A wannabe social-media influencer already under fire for allegedly ripping off a Big Apple eatery is in trouble again after a beloved dog she was hired to care for died — and she delivered its rotting corpse to its owner in a suitcase. 

Jiacheng the Husky was decomposing and showed signs of muscle atrophy at the end of his 10-day stay with online Manhattan fame-seeker Fahmida Sultana, according to a Cornell autopsy report reviewed by The Post. The influencer has claimed the 7-year-old dog had suddenly died earlier that day.

The dog's Brooklyn owner, Junyo "Eleven" Li, blames the influencer for her pet's death, although Sultana denies that it was her fault.

The canine controversy exploded on social media this week, igniting thousands of angry animal lovers who are now calling for Sultana's arrest — and came at a time when the fledgling social-media influencer was already catching heat for a far less sinister blunder.

Sultana has not had charges filed against her in either case.

She first drew the ire of the Internet by purportedly inhaling $200 worth of free food and drink during a September visit to Long Island City Vietnamese restaurant Chef Papa in exchange for a "lifestyle and hospitality video" she failed to produce on time — until the owner made his own clip calling her out and she returned fire by posting a video disparaging the family joint.

In a statement on social media, Sultana copped to the food fight but said "miscommunication and lack of urgency … led to an unfilled collaboration."

In terms of the dead dog, she vehemently denied to The Post she did anything to hurt JC.

"I would never harm any animal," she wrote on Instagram, saying she couldn't go into detail over an expected forthcoming civil suit from Li.

"I am deeply sorry this family is going through this loss, and I am also sorry for the distress that people who have seen the video and posts online have felt," Sultana added.

Her alleged unreliability was not known in March when Li hired her for $360 to care for her beloved pup Jiacheng, or JC, as she took a 10-day trip to visit family in China.

The pair connected on the pet-sitting app Rover but agreed to make the transaction offline to cut out fees.

All appeared to go well after Li dropped JC off March 19 at the Hell's Kitchen apartment Sultana shared with her boyfriend. But things quickly went south.

Sultana all but stopped answering Li's check-in messages, which grew rapidly more concerned as several days passed, Li said.

After three days, Sultana finally shared blurry pictures of JC, including some showing him dirty and noticeably skinnier — so much so that Li begged Sultana to allow a friend to stop by and check in on her beloved pet, Li said.

Sultana allegedly ignored the request, instead emphasizing that JC was happy and energetic, prompting Li to send a heartfelt text thanking Sultana for "taking such good care of Jiacheng."

Just 12 hours later — the morning that Li was meant to pick up her beloved pet — Sultana broke the news that JC was dead, Li said.

"I was yelling on the plane, 'This is impossible!' I just couldn't stop crying — I can't believe this happened — everyone was looking at me," Li said.

Sultana and her boyfriend ended up stuffing the dog's body in a plastic bag and storing it in suitcase luggage that they hauled by taxi more than 2 miles away to a vet in Chelsea, with Sultana telling The Post it was only because the clinic around the corner from her home was too busy to help.

Li's boyfriend, who was also out of town until that disastrous day, met them outside the office and took a video of the couple dragging the wheeled bag down the street.

Sultana told The Post, "[JC's] owners were well aware of how he was transported because I informed him before transporting JCs actual body."

"I was in disbelief, shock, and confusion on how to transport him. It was not my intent to disrespect JC at all," she said.

"I stated that I found JC unresponsive the next morning. That means he could have passed at any time between when I went to sleep and when I discovered him. Additionally, the owner did not reach the body for several hours due to her flight, which further explains the state of JCs body. No, I am not lying about when he was found unresponsive," Sultana said.

Sultana and her boyfriend left without entering the vet, and Li's beau, who doesn't want to be named, carried the unopened luggage inside.

"There were about three, four dogs in the vet already, and as soon as I walked in, they started [whimpering] because they could feel [that JC was dead]. Even though I didn't open the suitcase yet, they could feel it," Li's boyfriend recalled, saying that a rotten stench exuded from the bag.

"They had to light a couple candles because of the odor," he said of the office. "The nurse was the one that told us this first — She's like, 'They say your dog died this morning? There's no way. There's no way, how his body is conditioned.' "

Li finally arrived at the vet and cried over JC's body, according to a heartbreaking video circulating online.

