Infamous Fauxfluencer Caroline Calloway countersues her landlord in unpaid rent saga
Caroline Calloway, Esq. https://t.co/HbdBLt8HyN
- Gawker (@Gawker) July 8, 2022
Don’t say I never gave y’all nothing 😭🤣 https://t.co/I27at76syZ
- Scam Goddess (@ScamGoddessPod) July 8, 2022
- A follow up to this post
- To recap: Caroline Calloway is an instagram "influencer" known for her style of long captions detailing her college years in the UK. She is a self-professed writer, despite not having written any of the books she has sold.
- In March, her landlord sued her for $40k in rent + $20k in damages after leaving her West Village studio apartment in a disastrous state following DIY renos, including painting her floor and 2/3 of her kitchen. Photos of the apartment can be found here
- This week, her legal team filed a countersuit, alleging she made improvements to the apartment and "communal" garden that increased the value and is owed compensation for that labor and property.
- The "Facts" section is filled with literary phrasing, hyperbole, exaggerations, and straight up lies that one can only presume it was written by Ms. Calloway herself. It's full of bizarre claims and statements that seem out of place in a lawsuit.
Details below:
- Ms. Calloway starts off the "Facts" with point 2. "There are fancier apartment buildings in New York City than X (the “Premises” or “X”), but to Ms. Calloway, for over ten years, it was the most perfect home she had ever known," and goes on to lament the lack of doorman and other amenities. She goes on to claim she had a "troubled childhood"and the studio "was not only her favorite home, but also her first". Note that she grew up in the affluent suburbs of Falls Church, VA
- She claims she started working on the garden in 2017 (this is a lie, her now deleted instagram posts prove that she started in 2021) "after yet another spring and summer had come and gone with so much wasted potential right outside her window-she realized that if she did not fix this problem, no one would."
- She goes on to describe the painstaking labor she put into clearing the space of debris such as "More broken glass than really made sense for an uninhabited slice of land. One billion cigarette butts." Which required such difficulties and expensive purchases of "gloves, hoes, rakes, more hoes, more rakes... The glass kept ripping their gloves, but they finally found a brand that worked", as well as "a black sand beach’s worth of topsoil and a bioweapon’s worth of fertilizer." She continues to explain what raking leaves is.
- A reminder that this is a legal document filed in NY court.
- She alleges she spent $10,000 on gardening supplies and seedlings. "However, the major expenses for the garden were not the plants or the uncompensated labor, but rather infrastructure," including "five winding paths through the garden [dotted] with 100 tea candles", - "the base for a pond along with water plants" and an "antique birdbath, in addition to installing two birdhouses and a birdfeeder, for which she also bought birdseed," a "grill with a rain cover for everyone to use, two tables to eat at, eight patio chairs, and a freestanding hammock."
- "Not only did she leave these chattels behind when she moved out so that Landlord (and its residents) could continue to enjoy them for years to come, but she was pleased to see that the listing for her own apartment included" photos of these items, among others to market the apartment listing
- Between 2017-2019, she alleges to have spent "approximately $25,000" improving her own apartment, including retiling, purchasing a new sink, molding, imported lighting all of which added "Old-World grandeur" to the studio, which she purports to have left behind
- She claims "The Landlord was well aware of Ms. Calloway’s costs and efforts expended but never reimbursed Ms. Calloway despite its promises to do so."
- She goes on to state that "the COVID-19 pandemic presented unique and unprecedented circumstances that were unforeseeable-indeed, unimaginable ... and prevented Ms. Calloway from being able to earn an income for more than two-years." "[For] the first time in her ten-years as a resident of the 250, Ms. Calloway found herself in the position of being unable to afford her rent."
- The lie detector test determined that was a lie. Calloway made money by selling artwork, access to her essay in response to the expose published in the Cut by her former ghostwriter, Cameo, and Onlyfans, among other grifts. She has also been sued multiple times for non-payment of rent
- She goes on to state that she is not liable for any of the rent owed due to the pandemic rendering her unable to earn income, despite never filing for NYC's eviction protection or hardship prior to this counterclaim
- Note that zero evidence or receipts or invoices are provided in support of Ms. Calloway's allegations
- TBD on what is to come next
Whew! This is a doozy but the "facts" section is worth a read imo.
Sources:
[Spoiler (click to open)]
https://twitter.com/Gawker/status/1545433253447868419?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/ScamGoddessPod/status/1545260210586935298
https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=izQRMijqdxs_PLUS_dAt0VDBZbQ==
https://quarantine.substack.com/p/caroline-calloway-is-eating-caviar
https://www.pedestrian.tv/entertainment/caroline-calloway-onlyfans-book-deal/
https://twitter.com/cacasmiddlename/status/1158801791749767168