A con artist-turned-doctor is a practicing gynecologist in New Jersey — despite being outed as a chronic catfisher in one of this summer’s hottest beach reads.
The Ethan Schuman described in sociologist Anna Akbari‘s “There is No Ethan” is actually Dr. Emily Marantz, 39, who lives in Livingston, N.J., and works at the Jersey City Medical Center, owned by RWJBarnabas Health, the book’s author told The Post.
The non-fiction book, which is also part memoir, recounts how three accomplished, well-educated women — including Akbari, who taught psychology at NYU — banded together to track down and expose the online predator who cruelly toyed with their emotions over several years, using the anonymity of the internet to pull off her perverse scheme.
“There are 10 victims that we know of and this went on for the better part of a decade,” Akbari told The Post.
A medical professional for 11 years, Marantz uses her married name professionally. But Akbari’s readers know her by her maiden name, Emily Slutsky.
In 2010, with a profile she’d created on dating site OKCupid, Marantz convinced several women she was an attractive, 6-foot-tall, Columbia and M.I.T.-educated, BMW-driving Jewish economic analyst with a dog named Harvey, living on the Upper West Side.
She wasn’t after money. Instead, Marantz manipulated her victims into falling in love with Ethan over time, through his irresistible, charming messages — some of which were sent from Ireland, where she studied medicine. What drove the doctor’s sick behavior? She simply wanted to emotionally devastate and demean attractive, successful women, victims said in the book.
But the three women — Akbari; a woman known only as “British Anna,” and Gina Dallago, an architect who studied at both Harvard and Princeton — realized something was askew when Ethan was never available for video chats and consistently canceled dates at the last minute.
That’s when the women found each other online and set out to stop Ethan.
Soon after they first started talking and after already establishing a strong connection, Marantz had Akbari believing Ethan had esophageal cancer, for which he needed immediate surgery — one of the most heinous acts of emotional abuse Akbari has ever endured, she said.
“Emily chose to have Ethan fake having cancer, to be diagnosed with cancer while we were talking, already knowing I lost someone close to me” — her grandmother — “a month prior” to lung cancer, she said.
“Of course, she knew I wasn’t going to abandon someone who’d told me that, because by then, there was an intimacy and a closeness that was well established.”
The book includes most of the conversations Akbari had with her false Romeo, who always seemed to know the right thing to say, often initiated inconsequential drama to cause blowout fights, and then punished her with periods of uncharacteristic silence or by reactivating his dating profile.
“The emotional abuse, that was a character choice she made,” Akbari said. “Why? I don’t know. But she was starting to make us question ourselves.”
In her book, she described it as feeling “like I’d stepped into an emotional blender.”
With Dallago, Marantz would shower her with compliments and thirst to learn more about her, all before then bringing up her Catholic background, noting his mother would never approve. He planned trips only to cancel them days before, without explanation.
Marantz never faced any repercussions for her actions, since she never actually violated any laws.
“Would someone who hasn’t suffered any consequences for their chronic bad behavior, would they stop?” asked Akbari. “It’s an interesting question.”
Marantz refused to answer her door Friday evening and did not return calls or emails seeking comment.
“Jersey City Medical Center has full confidence in Dr. Marantz’s ability to continue providing the highest quality of care to her patients,” a hospital spokesperson told The Post. “The events from more than a decade ago have been reviewed and addressed to the satisfaction of the medical center.”
A video promoting Jersey City Medical Center that featured Marantz was pulled from YouTube on Friday.
As her book details, Akbari said there were many instances where people in positions of power, including university officials, were made aware of her gross behavior, only to ignore it.
“It’s not my call to say what is a violation of medical ethics or the Hippocratic oath, but it’s shocking to me if this doesn’t qualify,” said Akbari. “This brings up so many questions, like should we be held accountable for our digital behavior in the same way we are for our physical behavior? In a culture where it feels like everyone gets canceled so easily, this is a remarkable case.”
Added Akbari: “It brings up so many other questions, like who is allowed to get away with this type of behavior and why, and are we okay with that?”
