posed as a German heiress to fool New York\u2019s elite<\/a>, had become a household name among many of the people Bartzen was trying to hang out with. They were on high alert to watch out for Delvey\u2019s type. Yet Bartzen, who was older, and decidedly less cool, slipped past their defenses.<\/p>\nBartzen, however, was developing a reputation. Back in New York after Miami, she seemed to show up everywhere \u2014 charity galas, restaurants, designer-boutique events \u2014 without an invitation. Often, she would come in late, after the organizers had stopped checking people in, or wait outside until she saw someone she knew. Tickets for these events can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. Bartzen rarely paid her way, according to many event organizers, publicists, and staff I spoke with. \u201cShe\u2019s been around for years. She\u2019s like a major party crasher in the Hamptons,\u201d said a society-party regular who has seen Bartzen at events for at least a decade. But these are genteel affairs, where, once you are in the room, no one is going to second-guess your presence. More often than not, even event hosts who knew what she was doing let her stay. \u201cShe turns on this syrupy kind of nice,\u201d said a person who has interacted with her over the years. \u201cYou can\u2019t really be nasty to her.\u201d The more Bartzen showed up, the more she seemed to belong.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s one of those ladies that plans out a spreadsheet \u2014 like, she has to be at an event at 9, 11, 1, 2, 3,\u201d said the acquaintance, who also spent time with Bartzen in Palm Beach. \u201cAlmost like it was air to breathe.\u201d Sometimes Bartzen was inexplicably at the Colony, the trendy, and famously pink, Palm Beach hotel. \u201cShe basically came to my table and ate the rest of my lunch I hadn\u2019t finished,\u201d said a person who ran into her there. In July 2024, Rothschild spotted Bartzen pacing in front of the VIP entrance to the annual Polo Hamptons. Then suddenly she was inside. \u201cShe was just walking around by herself,\u201d said Rothschild. \u201cNobody goes to polo by themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not every host turned a blind eye to her party crashing. That summer, she was kicked out of at least two Hamptons galas: an animal-charity fundraiser she snuck into and a cancer benefit to which she pretended to have bought a ticket. Later that summer, Bartzen attempted to sit down at real-estate executive Dottie Herman\u2019s table at a private dinner at Le Bilboquet in Sag Harbor, leading to a tense standoff with Herman until Bartzen finally agreed to leave.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t seem to matter to Bartzen whether she was invited or not. Once inside, she would make the rounds, posing for party photographs with the most noteworthy people there. \u201cThe only reason that Andrea Bartzen is in those pictures is because she jumped into them,\u201d said the Hamptons society-party regular. By the time Bartzen set about planning the first big event of her own that summer, which she called the Global Passion Project, it looked like she already knew everyone who mattered. That perception was important as Bartzen targeted her new audience: the immensely lucrative \u2014 if often na\u00efve and opaque \u2014 world of family offices.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
\n Bartzen at an event in Southampton in July.
\n Photo: Sean Zanni\/Patrick McMullan\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
On the society circuit, family-office events are their own subgenre of party. Family offices are essentially private wealth-management firms where the rich run their personal fortunes \u2014\u00a0something that becomes a practical option when a family\u2019s assets reach the scale of a small hedge fund. Generally, family offices are considered legitimate when they manage upwards of $100 million.<\/p>\n
In the Hamptons, the family-office circuit features attendees ranging from your average self-made .01 percenter (tech, finance, and so on) to the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of someone who built a fortune in the past. These are \u201cnext gens,\u201d and among their number are many self-proclaimed socialites, influencers, heirs, and heiresses. But it\u2019s a murky world. When you talk to someone who calls herself an heiress, it will often be impossible to figure out (via the media or public records or family obituaries) who their rich relative is or how they got rich. Some of these next gens will have built ostensibly successful businesses of their own (no doubt with a bit of family funding); others may be trying to use a recognizable last name to network and find opportunities. In this crowd, a name is money, and a counterfeit is not only a scandal but a threat to the overall order.<\/p>\n
