An internationally renowned pediatric immunologist claims his life was upended after a woman he met through a matchmaking service falsely accused him of grotesque bigotry and child sex abuse, maliciously tarring him as a “pedophile pediatrician” in an all-out attempt to ruin his medical career.
Dr. Jean-Laurent Casanova, who heads up a highly respected human genetics and infectious diseases lab at Rockefeller University in Manhattan, says his former paramour hatched the plot as part of a brazen extortion attempt that culminated last month with a raft of unthinkable allegations against him. In a June 18 email, the decades-younger woman warned officials at the world-famous biomedical research institute to “take the appropriate and necessary precautions to prevent your institution from any exposure to liability,” according to a $10 million lawsuit obtained by The Daily Beast.
“He’s confessed in 1:1 private conversations that he’s engaged in ‘threesomes with underaged girls’ or minors,” Jennifer Lin, 35, wrote in the missive, according to Casanova’s lawsuit.
The 60-year-old Casanova, who is the co-leader of the NIH-affiliated COVID Human Genetic Effort, also “brazenly and openly [made] open remarks about his views regarding his sexual relations with, in his words, ‘dirty, smelly black’ women,’” the email continued, alleging that Casanova “expressed very open disdain for the African American community, but ‘takes pleasure in having sex with those dirty monkeys and gorillas.’”
But the charges are “all… completely false,” and were fabricated solely because he refused to cave to Lin’s demands, Casanova says in his complaint, filed July 27. Nevertheless, Rockefeller retained outside counsel to oversee an internal investigation due to Lin’s email, the complaint reveals.
“Since that date, in an effort to try to minimize the damage to his career and to his relationship with the Hospital, [Casanova] must now participate in the Hospital’s internal investigation of him,” the complaint says.
Marc Gottlieb, Casanova’s attorney, told The Daily Beast that Lin had sent a notarized letter to Rockefeller early Monday morning retracting her allegations in exchange for Casanova dropping the lawsuit. Lin, who is not represented by an attorney, did not respond to multiple requests for comment and The Daily Beast was unable to independently verify the letter. Gottlieb said Lin agreed not to speak to the media as part of their agreement.
In the letter, Lin said “a psychotic episode consisting of delusions and auditory hallucinations because of schizophrenia” led her to send “correspondences composed wholly of falsehoods.”
The pair met around 2015 when a then-unmarried Casanova was looking to meet compatible single women, his complaint states. He hired a matchmaker and was introduced to Lin.
She lived in Los Angeles and Casanova lived and worked in New York City. Still, the two decided to make a go of it and began communicating via phone and email, the complaint says. A few weeks later, Lin made plans to visit Casanova so they could meet in person.
Casanova invited Lin to stay with him at his apartment, and she happily accepted, the complaint states.
“The parties also discussed, and both understood that during [Lin’s] visit, they were likely to have consensual sexual relations with one another and they planned accordingly,” it says.
Lin spent the weekend with Casanova, touring the city. They visited art museums, dined out, and, on Lin’s second night in town, “engaged in a consensual sexual relationship,” the complaint continues. Things went well enough that when Lin left to go back to L.A., the two had already started planning for Casanova to visit Lin.
Lin began her career as a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which, as her now-defunct LinkedIn profile noted, is the second-largest school district in the United States. She later found work as a headhunter, according to her LinkedIn. According to her bio, she studied law and earned master’s degrees from Oxford University and the University of Southern California, and is a “writer of true stories and stories based on true stories.” Her self-published 2016 book, Unforgettable: The Story of a Lonely Girl, is billed as a memoir of Lin’s “rather lifeless and loveless” existence.
“Who is Lonely Girl?” the book’s Amazon page asks, describing Lin as, “at worst, a forgotten and an abandoned unknown or at best, a beautiful disaster.”
Lonely Girl’s “secret aspiration becomes finding a husband to live as his submissive wife, desiring all forms of unhealthy attachment, while her distinctly more ‘Caucasian features’ as compared to her Asian peers works to her benefit in these circles,” a PR pitch for Lin’s book read. “The girl then meets a worldly—and much older and experienced—Swedish businessman who is 23 years her senior that she’s determined to marry, until a sudden discovery and ensuing request threatens to destroy her dream.”
About two weeks after Lin’s visit to New York, Casanova went to L.A. for a second date. He spent the weekend at Lin’s place, and the budding couple “toured Los Angeles, spending time at the famed Getty Museum, dining out, and that Saturday evening, while at [Lin’s] apartment, they again had consensual sex with one another,” according to Casanova’s complaint, which says he returned to New York the next night.
