A Manhattan dance teacher tried to shake down one of his students while lying to her well-off hubby that they had tangoed off the dance floor, a new lawsuit says.
Carolina Hernandez Gildred says in her Manhattan Supreme Court suit that she met tango teacher Michael Foster in New York in 2015 at competitions.
After Gildred, 40, relocated to San Diego with her family last year, Foster, 53, “persuaded [her] to have him travel to California to provide dance lessons to [her] and a group of friends,” the suit says.
Then he “began to push [Gildred] to open a tango studio in California, that he would be her partner in the studio and that [her] husband could put up the money,” according to court papers.
When Gildred shot down the idea, Foster “came unhinged” in September 2016, the suit says.
He emailed her husband, Tom Gildred, falsely stating that they were “making love to each other” and “yes, having sex,” the suit says.
Meanwhile, the dancer barraged Gildred with texts and phone calls and even contacted the marketing department of her husband’s laundry business, Emerald Textiles, according to court papers.
An Oct. 24, 2016, email to the marketing team called Tom Gildred a “board-line pedophile” and his spouse a “trophy wife” who would be the subject of a “murder-suicide,” the suit says.
Later that month, Foster threatened to publish defamatory Web sites in the couple’s names if they didn’t pay him $10,000, the suit says.
They refused, and he created the sites, which call Carolina Gildred “a seducer of the rich” and a “despiser of the poor,” the suit says.
The alleged harassment continued this year with Foster leaving a message at Tom Gildred’s company.
“In his voicemail, Foster states that when [Carolina Gildred’s] husband ‘kisses the lips of a Mrs. Gildred he’ll pretty much be sucking my big black d–k,” the suit says.
The threats continued to escalate, with Foster warning in March that he plans to visit the Gildreds and their children at their California home and saying, “I’m coming at you,” according to court papers.
The suit says the Gildreds have filed police reports against Foster in both New York and California.
Their attorney did not immediately return messages seeking comment. Foster also did not return messages.
Carolina Gildred is suing Foster for $250,000.
In addition to the laundry business, her husband founded the software consulting firm FMT Consultants, according to his Web site.