The "traumatized" pet owner ordered a necropsy to gain some insight into her dog's death. The report said its results were inconclusive because of the "degree of autolysis" — the first stage of decomposition.

The dog was suffering from muscle wasting, but the report said it couldn't prove whether it was chronic or brought on by outside factors. JC did not appear to be poisoned, the preliminary report shows. The report excluded starvation as the source of the atrophy.

Without concrete evidence for JC's death, Li said she has had little recourse to try to press charges but plans to bring a civil suit against Sultana.

"He means the whole world to me … He was with me all the time," Li said of JC, pointing to a customized pillow of hers with the pup's face on it.

"I used to have a crate here for JC. For the first two months [after his death], I would carry this pillow and stay in the cage and just cry," she said.

Li noted that JC was missing his red collar when he was dumped at the Chelsea vet's office. She said that when she asked for it back, Sultana said she didn't have it.

"I did not remove his collar and had no reason to," told The Post. "I thoroughly cleaned and searched my home and informed the owner that I did not have it. There is absolutely no advantage in my either removing or keeping his collar."

Li said she has struggled for months to serve Sultana with court papers. 

The wannabe influencer dog sitter's doorman barred Li's boyfriend from walking up to the unit, and family members at another listed address for Sultana refused to open the door when cops arrived, the pair said.

But thanks to Chef Papa's online outrage over Sultana's visit, a battle made viral by influencer Goob, Li was finally able to get traction — and plenty of attention — on her horrifying dog case.

Sultana's Rover account has since been deactivated, the pet-sitting app confirmed, telling The Post it had conducted an investigation but had little information because the stay was not booked on the platform.

"Our hearts go out to Ms. Li as she mourns this devastating loss. We understand how distressing and painful Jiacheng's passing must be, as many of us at Rover are pet parents ourselves," a rep said.

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh said Wednesday that inflation risks have declined in recent weeks but that the central bank still had more work to do to rein in rising prices.

"Inflation risks have come down," Warsh said, noting that "energy prices have come down quite substantially" since the United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding to end the ongoing war last month.

"They're still a bit above where they were pre-conflict, but they've come down," he said.

Inflation is a sore spot for Americans, who are growing more dissatisfied with the economy, according to polls and consumer surveys. In May, inflation as measured by the consumer price index jumped to 4.2%, its highest level since 2023. The Fed's preferred inflation gauge also showed price growth was hot, driven by the surge in energy prices.

Warsh also weighed in on artificial intelligence's growing impact on the economy and inflation, sounding an optimistic note on longer-term prospects for the technology.

"We're all being hit by a series of shocks in the U.S.," Warsh said. "The AI shock is leading to a boom in capital expenditures. We see that first and foremost in demand, but I'm confident we're going to see it in supply at some point. So we're spending most of our time trying to monitor those developments."

Still, the central bank chief declined to give any hint as to if policymakers will raise interest rates: "I'm not going to give you any prediction as to what we will do." Warsh has said that he plans to break with recent Fed leaders in limiting the amount of communications about the Fed's future plans.

Asked if the Fed will make that decision regardless of what President Donald Trump wants, Warsh said, "We've been an independent central bank for a very long time. We're going to be an independent central bank at this moment, and you're going to see no changes on that." Trump has repeatedly pushed for the Fed to cut its key rate, often attacking Warsh's predecessor, Jerome Powell, over the matter. (Powell, like Warsh, was appointed to the role by Trump.)

Warsh was in Sintra, Portugal, speaking alongside European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey and Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem at one of the highest-profile gatherings of central bankers each year.

Lagarde largely agreed with Warsh's view on inflation, saying that upside risks to inflation and downside risks to economic growth prospects "are probably more broadly balanced" now than "a few weeks ago as a result of what we're seeing" with energy prices.

The European Central Bank is one of only two major central banks to have raised rates since the war with Iran started, while the Federal Reserve has kept rates unchanged in its most recent meetings as it monitors the pass-through of inflation from energy to other parts of the economy.

One key area Warsh said the Fed is monitoring: the AI industry.

As major cloud computing companies such as Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet and Amazon rush to build data centers around the globe to power new AI models and systems, the price of computer equipment and memory specifically has been skyrocketing.

Consumer electronics companies such as PlayStation and Xbox have raised prices as a result. But the most notable price hike came Thursday, when Apple hiked prices on many of its laptop and desktop computers along with iPads, the Apple TV device and HomePod speaker.