Bartzen planned to debut her Global Passion Project as an event for family offices in late August 2024 in East Hampton. The idea was to bring together family-office investors with a range of executives, doctors, and philanthropists representing various health-care entities \u2014 in theory, pairing people running ambitious health initiatives with potential funders. (Bartzen had by then become enamored of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d movement, and she showcased a variety of eccentrics, some of whom aligned squarely with a MAHA concept of wellness and alternative treatments.)<\/p>\n
Bartzen teamed up with Rolise Rachel, who had been producing family-office events for years and had become something of a socialite herself. Rachel, 53, was born in Southampton and said she was raised by a \u201cWaspy\u201d grandmother who took her on trips to Scotland, where they would sit for daily tea at 4 p.m. (\u201cThat type of upbringing,\u201d she said.) She kept her cherished Palm Beaches Blue Book \u2014 essentially a privately published society register and a who\u2019s who of the area\u2019s old-money heirs and debutantes \u2014 on top of the antique organ in her dining room. Over the summer, while they worked on planning the event, Rachel had agreed to rent Bartzen a room. Rachel said they planned to split the event proceeds 50-50, after giving a cut to three health-care charities that would supply speakers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think about it, the family office rules the world,\u201d said Rachel. \u201cThey are our most generous benefactors \u2014 they\u2019re the ones who support funding for biotech or robotics.\u201d Family offices control an estimated $5.5 trillion of capital, ranking them with Wall Street\u2019s biggest banks. But in the financial world, they\u2019re often the butt of jokes. There are notable exceptions, yet overall, family offices have a reputation for being somewhat unsophisticated \u2014 a sort of dumber money. Many of them make investments based on the whims of one very rich dude or, worse, the whims of his children who have no business experience or financial acumen of their own.<\/p>\n
A joke among family offices goes, \u201cYou have a family, you have an office, you have a family office.\u201d In other words, there are few specific qualifications or regulatory requirements for setting one up, making them both a potentially easy target for cons as well as ripe for fakers. When I spoke with people in the industry, many wanted to warn me about a roster of unscrupulous characters they believed to be scamming family offices.<\/p>\n
As Bartzen worked on the event, she seemed unusually on edge. \u201cShe was a ball of stress, hammering the phone, like 16-hour days calling people. The type of behavior suggested that maybe she was having a tough time paying rent,\u201d said the acquaintance, having run into her that summer. \u201cShe said, \u2018I need to make money.\u2019\u201d Her dad had died without leaving her anything, she explained, and her mom was middle class and retired. \u201cShe told me no one can help her, and she\u2019s on her own.\u201d Soon Rachel began noticing a rotation of unexpected guests in her home. It turned out Bartzen had been renting out the other side of her own rented bed.<\/p>\n
Rachel started to question Bartzen\u2019s background. Bartzen cursed a lot, and she spoke with a raspiness not typical of the wealthy ladies with whom she was rubbing shoulders. \u201cThe frequency of her voice is off. You can tell she wasn\u2019t brought up with money,\u201d said Rachel. \u201cShe just doesn\u2019t have the vernacular.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bartzen had promised caviar, oysters, and sushi, along with dishes from two private chefs, for the six-hour event, held at the home of Scott Weissman, CEO of fashion label Grey\/Ven. She was charging sponsors between $7,000 and $30,000, ostensibly to cover an impressive spread. But when the day came, attendees arrived to find there was tequila but no food; one speaker compared it to the Fyre Festival. Guests milled around, audibly complaining about their hunger. Modest platters of sandwiches and sushi eventually showed up and were devoured almost instantly. \u201cIt was scavenged through because people hadn\u2019t had food all day,\u201d the speaker said. Utensils were hard to find. \u201cPeople just had to kind of grab the sushi with their hands.\u201d<\/p>\n
But to Rachel, who said she\u2019d planned for a much smaller number of guests than Bartzen had invited, the biggest problem was what Bartzen did \u2014 or didn\u2019t do \u2014 with the money they\u2019d brought in. Based on what sponsors paid, Rachel believes Bartzen made about $100,000, but the charities the event was supposed to benefit received nothing. \u201cWe didn\u2019t make any money at the event, so there\u2019s nothing to donate,\u201d Bartzen told one. Rachel said Bartzen never paid her half of the supposed profits either.<\/p>\n
Three days after the event, over Labor Day weekend, when Rachel was out for the afternoon, Bartzen packed up and left. \u201cHer moving out of my house is like skipping town with the money,\u201d said Rachel. After Bartzen left, Rachel noticed the Blue Book was gone too.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
\n Matthew Rockefeller next to a bust of John D. Rockefeller at the National Portrait Gallery in October 2023.