Soon after, Casanova says he received a “strange and unexpected call” from Lin, who told him she was seeing another man and wanted to break things off. The two nevertheless remained friendly and stayed in sporadic touch, according to the complaint.
A couple of years later, Casanova found himself in Los Angeles for a work meeting. While there, he texted Lin to ask her out to dinner. They “enjoyed a pleasant yet purely platonic evening which ended amicably,” the complaint states. Then, several months later, Casanova says Lin called him out of the blue and told him she was depressed.
She told Casanova he was the best lover she’d ever had, according to the complaint. She also said she had written a book that she wanted him to read and critique, it says. (Casanova read the book and provided feedback, according to the complaint, which does not include his thoughts on the book, or what he said about it to Lin.)
Lin would call every 12 to 18 months, mostly to tell Casanova how poorly her life was going, the complaint states. According to Casanova, Lin complained that men were constantly breaking up with her, that her career was in the toilet, and that she was struggling financially. Last summer, Casanova says Lin called to tell him she was moving to Atlanta to be closer to her parents.
By this time, Casanova was married and raising a young child with his new wife. He had not, however, mentioned this to Lin, according to the complaint. Now living on the East Coast, Lin “appeared to have done a complete 180-degree turn,” suggesting they try again and even get married if he “would agree to support her so she could quit working,” the complaint states. Casanova “immediately rejected that notion out of hand, reminding [Lin] that they were not in love with one another, nor were they particularly compatible, as it turned out.”
Casanova says the interaction once again ended “amicably.” But, according to the complaint, things “forever and permanently changed” in mid-June, when Lin allegedly contacted him out of the blue and asked him to send her $1,000.
“[Casanova] was surprised by this request, and he told [Lin] he would not be doing that,” states the complaint, saying Lin upped the ante to $1,500 a week “indefinitely.” Casanova thought Lin was kidding at first, but quickly understood “the demand was no joke and was more akin to a form of extortion.” If he didn’t send her the money, Lin warned “he would be very sorry; that she would denounce him and ruin his life,” according to the complaint.
When Lin realized the money wasn’t coming, Casanova says she went scorched-earth.
“YOU PEDOPHILE. STAY AWAY FROM WOMEN YOU PREDATOR,” Lin texted him, according to a transcript of the message included in the complaint. “I’m filing a complaint with the FBI too regarding your conduct… I’ve relayed to [sic] truth about who you are to Manhattan’s District Attorney, Alvin Bragg… YOU WILL BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE LIKE HARVEY WEINSTEIN, JEFFREY EPSTEIN, and all the PERVERTED PEDOPHILES lie YOU who commit exploitive sex crimes. I’m filing a complaint with the FBI too regarding your conduct.”
Casanova says he was deeply rattled and cut off all contact. He was “stunned” by the accusations, according to the complaint, which characterizes them as “a complete and utter fabrication; none of it having any basis in reality.”
Whether or not Lin contacted the feds is unclear. But on June 18, she emailed his bosses at Rockefeller.
New York State Supreme Court
“The contents of this report serves to inform your institution about a matter concerning the above-named pediatric physician/professor,” Lin wrote to Rockefeller University’s HR and public affairs departments, with Casanova cc’ed. “He reportedly engages in illicit and criminal activity, including but not limited to the solicitation of prostitution, including underaged girls or minors.”
The allegations of underage threesomes and vile racism followed, signed off with Lin’s name and contact info.
Casanova’s complaint describes Lin’s email, which is filed as an exhibit, as “highly damaging and maliciously false.” He says it was “specifically designed and intended to destroy” Casanova’s standing at Rockefeller U, and prevent him from ever working anywhere else again.
“Any reasonable person who read [Lin’s] statements would consider [Casanova] a sexual predator and sexual criminal as well as an extraordinary racist,” the complaint states. Thanks to Lin, Casanova “is now suspected by Rockefeller of being a pedophile pediatrician, perhaps one of the worst types of offenders known to a civilized society.”
Casanova said he worried his medical license could be in jeopardy and blames Lin for the onset of anxiety, sleeplessness, hypertension, and unspecified gastrointestinal disorders, according to the complaint. He says the “full scope” of the financial damage is yet unknown, but “believed to be well in excess of Ten Million ($10,000,000) Dollars by the time everything is said and done.”
Rockefeller’s investigation into Casanova remained ongoing as of last Thursday, when Casanova’s legal team filed the complaint against Lin, the complaint says. Casanova’s lawsuit was on the docket and active as of Monday afternoon.
A Rockefeller spokesman, Franklin Hoke, told The Daily Beast on Monday that the university had no comment.
