How a Gen Z power couple's breakup became a trial by internet

• An influencer and a tech entrepreneur had a violent, and now very online, breakup.
• Prosecutors say startup prodigy Ben Pasternak assaulted social media star Evelyn Ha.
• Ha's TikTok has 4.5 million followers — but her most important video may only ever play in court.

Tech entrepreneur Ben Pasternak did not want to be served.

His trouble wasn't the room service. There at his suite in the Baccarat Hotel, the "service de chambre" included round-the-clock Cristal and caviar.

No, the Forbes "30 Under 30" startup wunderkind was hiding out at the Manhattan hotel in hopes of dodging the hand-delivery of a 41-page lawsuit accusing his crypto venture of fraud.

And there at the Baccarat, where suites start at $1,500 or more a night, things were about to go from bad to violent.

On March 31, Pasternak, 26, and his influencer girlfriend, Evelyn Ha, 27, had a breakup fight inside his suite. Ha told police that Pasternak choked her twice and repeatedly slammed a bathroom door on her body. Pasternak says he acted only in self-defense.

Three weeks later, Pasternak, once hailed as a teen prodigy for his tech ventures and a "vegan nugget mogul" for his successful plant-based food company, was charged with misdemeanor assault and felony strangulation.

His troubles were just beginning. The incident went viral.

Online debates over the breakups and rivalries of internet personalities are nothing new, but they rarely intersect with the severity of an ongoing criminal case. The battle between Pasternak and Ha shows how, for a generation raised on social media, no topic is too personal to deliberate online.

An online 'jury' is already passing judgment

Ha has 4.5 million followers on TikTok, where a video from a day after the fight showed her silently applying makeup to a red, half-inch scratch on her cheek.

The video received more than a million views and more than 700 comments, many criticizing "ben."

"I'm no longer in a relationship," Ha told her 470,000 YouTube followers three weeks later.

"There's been serious boundaries that were crossed, and I decided to move away from that relationship for the sake of my safety and my well-being." Her post, which went live the day news broke of Pasternak's arrest, has received more than 1 million views and 4,000 supportive comments — far more than anything else she had posted all year.

Three days later, on April 26, Pasternak responded with his own YouTube video, titled "My experience with Evelyn." Pasternak's channel has fewer than 2,000 subscribers, but his video received nearly 600,000 views.

In the video, Pasternak said he has never strangled anyone and accused Ha of infidelity, jealousy, and "digging her nails into me" during past fights.

"The truth is, Evelyn was abusive to me for pretty much the entirety of our relationship," he said.

"And I'm not the only one," Pasternak told the camera. "I've spoken to multiple of her former partners."

Another of Ha's exes, Instagram star Fred Liu, soon posted a story for his own 800,000 followers saying that he had experienced "physical violence" in his relationship.

"I experienced things that were consistent with parts of what Ben described," Liu wrote.

In his YouTube post, Pasternak briefly tried to crowd-source his defense, asking viewers to email information about Ha. The tagline was later removed.

Ha, through a representative, declined a request for an interview. Pasternak told Business Insider in an interview that he felt he had to speak up.

"Sharing the truth felt like the most important thing to me, and that's eventually what I came to do," he said of his YouTube video. "Hitting the post button was one of the scariest things I have ever done."

Ha gave a video of the event to police

Manhattan prosecutors allege that the hotel breakup turned violent when Ha began filming the argument on her cellphone.

Pasternak "lunged at her to try to take her phone," scratching her in the face, Isaac Buck, an assistant district attorney, told the judge at the arraignment. He said that Pasternak was "actively fleeing" legal action at the time, referring to the lawsuit over his crypto venture.

As the fight for the cellphone continued, Pasternak "took both hands and strangled" Ha, then pushed her to the ground, the prosecutor continued.

When Ha got up, Pasternak "again used both his hands to strangle" her, the prosecutor said. He said Pasternak grabbed Ha's phone and repeatedly slammed a bathroom door on Ha's arms and hips as she struggled to get it back.

Ha "is extremely fearful of the defendant," the prosecutor told the judge.

