HELL IN A HANDBAG
Manhattan socialites are up in arms.
Guest of a Guest writer and realestate agent George Mickum is being accused of scamming a number of New York City’s top socialites out of thousands of dollars by selling them fake Hermès Birkin couture purses — and the rich ladies of Manhattan are piping mad that they’ve been allegedly duped.
One source described the contributor to the society and nightlife website as the “modern male version” of fraudster Anna Delvey because “he targets wealthy women and has been selling his friends hard to get Hermes bags at resale, but it turns out they’re all fakes,” the source charged.
Unlike Delvey, however, these victims aren’t pressing charges, the source added, saying Mickum “knows they won’t resell them and won’t say anything once they find out [they’re not real].”
Mickum told The Post that the allegations are “absurd and false.” The women accusing him of selling the fake bags have not filed charges.
Several sources familiar with the situation said Mickum was allegedly able to convince the ladies to purchase the hard-to-come-by, fivefigure handbags “that even rich people don’t have access to” because “he lied about being friends with [Hermès gatekeeper] Michael Coste.”
But “Michael doesn’t even sell bags to his best customers. He makes them wait! It never sounded right. It’s all shady,” alleged a second source who has interacted with Mickum.
Mom’s ritzy résumé
One victim of the scam, who is too embarrassed to be named, shamefully admitted she fell for Mickum because of his pedigree: His mother, Sally A. Painter, was a senior adviser in the Clinton administration “from 1993-1995,” according to her company bio. She is now the co-founder and chief operating officer of Blue Star Strategies LLC, where “she provides corporate, institutional, and public sector clients with external affairs, foreign and security policy guidance, and global business development strategies.”
The “super trusting” fake-bag victim says she met Mickum at an event for Prince William in London that he attended with his mom “a million years ago.”
“As far as I knew, his mother was close friends with the Prince of Wales. [George is] also a pretty recognizable person around [New York],” she added.
They reconnected in New York, she said, and “I’d see him and he was always like, ‘I’m jetting off to Turkey or Paris.’ I never thought twice [about him being a phony].”
A fourth source said Mickum would “parade his mom” around New York when she’d come to town from Washington, DC.
“Meeting someone’s mother adds a lot of credibility — especially when they’ve worked with the royals and have been photographed with King Charles,” they said.
The fourth source believes Mickum’s association with the royals made it easier for him to allegedly scam the socialites because “he claimed to have vacationed with the royal family and leveraged that in NYC circles for credibility.”
The women cracked the alleged scam after “one of our friends noticed” a fake bag he was “flaunting around,” according to a fifth source. “That’s when one person went to an Hermes store and there wasn’t a [date stamp] on the bag,” according to the source.
A rep for Hermes did not comment, but a rep for luxury handbag reseller Madison Avenue Couture in New York confirmed that one of the alleged victims came to them to authenticate the bags.
“One of the many things that one looks at to authenticate a [Hermes] bag is the date stamp, which is a unique code to identify the bag,” they explained.
When one of the victims showed them the bag, “I said, ‘They’re fake.’ They looked counterfeit to us, and we didn’t think they were authentic. Two of us looked at them and those bags were not OK,” they claimed.
The rep added they “felt bad because one of the girls started crying. It was my understanding that it wasn’t some random person who sold them the bag. It was a close friend or somebody that was in their circle.”
For his next act . . .
Hermès allegedly wasn’t the only thing Mickum was selling.
The fifth source told us he was trying to “get in the mix with the New York arts community” and offered to give her a million dollars for her charity.
Thankfully, she realized, “he’s full of s--t,” she said.
“He was saying how he’d set up a meeting with this donor, and then it kept getting drawn out . . . Who tells someone that they’re connecting a donor to a charity and the donor is going to donate a million dollars? It’s a strange lie that will come out,” they said.
Still, his mother and connection with our victim also “gave him legitimacy,” the fifth source said.
The mom did not respond to a request for comment.
Mickum’s last column for Guest of a Guest was a holiday wish list published back in December.
Hermès was not on the list.