A crook posing as a stylist to the stars — saying he worked for actors Jared Leto and Johnny Depp — ripped off three trendy Manhattan clothing shops by phoning in orders with a stolen credit card, sources told The Post on Tuesday.
The phony fashionista — a “hip”-looking shopper with a scruffy beard — ordered more than $2,000 worth of button-down shirts, shorts, polo shirts, tennis shoes and a card case from Carven in Soho on March 27 while posing as Leto’s stylist, sources said.
He also scammed Acme in SoHo claiming he worked for Leto, then switched to pretending to be Depp’s stylist at Marni in the Meatpacking District, sources said.
“We got swindled…He was very convincing, charming and friendly,” a source from Carven told The Post.
“When he came in, he was joking around. He walked through the store looking at things. He looked hip… he had a scruffy beard,” she said.
“He said he was sending his assistant in to pick up the merchandise … My sales associate made the mistake of not asking for an ID,” she admitted.
The men’s clothing shop —which specializes in French Couture and sells $300 shirts — has a policy requiring customers who place orders over the phone to pick them up in person and show IDs.
But it sometimes makes exceptions for celebrities with assistants, such as in this case, the Carven worker said.
We got swindled…He was very convincing, charming and friendly.
- Source
She added that one thing, in retrospect, was suspicious.
Leto, who played a transvestite prostitute in “Dallas Buyers Club,” is a small guy — but the crook picked out large clothing, said the source, who wasn’t at the shop at the time of the theft.
“I would have been suspicious… he was asking for things bigger than Jared Leto. He would be size small,” said the worker.
When AmEx refused to pay for the order, the shop reported the crime in May, sources said.
The thief used a card with the name Brian Orter on it at Craven, sources said.
At Marni on April 14, he used the name Jonas Bergrenn, sources said.
Neither were the stylists.
A surveillance camera caught the crook on tape at Carven, source said.
While shopping at Carven, the slick con man mentioned he had recently shopped at the other upscale clothes shops, the Carven worker said. After Craven realized that it had been scammed, workers there called Acme and Marni, where employees claimed that the same thing had happened to them.