The prosecutor also told the judge that Ha "eventually" left the hotel with her phone.

"I didn't think she would go to the police, but I thought she was going to start a social media war or something of that nature," Pasternak said of the moment she left the suite.

"And then a few minutes later she sent that text saying, 'I'm going to make this come back a million fold.'"

A Ha family representative told Business Insider that she shared her video of the hotel incident with the NYPD.

Camps have formed on either side

Ha and Pasternak have taken different approaches in telling their sides of the story.

Ha has kept her social media posts vague. Neither she nor her two influencer sisters has described or mentioned the fight, and her posts do not refer to Pasternak by name.

Beyond what she's posted to her fans, she "doesn't really want to talk about it," the family's rep said.

"She's obviously told her family what happened, but it's pretty traumatizing to even talk about it," the rep said. "So it's not something she's really wanting to put out there, and she just really wants the justice system to take care of it."

Instead, her fans have done the work for her.

On Reddit, Instagram, and TikTok, they have dug into Ha's vast corpus of popular online videos, pulling out clips of moments where Pasternak has joked about violence and criticized her.

Pasternak has moved quickly to defend his name and shape the narrative forming online. His publicist and lawyer issued a statement after allegations about him hit the internet, and supporters have lent their voices to his defense.

His longtime publicist, Dini von Mueffling, told journalists that Ha "physically attacked Ben" throughout their relationship.

"When Ben ended his relationship with Evelyn on March 31st, she flew into a rage and attacked him," von Mueffling told Business Insider.

His lawyer, Joshua Kirschner, said in a press statement that Pasternak's conduct was "limited to lawful self-defense and efforts to disengage."

Other allies, like Liu and Pasternak's friend Kylie Ritchie, stepped forward to back up his version of events.

"They would get in these explosive fights and Evelyn would physically scratch him, pull him, the whole thing," Ritchie told Business Insider.

The March 31 fight came at the end of a rocky patch, during which the two had broken up and then reconciled, she said. It was a pattern. Pasternak and Ha "always kind of made up" during these incidents, Ritchie said.

"Ben thought it was crazy because he didn't take this very seriously, and nothing ever happened with that," Ritchie said.

Pasternak said he is still reeling emotionally.

"When you are going through a breakup and then, on top of that, you have 10 million people commenting on the breakup, it's even more painful," he told Business Insider.

The tech wunderkind is now under a different microscope

Pasternak was already almost-famous when he was arrested.

"Flogg," his "Generation Z marketplace app," secured millions in seed-stage funding, Time wrote in an article naming him one of the "most influential teens of 2016." Simulate, a meatless food company Pasternak cofounded at age 19, sold its vegan "chicken" nuggets in Whole Foods, Walmart, and Target. Fast Company called it "The Tesla of Chicken," and the company landed him on a Forbes "30 Under 30" list for 2021. It was valued at $250 million before being sold.

Pasternak has since been served with the fraud lawsuit from investors in his cryptocurrency project, Believe.

A process server gave it to a reluctant lobby security guard, downstairs from Pasternak's $1.8 million Manhattan condo, two weeks after the alleged assault, court records say.

The lawsuit alleges Pasternak exploited the trust he built through his previous companies to scam people who bought tokens on the platform. Pasternak allegedly engineered several price swings for his custom cryptocurrency — once named $PASTERNAK — at the expense of people who held the token.

Pasternak hasn't responded to the allegations in court filings; von Mueffling told Business Insider the lawsuit is "not serious."

Pasternak told Business Insider he still believes he's in good standing in the startup community. He says he's gotten hundreds of messages of support from people he's worked with over the years who know he's "anti-violence by nature" and "just immediately know that this is nonsense."

At his court date, Pasternak pleaded not guilty to assault and strangulation, and agreed to comply with a restraining order. He is free without bail.

He is due back in court on June 11, when he is scheduled to learn if he has been indicted.

"I never would want to inflict pain on her," Pasternak told Business Insider. "I had deep, deep love for her," he said, adding, "It sucks that we're here."

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