Apple didn't raise the prices of the iPhone, the Apple Watch and AirPods, but many analysts project those could be next.

Asked about the AI boom and whether it may be inflationary over the longer term, Warsh said it is "one of the central questions that all of us have for our day jobs."

But Warsh predicted that the United States was "likely to be a big winner over the medium term in this."

"Who knew when the internet was born that the internet was going to create a million and a half jobs as Uber drivers? We are in the first or second inning of this revolution," he said.

"This is a big paradigm shift, both for the conduct of our policy and for our economies," Warsh continued. "I think the jobs will be greater, prosperity will be stronger."

Several economists, corporate leaders and analysts warn that AI could significantly reduce jobs. A study from financial operations firm Ramp found that companies that are spending more on AI are also growing their workforces.

Repeating what the Fed said after its most recent interest rate meeting, Warsh said that labor markets are steady and the demand side of the economy is solid: "Again, this is before we see the fruits of AI."

"But we've all looked around and we've seen that prices are too high, and I don't think I'm the only one on this stage that's recommitted to deliver price stability," Warsh said, referring to one of the central bank's two legal mandates.

In Warsh's first meeting as chairman last month, the Fed held interest rates steady as other policymakers projected a likelihood of hiking interest rates before the end of the year — projections the chairman would downplay at a news conference.

The Fed's rate-setting committee is scheduled to meet July 28 and 29.

As AI is adopted across industries, it's also being taken up by scammers. Around 6% of U.S. adults, or about 15 million people, were scammed out of money last year, a new Gallup and Stop Scams Alliance survey finds, and victims reported that 12% of those scams involved AI or deepfakes.

"These guys aren't called organized crime for nothing. They're actually organized, and they're using their organization to start attacking us with scale now to a tune of $68 billion, which is like the annual revenues of Delta Airlines. It's like a Fortune 500 company. It's huge," Stop Scams Alliance founder and CEO Ken Westbrook told NBC News. The Stop Scams Alliance is a nonprofit organization that aims to reduce scams in the U.S.

The survey of 5,173 U.S. adult respondents in January through February, which relied on participants' self-reporting their scam experiences, said that "the use of AI may be difficult to detect by scam victims."

But Westbrook noted that the results align with other signs of the burgeoning issue of AI-fueled scams.

In March, Interpol warned that AI could enhance and fuel fraud. "Enabled by artificial intelligence, low-cost digital tools and increased global criminal collaboration, we are witnessing the industrialization of fraud," Secretary General Valdecy Urquiza said.

AI companies, including OpenAI, have periodically also released reports documenting the use of their platforms by scammers. In February, OpenAI released a report documenting attempts to use its technologies to commit fraud and scams around the world, including one instance targeting people who were already victims of scams with faked advertisements for "scam recovery" services.

In total, the Gallup and Stop Scams Alliance survey found that Americans lost $68 billion to scams last year.

The survey helps fill in a picture of the scale of scamming in the U.S., Westbrook said.

The U.S. does not actively regularly collect information from residents about scamming, though the Federal Trade Commission publishes complaint data it receives yearly. Respondents in the Gallup survey reported losing nearly four times as much as the losses that were reported to the FTC.

The survey included respondents who did not formally report the scams to an authority, which partially explains the nearly $52 billion data difference, Westbrook said.

The data reporting gap is "one of the reasons why we're not devoting sufficient resources to this problem. It's just that we haven't measured it properly," Westbrook said.

The governments of the United Kingdom and Australia conduct annual surveys of scam prevalence, but the U.S. has not regularly measured it.

"The government can't even tell you what the percentage of people in the United States being scammed is. That's because they just get victim reports, but they don't know how much is unreported. So that's the gap that we're able to fill in with the Gallup survey," Westbrook said.

The survey also found that 1 in 4 Americans say they've been personally scammed at some point in their adult lives.

The scams brought about severe financial hardship for 21% of respondents and moderate financial hardship for 46%, according to the survey. The report also found higher scam rates among lower-income adults, people of color and people without bachelor's degrees.

Scammers used sophisticated research and impersonation techniques to fool their victims.