\n Photo: @mattwrockefeller\/Instagram\n <\/p>\n
That fall, with her sights set on even bigger targets, Bartzen headed to Palm Beach and began hanging around with someone who appeared to be a genuine member of the scion class: a much younger man who introduced himself as Matthew Rockefeller. \u201cFrom the minute they met, they were inseparable,\u201d said someone who saw them in Palm Beach and Miami. Before long, Rockefeller was telling people he wanted to marry Bartzen.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, Bartzen and Global Passion Projects, to which Rockefeller signed on, took on a new gloss. Rockefeller, who is 39, told potential event partners that he ran the philanthropy arm of the oil baron\u2019s family. In late 2024, the two invited a pair of entrepreneurs to Rockefeller Center to discuss partnering for a Global Passion Projects event on a yacht at Miami Hedge Fund week. The entrepreneurs showed up to the meeting expecting to be whisked upstairs to a conference room at the offices of Rockefeller Capital Management. Instead, Rockefeller, in a full suit, ushered them into the Equinox at the base of the building. He took a seat in the gym\u2019s caf\u00e9 area. \u201cHe couldn\u2019t have invited us into one of the buildings? Why are we meeting at the Equinox at the Rockefeller Center if we\u2019re meeting with a Rockefeller?\u201d one of the entrepreneurs said he wondered. Still, it wasn\u2019t a deal-breaker; children from ultrarich families did all sorts of odd things to project normalcy.<\/p>\n
For fees of up to $12,000, Bartzen and Rockefeller promised event sponsors access to a network of 50,000 investors, according to emails and promotional documents. The entrepreneurs agreed to co-host the event, which was scheduled for late January, on the condition that they would not be responsible for any costs. The party was to be held at the Mansion Yacht House, a new waterborne private club.<\/p>\n
Trouble started as soon as guests showed up to the yacht. They were initially unable to board. The venue\u2019s owners had agreed to host about 30 investors aboard the yacht for free but balked when Bartzen showed up with some 300; an event that size would typically cost $40,000. \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018All right, there\u2019s no way in hell we\u2019re doing this for free,\u2019\u201d said a manager of the Mansion Yacht House. \u201c\u2018It\u2019s not gonna happen here.\u2019 It wound up turning into one of those things where it\u2019s like, \u2018I need the check and I need the check now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Bartzen assured him she had the money. \u201cThe Rockefellers are coming!\u201d she insisted. Rockefeller, meanwhile, in don\u2019t-you-know-who-I-am fashion, shouted at the manager that his family would never do business with him again. Up until an hour before the event, Bartzen still had not paid.<\/p>\n
Eventually, the manager received $15,000 \u2014 his heavily discounted fee \u2014 in the form of a check, wire transfer, and Zelle from three different people, none of whom were named Rockefeller or Bartzen. One of the entrepreneurs sent $5,000 from his personal account, after Bartzen begged, promising to repay it immediately after the event. \u201cThey were presenting themselves as literal billionaires, and they can\u2019t send $5,000. I thought it was funny at first,\u201d the entrepreneur said. After all, maybe it was one of those quirks of the ultrawealthy \u2014 would a Rockefeller ever have had to set up Zelle?<\/p>\n
Afterward, though, at least two sponsors asked for their money back. The vast network of investors Bartzen promised never materialized. \u201cWe didn\u2019t see one there, not one,\u201d said a sponsor. But the sponsors didn\u2019t get their money back \u2014 and neither did the entrepreneur who fronted the $5,000.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
\n Bartzen and Rockefeller at a Fashion Week party last year headlined by then-mayor Eric Adams.
