Banned Underage Drinker Pays Protesters To Bully Lux UES Hotel. Hotel Sues. Police Shrug

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A boy denied booze at a luxury Upper East Side hotel has since mounted a campaign of defamation, sending paid protesters to chant strange allegations that the five-star destination denies the Holocaust, supports Jeffrey Epstein and has mice, according to court records, video and workers.

The Mark Hotel on East 77th Street between Fifth and Madison avenues — whose visitors include Met Gala guests and Angelina Jolie — filed a defamation lawsuit against Theodore Weintraub in July, court records show.

Workers told Patch the would-be imbiber has been spotted sitting in a parked Cadillac across the street, smirking as protesters-for-hire chant at his behest.

"They were saying the most random things," Claudia Oshry says. "'The Mark has mice, The Mark denies the Holocaust, the Mark supports Epstein.' Ben was like, 'How are these three things related?'"

"All these different chants all day…It’s the craziest thing we’ve ever had to deal with."

According to the lawsuit — which seeks a restraining order and damages — the connection is an underage drinker denied service in 2019.

The Upper East Side boy was banned from the hotel after repeatedly trying to buy drinks at The Mark Bar — where Champagne cost up to 90 bucks a coupe — with a fake ID, the hotel says.

“With every passing failed attempt, Weintraub became increasingly aggressive with those refusing to serve him,” the suit reads. Ultimately the hotel deemed him “someone not to be welcomed into the hotel.”

About a month later, Weintraub reappeared, this time on a dinner date with his father, “a well known doctor in Manhattan,” who was immediately informed of his son’s ban.

Weintraub Jr. first begged forgiveness, then shouted accusations that the hotel was antisemitic and that staff spit in people’s foods, the lawsuit contends.

While the Park Avenue doctor isn't named in the suit, Theodore shares an address with Park Avenue, art-collecting cardiologist Dr. Philip Weintaub.

For two years, Weintraub avoided the hotel until earlier this summer when he started to verbally attack staff. And then in late June, he began to picket alongside others, the suit claims.

Protesters, who told staff they were paid $25 an hour, began “systematically” appearing outside the hotel for hours, according to the lawsuit.

The hotel hired extra security and shortened outdoor dining hours when Weintraub and his sign-toting staff began yelling at guests.

“It was like non-stop,” the worker said, “going up to every single table back and forth for hours.”

Sometimes the protesters chanted, sometimes they waited in silence for VIP and celebrity guests to arrive, workers said.

Weintraub, the suit reads, also targeted individual workers, calling them “pedophiles,” making fun of one doorman’s bald head, and even telling one that his “mother is prostitute.”

The protesters have told Mark workers that if the owner lets Weintraub back in the bar, they would stop protesting, the worker said.

The worker told Patch that The Mark's eminently New York neighbors started yelling from their windows: “‘Shut up already!’”

“It was like something out of a movie.”

A shoving match between protesters and fans of a departing celeb ensued on July 18, when one protester was punched in the face by a fan, the suit said.

Despite calling the police on multiple occasions, the worker says the cops can’t do anything because the group is small and are not using sound amplification.

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