Chrissy Teigen’s representatives claim that Michael Costello manipulated the Instagram messages, in which he claims she told him to “suffer and die.”
According to Business Insider, Chrissy’s team “found technical inconsistencies” in the private DMs that Michael revealed last week.
Michael claimed that the messages were sent in 2014, but blue/purple messages, such as those seen in the screenshots, were not added until 2020.
Similarly, the video chat icon shown in the screenshots was just introduced in 2018.
Costello, 38, claims that he felt “traumatized” and “suicidal” after he said Teigen “bullied” him “blacklisted” him from the fashion industry.
Michael said Chrissy singled him out after hearing a story that he used a racist slur, ultimately debunked.
He said on Instagram, “I wanted to kill myself and still am traumatized, depressed and have thoughts of suicide,” hours after Chrissy apologized for her previous statements in a Medium article.
Michael went on to say that he’s been “living in fear” because he believes his “most profitable brand relationships” and friendships are in jeopardy, as well as the “fear of being blacklisted even more by the industry’s power elites.”
He wrote: “In 2014, I received a public comment from Chrissy Teigen on my Instagram page, accusing me of being a racist. She apparently formed her own opinion of me based on a photoshopped comment floating around the internet which has now been proven to be false by Instagram and since taken down. When I reached out to Chrissy Teigen to communicate that I was a victim of a vindictive cyber slander and that everything she thought I was is not who I am, she told me that my career was over and that all my doors will be shut from there on.”
Michael claimed he lost employment with “no explanation” over the following five years because Chrissy and influential stylist Monica Rose “gone out of their way to threaten people and brands that if they were in any shape or form associated with me, they would not work with any of them.”
He stated he tried to explain everything to Chrissy and Monica, but they never gave him “the time of day.”
Michael continued: “So many nights I stayed awake, wanting to kill myself. I didn’t see the point of living. There was no way I can ever escape from being the target of the powerful elites in Hollywood, who actually do have the power to close doors with a single text. Not only was I the target of cyber defamation, but I was also getting blacklisted in real life.”
Michael said he’d gained the guts to reveal his truth after “suffering tremendously” while remaining silent.
“Last week, I wrote a personal letter to my family and closest friends because U thought that taking my own life would be the best way out,” the designer explained.
Michael then posted a DM conversation he claimed he had with Chrissy.
Chrissy said, “No! I do not have anything to say to you. You will get what’s coming to you.”
Chrissy responded, “Good luck with that lmao hope that story keeps your already dead career going,” to Michael’s claim that he “never called anyone the n-word.”
When Michael was pleading with Chrissy to phone him, he said, “I am suffering from this more than you can imagine. So many people are attacking me over this. It’s a fake story, but your comment is adding more fuel to the fire,” the designer claimed.
“Good!” replied Chrissy. “Racist people like you deserve to suffer and die. You might as well be dead. Your career is over; just watch.”
They explained: “She wouldn’t just publicly tweet about wanting me to take ‘a dirt nap’ but would privately DM me and tell me to kill myself. Things like, “I can’t wait for you to die.”‘
In 2011, Teigen was accused of bullying Lindsay Lohan on Twitter.
Lindsay’s earlier self-harm struggle was mocked in a rediscovered tweet from Chrissy’s account, which read: “Lindsay adds a few more slits to her wrists when she sees Emma Stone.”