A woman told Gallup that scammers contacted her after she posted about her two missing cats online. The scammers portrayed themselves as the sheriff's department and transferred her to somebody who said they worked in the emergency vet clinic and claimed they had her cat and needed around $780 for emergency surgery.

"It sounded like it was 100% legitimate. ... I was waiting and waiting, and my husband ... he called the [City] Police Department, talked to them, and they are the ones who told him, no, your wife was scammed," she said.

Seventy-five percent of respondents reported that being scammed had negative impacts on their mental health and well-being.

"There's a line in the Gallup report that hit me like a hammer when I read it. It says that 'the emotional impact of scams can be more injurious than the financial impact,' and I certainly saw that with my mom," Westbrook said. His mother was scammed in spring 2023, which started when she searched for her sister's obituary online but clicked on a fake page set up by scammers, who eventually robbed her of her life savings.

Fraudulent websites are among the most prevalent scams, 40% of respondents reported in the survey. Phone, text and email were each involved in nearly half of all scams, with 50% of scams involving two or more methods.

In nearly half of all scams, 49% of the victims were also deceived into personally sending money to the scammers. Payment apps like Zelle and PayPal were the most commonly used methods, the survey found.

One year after President Donald Trump signed his core domestic policy package into law, student loan borrowers are bracing for a major overhaul of the federal lending system that will begin this week.

Many were already struggling when the Biden administration attempted to enact sweeping student debt relief in the wake of the Covid pandemic, but the proposal encountered Republican blowback. Now, under the Trump administration's changes, borrowers will experience a range of effects with some seeing little difference in what they owe each month while many lower-income borrowers will be hit the hardest with increases, student advocacy groups and financial planners say.

Come Wednesday, Trump's "big, beautiful bill" will streamline the system to have fewer loan repayment program options and greater restrictions on how much students can borrow. And it will end the most borrower-friendly repayment program launched under President Joe Biden, forcing many of the more than 7 million people enrolled to pay more in their monthly federal loan bills. Separately, interest rates will also increase.

"There is a real sense of urgency and almost fear around what's to come," said Becca Craig, a wealth adviser with Focus Partners Wealth in Kansas City, Missouri, who has seen an uptick in borrowers seeking help before the latest changes take effect.

The new direction is part of the Trump administration's broader goal of slashing funding from government assistance programs across federal agencies. As part of the plan, the federal student aid program will be transferred from the Education Department to the Treasury Department, which administration officials say is better equipped to get debtors into compliance because it collects defaulted debt for federal and state agencies.

The White House has accused the Biden administration of focusing too heavily on student loan forgiveness and debt cancellation instead of ensuring loans are repaid in an effort to curtail federal spending and pressure colleges to lower tuition costs.

Student borrower Lori Correa, of North Carolina, is in knots over the changes and weighing her options. After using an online loan simulator, she said she estimates her monthly student loan payments would jump from $150 to $713 under one of the new plans because of changes in how payments are calculated.

As a single mother of three in the early 2000s, Correa switched careers from waitressing to legal studies, earning her associate, bachelor's and master's degrees while maxing out her student loans in the hope that she would advance in better-paying jobs.

She earns about $60,000 a year as a real estate agent's personal assistant and still owes roughly $200,000 in student debt, which has been financially crippling when coupled with housing costs and medical bills over the years.

"I would have hoped that I would be making a decent living on the education that I paid such a dear price for," Correa, now 57, said. "But I was sold a dream. It feels like now, if you are a normal, average person just trying to make it, you're not going to."

In the first quarter of 2026, almost 43 million student borrowers carried nearly $1.7 trillion in loans, according to Federal Student Aid statistics. In that same period, an additional 2.6 million student loan borrowers fell into default for nonpayment, a Federal Reserve Bank of New York report found. The report said the average defaulted borrower was nearly 40 years old, from a Southern state and did not have a history of nonpayment before the pandemic.

An Education Department spokesperson said the agency's online loan simulator to help student borrowers select a new repayment option will be updated ahead of Wednesday and referred to materials on its website laying out how the new plan can be a "simple and affordable option." Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement in March that the Trump administration is "confident that American students, borrowers, and taxpayers will finally have functioning programs after decades of mismanagement."

