NJ Gynecologist 'Catfished' Women Online, Report Says

JERSEY CITY, NJ — A North Jersey doctor was unmasked this week by the New York Post as the subject of a new memoir about "Ethan," a fake persona used a dozen years ago to seduce women online.

In June, Hachette Book Group published the memoir "There Is No Ethan," written by a sociologist who was one of the women corresponding with "Ethan Schulman," a faux New Jersey man whom they say they met on a dating app in 2011. The author of the memoir, Anna Akbari, and two other women banded together to find out the person behind the alias.

The New York Post on Sunday identified the alleged seducer as a practicing gynecologist at Jersey City Medical Center, Dr. Emily Slutsky Marantz. Now, the hospital's parent company says they stand behind her.

"Jersey City Medical Center has full confidence in Dr. Marantz’s ability to continue providing the highest quality of care to her patients," a spokesperson for Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health told Patch on Tuesday.

The spokesperson added, "The events from more than a decade ago have been reviewed and addressed to the satisfaction of the medical center."

Since the book debuted on June 4, its readers have been leaving angry reviews of Matantz — whom the Post says lives in Essex County — online.

"Wish I could leave 0 stars. She should step away and seek mental health treatment. Women should build women up, not tear them down," wrote a commenter on WebMD on Sunday.

"To emotionally devastate cause irreparable emotional harm to others out of jealousy is not someone that should be practicing medicine," wrote another.

The book has received critical acclaim from the New York Times and other publications, one of which called it "jaw-dropping."

According to the book's description, author Akbari and two other "highly educated" women quickly fell for "Ethan" and accepted various excuses for why they could not meet, including emergency cancer surgery.

"Unbeknownst to the others, each exchanged countless messages with Ethan," says the book's description. "His detailed excuses about broken webcams and complicated international calling plans seemed believable, as did last minute trip cancellations.

"After all, why would he lie? Ethan wasn't after money — he never convinced his marks to shell out thousands of dollars for some imagined crisis. Rather, he ensnared these women in a web of intense emotional intimacy. After the trio independently began to question inconsistencies in their new flame's stories, they managed to find one another and uncover a greater deception."

Akbari had actually identified the alleged seducer as Slutsky in a story for the New York Observer back in 2014, but hadn't recently published about the doctor's current career.

The person behind "Ethan" technically did not ask the trio for money or break laws, noted the author and media.

Read more about "There Is No Ethan" here.