\n Photo: Leo The Visualist Media\n <\/p>\n
Around the time she met Matthew Rockefeller, Bartzen had added a middle name to her LinkedIn that elevated her own pedigree: Cartier. She told the Mansion Yacht Club owners that she was connected to the legendary family, heiress to the more than 150-year-old jewelry business.<\/p>\n
Andrea Cartier Bartzen seemed to take the event snafus in stride, and even some of her disgruntled guests chalked up the problems to disorganization and the usual struggles of a fledgling business. \u201cShe kind of has no business planning an event, but she does have great connections,\u201d said a person who spoke at one of Bartzen\u2019s parties. Besides, people seeking their money back from Bartzen were often too embarrassed about being bamboozled to complain much about it; the risk to one\u2019s own reputation was greater than the financial hit. Bartzen was now seen as powerful, with a robust network, and several people told me they worried she would retaliate if they spoke up. \u201cI would rather my name not be slandered for $5,000,\u201d said the entrepreneur. \u201cIt would be a net negative.\u201d<\/p>\n
By March, Rockefeller and Bartzen were regaling rich people across Florida with their alleged family lore. Rockefeller told one investor he received daily hate mail about John D. Rockefeller\u2019s impact on medicine. At his birthday party at a Miami Beach bar, he approached Adi Soozin, who manages a small private-equity fund and says she comes from a fifth-generation real-estate family. Introducing himself as a member of the Rockefeller family, he recounted a story of people trying to kidnap him for ransom in Mexico. \u201cWe just took it at face value,\u201d said Soozin. \u201cThey\u2019re hanging out with all of the right people. We just assumed they just didn\u2019t grow up with us but they\u2019re from the same bubble.\u201d Bartzen, meanwhile, was volunteering, with increasing confidence, that she was a Cartier. \u201cYou know I\u2019m part of the Cartier family?\u201d she\u2019d say casually.<\/p>\n
Bartzen\u2019s decision to use Cartier as her middle name was objectively shrewd: A number of direct Cartier offspring were daughters who changed names when they married, so Cartier is now used as a middle name among some of today\u2019s descendants. The jewelry business was sold off for a relative pittance decades ago, and none of the family members are currently involved. Unlike institutions that bear the name Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, or Soros, there is no Cartier family office. Today\u2019s living Cartier heirs are not even universally wealthy. Said one, \u201cIt\u2019s not like we were brought up wearing tiaras.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2019, Francesca Cartier Brickell, the great-granddaughter of Jacques Cartier, published The Cartiers: The Untold Story of the Family Behind the Jewelry Empire, which included a detailed family tree based on a decade of genealogical research. None of the surnames on any of its branches matched those of Bartzen\u2019s parents or grandparents.<\/p>\n
As they were introduced around Palm Beach as the \u201cCartier-Rockefeller couple\u201d in early 2025, Rockefeller\u2019s claims that, yes, he was indeed related to those Rockefellers struck a few people as off. First, his handshake seemed too soft, one observer sniffed. And they found his clothes to be too on the nose. Tall, rail-thin, and lanky, he often wore flapper-era newsboy caps, as if he were cosplaying John D. Rockefeller on the way to the golf course. He was almost always in a suit, even for video calls.<\/p>\n
Then, one afternoon, Rockefeller and Bartzen pulled up to a polo match in an old \u201crusty-ass\u201d pickup truck, recalls one polo player. \u201cI was like, Yo, this motherfucker is trying to tell people he\u2019s a Rockefeller dude. No way that guy is legit. Nobody drives a piece of shit like that and has a couple hundred grand in their account, let alone hundreds of millions.\u201d Another polo player said he once introduced Matthew Rockefeller to a bona fide Rockefeller descendant, who appeared not to recognize him.<\/p>\n
There were other awkward incidents. In early April, police were called to the Ben hotel in Palm Beach, where Global Passion Projects was having a cocktail party, after Bartzen didn\u2019t pay the tab, according to West Palm Beach police records and attendees. \u201cShe was in tears, and she didn\u2019t have the money to pay her bill. She needed an $8,000 buyout or else they would have hauled her off to jail,\u201d said a person who was there. Another attendee bailed her out. After all, that amount was pocket change among the crowd with which Bartzen was rolling. \u201cDropping like $80K on something, or $100K on something, it\u2019s de minimis value. It\u2019s not a lot of money,\u201d said the person. \u201cSo we always question those folks that are struggling for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bartzen\u2019s professional life, however, was blossoming. She started landing speaking gigs in front of high-net-worth audiences. In May, she spoke on a panel at a Family Office Club summit in New York, where she was touted as an \u201cangel investor.\u201d \u201cShe said she was an angel investor and not raising capital, and we had no reason not to believe her,\u201d said Richard Wilson, president and founder of the Family Office Club. She told many people on the party circuit that she\u2019d been the \u201cmastermind\u201d behind the launch of several blockbuster drugs on the market, including Botox and the Merck cancer drug Keytruda.<\/p>\n
