Did High Society Party Planner Try To Rip Off A Charity Auction?
Bronson Van Wyck (pictured in white) is a blueblood, Yale-educated NYC event planner whose firm is known for staging fahbulous parties for everything from high society weddings to political rallies. But according to one reliable tipster, he's also a cheapskate who recently tried to scam his way into a cut-rate gym membership by rigging a charity auction. The full email detailing the party boy's underhanded plan to save himself $600 at Equinox, after the jump.
So at last night's New Yorker's For Children: A Fool's Fete ball at the Mandarin Oriental, there was a silent auction as there usually is at these kinds of things. One of the items being bid on was a gym membership to Equinox which started at $450. The first bid was by a guy named Bronson Van Wyck. You can read about him here and here.
After that PR lady Susan Shin and a guy named Stuart Sussman also bid on the membership but they had crossed out their bids for some reason. The mystery was easy to solve. It was Van Wyck's doing. According to another bidder who was about to outbid Van Wyck, as he was putting down his bid, Van Wyck came up to him and whispered, "Hey, why don't we just cross out all these bids and then we'll just get the membership on the cheap." The counter bidder looked at him with disgust and said, "No, you've got to be kidding me. This is for charity." and refused. So the price went up and Van Wyck, perhaps to mask his crumminess, eventually won it, for $1050.
