A would-be influencer who was recently sent to Rikers for dining and dashing from at least ten restaurants has also been skipping out on her rent payments, according to the New York Post. Pei Chung, who was arrested after failing to pay her bill at Michelin-starred restaurant Francie, as well as at Misi and Peter Luger, to name a few, is being evicted from her studio apartment at 416 Kent Avenue, one of a trio of glass rental towers on the Williamsburg waterfront owned by former governor Eliot Spitzer.
Chung owes around $40,000 in back rent for her $3,350-a-month studio apartment, according to court documents reviewed by the Post. That amounts to about a year of rent. Chung has lived in the apartment since July 2021, and her lease apparently expired in August 2024. For her 26,000 followers, the apartment is familiar; it’s where she makes many of her social-media videos, posing in lingerie and clothing from luxury brands like Cartier, Burberry, and Louis Vuitton. The rent is about average for a waterfront studio; the neighborhood’s median base rent is now $4,760, according to StreetEasy. Other studios at the complex, which started leasing in 2018, are renting for between $3,200 and $3,900. Chung, who appears to like the finer things in life, seems to have picked a building with upscale amenities: The apartments have oak floors and floor-to-ceiling windows, and there’s a doorman, a gym, and a pool in the building.
“Here’s the thing that annoys me: I tried to get reservations at some of those restaurants and I couldn’t,” Spitzer told the Post. The former governor, who returned to his family real-estate business after being ousted in a prostitution scandal, owns a number of luxury rental buildings and has others under development, including one on Fifth Avenue.
In court documents, building management portrayed Chung as a problematic tenant who displayed erratic behavior that necessitated calls to the NYPD. One neighbor described “repeated outbursts, visible signs of conflict, and disorder in the hallway,” while another said she wrote his name in red lipstick on his door. Chung also displayed strange behavior at nearby restaurants. Staff at Hole in the Wall on Bedford said she ordered three entrées and a cappuccino and sat for five hours, scrolling on her phone without eating anything and leaving without paying. On top of refusing to pay her rent or her dining bills, she has apparently also insulted the restaurants on social media, writing that they “cease to functionally deliver something that I am really satisfied with every detail.”