Some health-care executives who\u2019d met Bartzen and seen her speak became suspicious \u2014 they\u2019d never heard of her. And they were right to be: Her work on Keytruda\u2019s launch was actually a six-month gig for an Omnicom health-care subsidiary called Wildtype; another three-year r\u00e9sum\u00e9 stint supposedly leading the launch of a Keytruda drug collaboration turned out to be a contractor position that lasted under a year. Bartzen\u2019s educational background was also largely fabricated. The MIT Registrar\u2019s Office said it had no record of Bartzen being enrolled as a student, nor did Case Western, from which Bartzen claims an M.B.A.<\/p>\n
Then in June, Soozin was leaving a voice-memo for Bartzen, explaining what she called \u201chigh-society protocol\u201d \u2014\u00a0a code of etiquette she worried Bartzen might be violating through her behavior toward another heiress \u2014 when her mother overheard and asked to see a photo of the person she was instructing. \u201cHoney, no one from the Cartier family would tilt her head that way in a photo; she would have gone to finishing school by the age of 14,\u201d Soozin\u2019s mother said. \u201cLook at the spacing of her highlights. That hair treatment is under $200. No one from the Cartier family would have a hair treatment that cost less than $600.\u201d And then she pointed to Bartzen\u2019s foot, flopped out on the floor inelegantly. \u201cWhat is that?\u201d<\/p>\n
Soon, suspicion turned to gossip turned to outrage among Soozin\u2019s network as people started putting together the pieces. \u201cIn Palm Beach, pretty much everyone I knew was calling her \u2018the fake Cartier,\u2019\u201d she said. In Newport the next month, security guards escorted Bartzen out of a premier family-office event hosted by Opal Group after she snuck in. It wasn\u2019t that Bartzen had exactly stolen something tangible from the society set; what offended them most was that she\u2019d pretended to be one of them \u2014 she\u2019d taken the aura that comes with being not just wealthy, not just old money, but having the bloodline of an aristocrat.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
\n Rockefeller at the Global Passion Projects yacht party in August.
\n Photo: Leo The Visualist Media\n <\/p>\n
By the time the rumors started spreading in Florida, Bartzen and Rockefeller were already back in New York, preparing for their most ambitious event yet: a three-day Hamptons extravaganza including yacht and garden parties for several hundred guests to benefit the American Cancer Society.<\/p>\n
When the August blowout came around, it seemed like they\u2019d truly faked it until they\u2019d made it: The event appeared to be star-studded, at least by dubious or semi-disgraced stars. The chef Todd English cooked, and Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe \u2014 adopted into a German royal family at age 24 \u2014 was there, as was Hansel Bailey, a businessman who had been imprisoned for tax fraud. Even some people who\u2019d heard the rumors about Bartzen and Rockefeller, or who harbored some doubts of their own, attended anyway. After all, Bartzen hardly ever charged her richest guests for tickets, and if the party was good, who cared who was hosting it? \u201cIt was still free,\u201d said someone who went, after rattling off a laundry list of reasons they didn\u2019t trust Bartzen. \u201cWhat if she is a manipulator and she brings value?\u201d said the acquaintance, who now ran into Bartzen regularly at parties. Several people told me that even though they doubted Rockefeller and Bartzen were real heirs, they couldn\u2019t be sure.<\/p>\n
Bartzen and Rockefeller had also scored a major get: Cheryl Young, a private adviser of the Rockefeller Global Family Office, had agreed to sponsor the event, and the office\u2019s parent firm, Rockefeller Capital Management, appeared on the invites.<\/p>\n
Rockefeller Capital, once it learned of Young\u2019s arrangement, pulled its sponsorship, but the step-and-repeat backdrop was still patterned with the logo for Rockefeller Global Family Office. It was also plastered behind Young as she spoke onstage. \u201cThe brand was misused and no authorization was given by the firm,\u201d said a person close to Rockefeller Capital.<\/p>\n
Matthew Rockefeller\u2019s opportunity to shine came in a panel about \u201cnavigating life within legacy families\u201d and \u201cinherited influence.\u201d He sat alongside J. Bradley Hilton, who oversees the Hilton Family Office. \u201cHe was acting like he is reflecting an arm of the Rockefellers. He definitely made it very apparent that he\u2019s speaking as if he is born into a legacy family \u2014 you know, \u2018As a child, I did experience this type of stuff,\u2019\u201d said a person who was there. \u201cIt looked very real and authentic.\u201d A press release recapping the event described Bartzen as a \u201cscion of the Cartier Dynasty.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
\n Bartzen and Rockefeller pose with speakers, including J. Bradley Hilton and Cheryl Young, onstage at the Global Passion Projects event in August. The backdrop featured the logo of the Rockefeller Global Family Office, despite the firm withdrawing its sponsorship.
