An alleged fake Cartier heiress, Andrea Bartzen, 60, stood in the candlelit courtyard outside Palm Beach, Florida, restaurant Bice last Tuesday, sipping Champagne and eating hors d’oeuvres in a designer Alice and Olivia gown.
The Upper East Sider held court with a high society crowd, including navy seal veteran William Branum, former pro-basketball player Gary Forbes and Tiger Woods ex Rachel Uchitel. She had wrangled the cast for a “Cocktails and Conversation” mixer, for which she charged $150-per-ticket.
“I bring the powerful and wealthy into a room,” Bartzen told The Post of her rolodex of rich entrepreneurs.
However, Bartzen herself was as much the subject of the room’s gossip as her guests, following a scathing New York Magazine article. It alleged she used the name Andrea Cartier Bartzen for years, making up a connection to the jewelry family to elevate her status and convince sponsors to fund her events.
She was also accused her of crashing parties, fabricating large parts of her life, stiffing bills and pretending to be part of a social set she wasn’t truly a part of to gain money and relevance.
Her partner in it all? Matthew Rockefeller, 39, a former magician apparently now posing as an oil heir, who Bartzen met over Facebook. His real name is Matthew Tomasko, according to New York Magazine.
Bartzen says any claims of fabrication are lies, the work of a small network of people jealous of her success.
“I never go around saying that I’m an heiress,” said Bartzen, although she currently has a post pinned to her Instagram devoted to her grandmother, Mary Cartier Bartzen, who she says “was just like Jackie O.”
When asked to trace back her family lineage to the Cartier family, Bartzen provided The Post a photo of a family tree that shows she is related to a Francis Cartier of Quebec, Canada — not the Parisienne jewelry patriarch, Louis-Francois Cartier.
Still, she maintains the relationship is “indirect” — whatever that means — and her grandmother was Mary Cartier. This may be true, but The Post could not find anything relating Bartzen to the jewelry family.
At one point during her Tuesday event a party crasher called out the huge elephant in the palm tree decked courtyard, shouting: “Are you going to address the allegations of you being a fraud?”
Bartzen said the woman was escorted out and that she later apologized.
The Ohio native is adamant she won’t back down — insisting the New York Magazine story was planted entirely to damage her and her networking business.
“It was a complete mean girl, malicious intent to take me down,” Bartzen said, claiming a woman named Rolise Rachel tried to steal her high-end connections.
“She saw my life on social media. I had posted all these great things. She saw I had true established credibility in the business world,” Bartzen said.
Rachel disputes this, telling The Post: “Andrea Bartzen has this narrative in her mind that I put a group of people together [and] created the article. This is completely false.”
She also disputes Bartzen’s reputational claims, giving an example of how she reportedly crashed the wedding of a couple she did not know at Palm Beach’s Flagler Museum, claiming to be a friend of the bride.
“Within minutes of her arrival I knew that the mother of the bride was besides herself.
“I’m not sure why she would use the Cartier name except for the obvious reasons. I’ve met many heiress — this is not their typical behavior,” Rachel added to The Post.
She and Bartzen had collaborated on one event in the Hamptons,, which was, by many accounts, badly catered. It ended with Rachel out of pocket of any proceeds and with her contact book mysteriously disappeared, she claimed to New York Magazine.
Bartzen told The Post she moved to New York City in the 90s, comparing her life to TV show “Sex and the City.” She claimed to work in pharmaceutical advertising at huge agencies including McCann.
By the 2010s, she says she had cemented herself on the socialite-decked charity benefit circuit.
Bartzen says she now runs Global Passion Projects, a well-respected company committed to connecting “visionaries, investors, and change-makers worldwide.” She boasts they even hosted an actual event with the Cartier luxury brand.
Bartzen said she met Rockefeller, who did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment, in 2024 and they instantly connected. She had no reason to believe he wasn’t a part of the famously moneyed family dynasty.
“I met him as Matthew Rockefeller. Of course I took his word for it,” Bartzen said, although she adds the magazine story tore them apart.
“This article broke us up. It ruined both of our lives.The stress from it. We had true genuine connection. We were both dealing with the trauma of it. Who knows what will happen,” she lamented to The Post.
Rockefeller has also come on board with Global Passion Projects in the last couple of years.
One of their more notorious projects was a yacht at Miami Hedge Fund week 2024, booking sponsors for up to $12,000 and promising them access to a network of thousands of investors, according to promotional documents.
Bartzen assured “The Rockefellers are coming!” and fronted $15,000 for the venue, given by entrepreneurs whom Bartzen reportedly vowed to pay back.
After the event, at least two sponsors reportedly asked for their money back, according to New York Magazine.
Bartzen tells The Post the allegations are “a lie,” that she “personally paid for all bills and events” and she was being “sabotaged” by an anonymous group of women devoted to ruining her.
“They tried to get venues and yachts to pull out,” she said.
She also claims the same group “ran up bills,” including an $8,000 tab at a bar inside The Ben hotel in Palm Beach.
“They put party crashers on my bills and had competing events to mine. It was one thing after another. I ended up double and triple paying for everything,” she claims.
Others told The Post Bartzen appears to be engaged in the increasingly modern practice of living her life based on her own “version” of the truth, passing off opinions as fact and choosing to interpret the events around her in the best possible light.
She says she’ll never let the cabal of alleged “mean girls” on the socialite scenes in Florida and New York stop her living the high life and from doing what she does best — partying.
“There’s no way I will let them ruin my events,” she added.
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