Central Park 'Karen' Amy Cooper once accused colleague of $65K romance scam: 'She wanted to see me in gutter'
Amy Cooper, the woman who recently went viral for calling the police on an African American birdwatcher in Central Park over an argument about her unleashed dog, had also once unsuccessfully tried to sue a co-worker. It has been revealed that Cooper had claimed that the two had been former lovers and accused him of stealing tens of thousands of dollars from her.
Back in 2015, Cooper filed a lawsuit against a man whom she said stole $65,000 from her. The man whom Cooper had accused, Martin Priest, spoke to Oxygen and shared that the allegations she had made against him were totally untrue and "completely fabricated and false". He also denied ever having any sort of romantic relationship with Amy.
Priest said, "the idea of me having a relationship with her is preposterous." After she 'invented' the lawsuit, he broke off their friendship. Priest and Cooper had worked together at the Lehman Brothers in the 2000s. They had been colleagues but Priest apparently broke off their friendship after Cooper had become very obsessive. "She was a work friend and it turned into stalking. I pushed her away," he revealed.
In the lawsuit, Cooper had claimed that she and Priest had an intimate relationship that went on between 2008 and 2012, court documents reveal, as per the New York Daily News. She also claimed that Priest had asked her if he could borrow $100,000.
She said she had obliged and had managed to give Priest around $65,000 which she claims he never repaid. "The fraud perpetrated against [the] plaintiff by [the] defendant was gross, and involved high moral culpability," the lawsuit alleged. She had also said in the lawsuit that Priest had warned her to "keep the f--k out of [his] life" and that she would "get hurt". "She completely fabricated a story... in an attempt to obliterate my life," he said.
"At one point she said to me she wasn’t going to stop until she saw me in the gutter," he added. "I was in a troubled marriage at the time and she exploited that and the threats kept going on and on. The further and further I tried to keep away from her, she filed this crazy lawsuit. [It] did its damage, and she just walked away. She didn’t pursue it at all."
The case was eventually dismissed in 2018.
Amy Cooper recently made headlines after she called the cops on a black man in Central Park after getting into an argument with him. The man, Christian Cooper, was heard asking Amy to put her dog on a leash while the two were in the park.
After being told to put her dog on a leash, she refused and threatened Christian in a video that garnered a lot of attention across social media. The Park's website states that all dogs need to be kept on a leash while inside.
Oh, when Karens take a walk with their dogs off leash in the famous Bramble in NY’s Central Park, where it is clearly posted on signs that dogs MUST be leashed at all times, and someone like my brother (an avid birder) politely asks her to put her dog on the leash. pic.twitter.com/3YnzuATsDm
— Melody Cooper (@melodyMcooper) May 25, 2020
In the video, she is heard saying, "I'm taking a picture and calling the cops. I'm going to tell them there's an African American man threatening my life." She is then heard saying, "There's a man, African American, he has a bicycle helmet," she says. "He is recording me and threatening me and my dog."
Her appalling behavior was slammed on social media with many demanding that she be fired from her job which eventually happened.