\n Photo: David Warren\/Sipa USA\/Alamy Stock Photo\n <\/p>\n
Still, Rockefeller was \u201ca little awkward, a little too emotional. He\u2019s always following Andrea \u2014 like a lost puppy,\u201d said the acquaintance. \u201cNo Rockefeller would act like that.\u201d In fact, the acquaintance thought, Rockefeller seemed more like an actor. Bartzen didn\u2019t fit how guests envisioned a Cartier either. She was wearing what appeared to be a white Birkin bag, but upon closer inspection, a well-heeled attendee observed that it was fake. \u201cWhat Birkin has a grommet?\u201d said the guest. 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. \u201cWhat if this is all a collaborative con job?\u201d the guest wondered.<\/p>\n
Ironically, the person who took the biggest hit at the event was the only person in attendance with a verified connection to the real Rockefeller family. Young did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but according to people familiar with the situation, Bartzen never refunded the $30,000 Young had paid for the sponsorship \u2014 even after Rockefeller Capital revoked it.<\/p>\n
But even as people began to suspect Matthew wasn\u2019t really one of those Rockefellers, they didn\u2019t know who he actually was.<\/p>\n
It turned out he was an average guy from a blue-collar town who had been eking out a living as an actor and a magician. Born Matthew Wayne Tomasko in York, Pennsylvania, for many years he went by \u201cMatt Wayne the celebrity magician.\u201d He\u2019d received a magic set from his grandfather when he was 5. \u201cFrom there, it just kind of snowballed,\u201d he said later in a magic-trick video. His mother, Robbie Koser, was a onetime model who worked as a hospice nurse, and his father, John Tomasko, worked for a trucking company. Matthew started working at a local hotel when he was 14, then enlisted in the Navy after he came of age.<\/p>\n
He moved to Manhattan with $600 and just enough to cover the first month\u2019s rent, according to an interview he did with New York Resident magazine a few years later. In 2007, he was accepted to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts acting conservatory but dropped out after his first year. By 2010, Tomasko was producing a one-man Off Broadway show called The Complete Performer, starring comedian Ted Greenberg; the following year, he starred in a reality show called Doggie Moms. On the side, Tomasko formed a company called No Social Limits, helping clients make their videos go viral, and posted videos of himself doing coin tricks. \u201cI entertain mainly for celebrities,\u201d he said in one. \u201cI get to do magic tricks for a living. How amazing is that?\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
\n Rockefeller, whose real name is Matthew Tomasko, for years worked as an actor and magician under the stage name Matt Wayne. This image is from a 2015 short film.
\n Photo: IMDB\n <\/p>\n
A few years later, Tomasko moved upstate with a woman, peddling essential oils for a multilevel-marketing company. \u201cI\u2019ve always had to keep chasing that next deal, the next paycheck, you know \u2014 some months are up, some months are down, and it was always a struggle,\u201d Tomasko said in a promotional video for the company. The couple had a son in late 2017 but split within a few years, and Tomasko saw his child only rarely. \u201cIt was very difficult because I think he really wanted to father and parent and be really involved in his son\u2019s life and he didn\u2019t want it to be like how he was as a kid,\u201d said an old friend of Tomasko\u2019s from New York. (Tomasko\u2019s parents had long ago broken up.)<\/p>\n
Seemingly trying to reinvent himself, Tomasko moved back to Pennsylvania and embarked on a deep dive into his own family history, spending months combing through boxes of old photos in his grandmother\u2019s attic. On Facebook, he wrote about learning his grandmother was adopted after stumbling across her birth certificate, a discovery that seems to have changed his understanding of his own identity. In October 2023, Tomasko posted a photo of himself, in a suit with a blue tie, standing next to the bust of John D. Rockefeller at the National Portrait Gallery. \u201cThe countless hours I\u2019ve spent here over the last few years have been filled with fascination and awe,\u201d he wrote in the caption. It was around that time he changed his social-media names to Matthew W. Rockefeller.<\/p>\n
The real Rockefellers have no single spokesperson, family office, or philanthropic arm. The family is represented by a constellation of entities, generally operating independently of each other. Few of the major Rockefeller-affiliated entities wanted to talk about Tomasko. \u201cWe aren\u2019t aware of this individual being associated with the family,\u201d a source close to the Rockefellers told me. A spokesperson for Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors added that it has \u201cno association with this person.\u201d<\/p>\n
