Andrea Bartzen — the woman accused in a bombshell exposé of posing as a “Cartier heiress” to infiltrate elite circles — isn’t hiding.
Bartzen held an event at Bice in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday, drawing guests to a $150 ticketed “Cocktails and Conversation” party, where she was quickly confronted by an irate guest over her alleged fraud outlined in the New York Magazine piece.
We hear tensions boiled up immediately, when a woman stood up at the beginning of the night to demand of Bartzen, “Are you going to address the allegations of you being a fraud?”
A witness tells us Bartzen stood her ground, saying, “This moment isn’t for that. That was a hit job and I am not going to address that right now.”
“You are crashing my party,” Bartzen told the woman.
The guest and her boyfriend were then kicked out, said our source.
A rep for Bice told us, “We do not have security or staff that had asked anyone to leave. It is my understanding this guest was asked to leave from the client [Bartzen] after a confrontation.”
Bartzen — who, New York mag reported, allegedly bilked 1 percenters in Florida and the Hamptons and was dubbed by one source as “the poor man’s Anna Delvey,” referring to the famed fake German heiress — insisted to us that the woman who confronted her was part of a group of “mean girls” with deep connections who are out to get her and who orchestrated the article.
She won’t be swayed from her “purpose,” she told Page Six, which is to “heal humanity.”
“I put her in her place,” Bartzen told us of the booted guest. “She was not invited. She crashed my event.”
“I’m not gonna back down. I am here to help humanity and mental health,” she continued. “I won’t let someone try and stop me and lay down dead because they tried to kill me. I have a bigger soul purpose, to heal humanity, and that’s what this event was about.”
Bartzen has denied the allegations in the article, telling the Daily Mail, “None of it’s true.”
We hear the party drew about 60 people, with some showing up out of curiosity. A source tells us that everyone they spoke with at the event had come for free. Speakers, we are told, included a former pro athlete and former Navy SEAL.
We hear Bartzen had some vocal supporters. A source tells us that two men stood up and spoke in her defense.
“There’s a bit of an elephant in the room,” one of her supporters told the crowd. “There have been rumors and people have been casting aspersions on Andrea and trying to knock her down. I have known her for 10 years … and I have only known her to be a person of integrity and who’s furthering good causes.”
In March, New York magazine ran a lengthy article called “The Fake Cartier and the Fake Rockefeller,” accusing Bartzen and her then-boyfriend — a magician allegedly posing as a member of the Rockefeller family — of pretending to be blue bloods to infiltrate elite circles, crashing parties in the Hamptons and other monied locales.
The article accuses Bartzen of more than just a social-climbing scheme. It recounts numerous eyebrow-raising tales, from allegedly renting out an apartment she didn’t own to crashing a number of high-profile charity events. She allegedly even crashed a luxe black-tie wedding at the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, with the mother of the bride telling her, “You need to get the f–k out.”
In the article, others accused her of promoting events by saying money would go to specific charities, though none received funds. In once instance, “Bartzen had touted the American Cancer Society as the beneficiary of the event, but a spokesperson said it had no record of Global Passion Projects, or Bartzen or Rockefeller, donating any money,” said the report.
There was another allegation in the article of cops being called after a tab for her event went unpaid, with her well-heeled pals stepping in to foot the bill. In another instance, she allegedly didn’t pay for a yacht where she was holding an event, again with others stepping up to shell out thousands of dollars.
Her ex, who at the time allegedly went by the name Matthew Rockefeller, was revealed in the article to actually be a professional magician by the name of Matthew Wayne Tomasko, who hailed from Pennsylvania. He also appeared in a reality show called “Doggie Moms.”
A rep for Tomasko did not respond to a request for comment.
We hear she’ll be on Rachel Uchitel’s podcast “Miss Understood” this Saturday, delving into the whole situation.
