A 26-year-old Ocean City woman who claimed she was brutally assaulted because she worked for Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Ocean City) instead orchestrated the entire incident — paying a scarification artist to wound her and staging the scene with zip ties and “Trump Whore” written on her stomach and “Van Drew is a racist” on her back, federal prosecutors alleged today.
Natalie Greene, a Rutgers law student, allegedly concocted the hoax in July, with an accomplice making a late-night 911 call to report that she had been ambushed by three men on a nature trail in Egg Harbor Township. Police officers found Greene bound with black zip ties, her shirt pulled over her head, and the political slurs scrawled across her torso. She told police that her supposed attackers had a gun and threatened to shoot her, and struck her in the head.
Prosecutors say nearly every detail was fabricated.
Greene allegedly drove to Pennsylvania and paid a body-modification artist $500 to carve the wounds on her face, neck, and upper body, using a pattern she had provided in advance. Investigators later found matching zip ties in her Maserati SUV. Cellphone records showed that two days before the purported attack, her co-conspirator searched online for “zip ties near me,” a discovery authorities cited as further proof that the incident was staged.
She said one or more of her attackers had held her down, cutting her and writing on her body.
Several days later, after receiving medical treatment for her wounds, Greene was again asked to describe her alleged attack to law enforcement officers, including an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Interviews of Greene and the co-conspirator did not match.
Investigators used cell tower locations to obtain video footage and evidence that she went to a Dollar Store in Ventnor to purchase zip ties.
Greene appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Pascal earlier today and was charged with one count of conspiracy to convey false statements and hoaxes and one count of making false statements to federal law enforcement, according to Acting U.S. Attorney and Special Attorney Alina Habba. She was released on a $200,000 unsecured bond.
The complaint did not identify the federal official, but the New Jersey Globe has confirmed that it was Van Drew. The co-conspirator has not been identified.
She began working part-time for Van Drew in 2022 and later served as his constituent advocate. She started law school last fall.
A statement from Van Drew’s congressional office said they were “deeply saddened by today’s news.”
“While Natalie is no longer associated with the congressman’s government office, our thoughts and prayers are with her and hope she’s getting he care she needs,” the Van Drew office said.
Law enforcement asked Greene whether the words written on her were similar to those on postcards sent to Van Drew’s South Jersey office.
“There’s so many. I mean. Yeah, racist um. Windmills belong on your grave. Like stupid, I mean like there, they have a bunch of little things on there that they’ll write on there. We have them all, you can look at all of them,” she said. “But um. Yeah we keep em just. We keep all of our hate mail. We recently got like, a letter with like powder in it and stuff. A couple of the politicians got like.”
