saga through her coverage. Batty’s confession came not long after that. “I lied to Anna, and the rest of Anna’s team about the rabbits,” they wrote in a statement shared on Delvey’s stories over the weekend. “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. Believing mistakenly, that there were existing rabbits in that area, I released them there, thinking that was my best option. That belief was wrong, and I regret it deeply,” Batty added.

Thanks to Chao’s vigilance and those who helped her (including Batty, who joined the blogger in rescuing one more bunny over the weekend), these fluffers are safe, sound, and getting the care they need. Delvey (non-scammer name: Anna Sorokin) maintains she had no knowledge of the dumping after the bunnies appeared in her shoot.

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