Ex-TAO hostess accused of tossing poop in NYC hotspot’s koi pond busted for feces fling
A former hostess accused of throwing poop at swanky downtown nightclub TAO was arrested Monday for tainting the hotspot’s koi pond.
Ariel Roman, 24, was cuffed just after noon outside Manhattan Criminal Court, where she’d appeared for a hearing in a separate harassment case.
The ex-TAO Hospitality Group employee was charged with burglary – by entering an establishment she knew she was banned from and damaging property inside the restaurant – and criminal mischief in connection with the poop toss around midnight on June 2, police said.
The upscale downtown establishment sued Roman, claiming the feces fling had cost it a whopping $3,135 in damages, according to court records.
Roman was due in court on Monday for an appearance relating to harassment charges stemming from interactions with a TAO-affiliated promoter, she told The Post. She pleaded not guilty to those charges last month.
“This is based on a fake report,” she said before things hit the fan outside court. “They said I was stalking him and harassing him by sending him repeated texts and stuff, which isn’t true whatsoever.”
Her arrest came less than a day after Roman claimed to The Post her ex-coworkers were falsely reporting threatening incidents involving her because she tried to whistleblow about alleged sexual assault and drink spiking at the hands of TAO promoters.
She claimed she has also been receiving countless anonymous messages to her online accounts threatening to keep making false police reports against her to land her in jail.
“These people are after me and won’t leave me alone,” she said.
The ex-hostess was also charged with assault Monday in another incident after allegedly throwing a bottle at someone at the Hearsay nightclub, causing liquid to splash into the victim’s eye and causing burning last December.
Roman was last arrested on June 1, when she was charged with aggravated harassment after allegedly showing up outside the Nebula nightclub and shouting threats, police said.
TAO claims Roman is an “unhinged and violent” ex-employee on a rampage of “harassing and threatening behavior,” according to its lawsuit filed June 11 in Manhattan Supreme Court.
But Roman contends she is a #MeToo whistleblower who cannot be silenced.
The ex-hostess claimed she’s been targeted for speaking out about alleged sexual assault incidents at the hands of promoters at TAO — and that she flung the feces in an attempt to draw attention to the issue.
“That’s my desperation,” she told The Post on Sunday. “That’s what led me to do something to get on the news with the TAO [poop throw] thing. I’m desperate because nobody’s taking accountability.”
The drama started in late 2022 when Roman broke up with her boyfriend, a TAO promoter, whom she alleges threatened to strangle her cat, sexually assaulted her and impregnated two women while they were together.
“I was genuinely having a mental health crisis,” she said. “I was literally outside by the pier crying all night because I found out that he had gotten two girls pregnant … his friend basically told me, ‘everyone at TAO knew about this.’”
Roman ditched work after the breakup, and was subsequently fired in December 2022.
She began speaking out on TikTok and Instagram the following spring after someone came forward and said she had been assaulted by the ex, Roman told The Post.
“That’s when I started speaking out about all this stuff,” she said. “When I started posting about it, other people started coming forward. I started realizing that this was not just one girl.”
Roman claims the alleged harassment has only escalated since she began airing out TAO’s dirty laundry: she says she was jumped by her ex and his friends in March 2023 — causing her front tooth to break, a concussion and scar on her chin – and has received anonymous threats via social media conspiring to send her to jail.
Roman was arrested in June 2023 after her ex filed an order of protection – which she didn’t know about, she claimed.
The drama reached a fever pitch on June 19, 2023 when she was at Summer Club — a daylife venue frequented by TAO employees, she said – and her ex received a threat that he was going to be set on fire from a burner phone.
Roman maintains her innocence, noting that the outgoing call documented in police records lasted zero seconds and was a “canceled call.”
“Even if it were me who had called, nobody said anything on the phone because he didn’t pick up,” she said. “They knew that since the night of my arrest … and they still kept me on trial when they knew that I didn’t do it.”
That case was dismissed in December due to insufficient evidence, court records show.
The ex-hostess said she expects she’ll continue to see a pattern of false reports targeting her until she can afford a lawyer to prosecute in civil court.
“I cannot warn every single police officer in the city not to take a report … they just look at my record,” she said. “But I know that I’m just going to keep getting arrested.”