In recent months, Bartzen and Rockefeller \u2014 or Tomasko, as a few people now knew him \u2014 had been a white-hot topic of gossip in the family-office world and society circles. \u201cIt\u2019s sort of like almost everyone knows about this,\u201d said the person who\u2019d seen them in Palm Beach and Miami. \u201cThey\u2019re literally all talking about it.\u201d Tomasko\u2019s past as a performer wrote its own punch lines: \u201cYou do this magic trick, and all of a sudden you turn into a Rockefeller!\u201d joked someone who spent time with the pair in the Hamptons.<\/p>\n
But to others the misappropriated names were much more serious. \u201cShe was provided access, I\u2019m sure, based on the story that they tell \u2014 people let them in the door,\u201d said the polo player. \u201cIt\u2019s total fraud.\u201d Bartzen had seen the videos of Tomasko doing magic, but she remained adamant that he was a Rockefeller. \u201cIf you can\u2019t really find the lineage \u2026 if they\u2019re fake, that\u2019s a criminal thing, what they\u2019re doing,\u201d said the person in Palm Beach and Miami. Kelly Bagla, a lawyer representing Tomasko who describes herself as a \u201chigh-net-worth business attorney,\u201d declined to respond to questions, saying only that the \u201cfacts are incorrect\u201d without identifying which ones specifically. Bartzen did not respond to numerous requests for comment \u2014\u00a0though many people I spoke with reported hearing her complaining about the story or warning those in her network not to speak with me.<\/p>\n
By October, Tomasko and Bartzen were on the rocks. Bartzen had traveled to Saudi Arabia to hit the party circuit there and extended her trip. Tomasko fretted to others that she still had $10,000 of his money. One night around 1 a.m. Riyadh time, Bartzen texted Tomasko: \u201cCan you order me an uber?\u201d she wrote. \u201cNo I can\u2019t,\u201d Tomasko wrote back. \u201cWhat the heck is going on with you Andrea?!\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t call an uber! And I\u2019m stuck,\u201d she wrote back.<\/p>\n
In December, Bartzen \u2014 who by now owes New York State nearly $36,000 in unpaid taxes and interest \u2014\u00a0 threw a party at Art Basel; more events were planned for March and April in Palm Beach. Bartzen claimed a portion of the ticket sales for an upcoming Palm Beach gala in April would be donated to her \u201cPassion Partner,\u201d the American Heart Association. But a spokesperson for the AHA said no such arrangement had been finalized, and the association asked Bartzen to remove the language.<\/p>\n
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\n Bartzen, center, is confronted while crashing a black-tie Palm Beach wedding at the Flagler Museum in February.<\/p>\n
Then in February, Bartzen crashed the wrong party \u2014 a black-tie wedding at the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach. Bartzen wore a short pink dress \u2014 the same garment she was photographed in the night before and the night after \u2014 and white tweed jacket, while most of the wedding guests wore floor-length gowns and tuxes. When the mother of the bride asked who she was, Bartzen held up a table card. It bore the name of the bride\u2019s best friend, who was standing a few feet away. \u201cI said, \u2018You\u2019re so full of shit,\u2019\u201d recalled the mother of the bride. \u201cYou need to get the fuck out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bartzen continued to protest that she\u2019d been invited until security arrived, marching her by the arm off the premises. \u201cIt was a personal, private event, no different than if I had it in my house, and she decided to break in to come into my party,\u201d said the mother of the bride. The story quickly spread back to people who knew Bartzen from the Hamptons. It was one thing to crash a ticketed event like a charity gala, where anyone could theoretically buy their way in, they said; it was quite another to show up to a stranger\u2019s wedding, planning to stay for dinner. \u201cI want this woman destroyed,\u201d said the bride\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n
While Bartzen never responded to me directly, stories and photos of her poured in all winter from Miami and Palm Beach; she seemed to be fretting about the story, going through my Instagram contacts and lashing out at those she believed might have spoken with me \u2014\u00a0even as she continued showing up at events to which she had not been invited. At the end of January, I received a notification that she viewed my LinkedIn profile. Within a few days, Bartzen had removed \u201cCartier\u201d from her own profile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrea Bartzen and Matthew Rockefeller hosted the Global Passion Projects Hamptons VIP Yacht Party in Sag Harbor last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[40802,71621,18475,17407,75,84,83,9,24,63,19031,50867],"class_list":["post-176373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-audio-article","tag-dynasties","tag-hamptons","tag-hard-paywall","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-palm-beach","tag-social-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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