Student borrower advocacy groups, however, worry that the payment increases will only make it harder on people already grappling with a surge in inflation, rising energy and food costs, and affordability gaps in housing and healthcare. They also warn it may drive some low-income and first-generation students to the private lending market, where they may face higher interest rates and have fewer protections against predatory lenders. Or, advocates fear, those students may forgo higher education altogether, affecting their economic mobility and competitiveness.

"Is this plan enough of a safety net for American families?" asked Kyra Taylor, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group. "I think simplification is a good goal, but it has to be affordable to families. If it's not, then we're going to see an increase in borrowers who go into default."

As the new policies take effect, experts say there are four key changes that borrowers should know.

1. New loans

Typically, student borrowers have been able to choose from an array of repayment plans that either came with fixed terms or were based on income.

But those legacy plans are going away, and beginning Wednesday, borrowers who take out a student loan or seek to consolidate existing ones must select between only two new options.

The first, known as the Repayment Assistance Plan, is being touted by the Education Department as a replacement for the Biden-era Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan. Under the new plan, borrowers' monthly payments will be based on adjusted gross income — or their total annual income minus certain tax adjustments, including deductions for dependent children.

At the plan's lowest income level, borrowers with an adjusted gross annual income of up to $10,000 must still pay at least $10 a month, said Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director of Protect Borrowers, a student advocacy organization.

"That doesn't seem like a lot on its face, but if you're earning $10,000 or less, that is a sizable amount," Bañez said.

Borrowers will also be required to make payments for 30 years before they may be eligible for loan cancellation.

The other repayment option for borrowers with new loans will be the Tiered Standard Plan, in which payments will be calculated based on one's outstanding loan balance at a set fixed term from as little as 10 years and up to 25. That may be a faster way for borrowers to pay off their debts and save money on interest compared with the income-based option, which can carry higher interest costs.

The new plans mark a significant departure from the Biden-era offerings.

The SAVE plan has been the most affordable for financially strapped borrowers who may not even be required to make monthly payments. Those on the plan can also see their loans forgiven in as little as 10 years.

2. Older loans

Borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan will have at least 90 days to move to one of the new plans, the Education Department said in a court filing last week. They could also select a current fixed-term plan or an older one tied to their income, although those will be phased out in 2028.

There's one other option: They could choose the Income-Based Repayment plan, which isn't going away because it was created by Congress two decades ago. The plan, which is geared toward borrowers with high debt relative to their income, can allow monthly payments of either 10% or 15% of one's discretionary income, with loan forgiveness eligibility within 25 years.

Since the plan is based on discretionary income — money left over after paying necessary living expenses — it can translate to a "lower payment for borrowers," said Craig, the financial adviser.

Millions of borrowers enrolled in Biden administration plans may also face a payment spike because they have not had to make any loan payments since July 2024, Craig said. At the time, some Republican-led states filed litigation attempting to block the SAVE plan, arguing that the Biden administration overstepped its authority in creating it, leading to a protracted court battle.

With the plan now ending, not only will borrowers need to begin payments, but their debt balances will have also accrued interest since summer 2025.

3. Borrowing limits

For decades, graduate students and parent borrowers have had access to tailored loan programs that were not subject to borrowing limits. But beginning Wednesday, such plans will be eliminated and replaced with new loan restrictions, including borrowing no more than $257,500 in federal student loans in one's lifetime.

Nicholas Kent, the Education Department's undersecretary, said in a statement in April that creating borrowing limits would help students avoid "racking up excessive loan debt."

Graduate students will be allowed to seek up to $20,500 in loans each year and up to $100,000 in total.

Professional students, which include those studying law or medicine, can apply for up to $50,000 in loans each year and up to $200,000 in total.

Students currently enrolled in graduate or professional degree programs will be exempt from the new limits for three years. About 1.8 million student borrowers owed graduate loans last fall.

The loan limits have already been caught in a legal battle over who counts as professional students. The Education Department decided to exclude certain fields in healthcare under the changes. In response, several associations, including one for nurse practitioners, sued, and a federal judge last week agreed to pause the administration's new categorization of "professional degrees" while another challenge to loan limits plays out in court.

Still, the new loan caps can go into effect.

The Education Department said it is "reviewing the order and will take appropriate action."

Under the new rules, parents can borrow up to $20,000 per dependent child each year, up to $65,000 per child in total.

Taylor, of the National Consumer Law Center, said there may be an unintended consequence for students who realize they don't have enough in loans to afford college:

"They may not want to go to school at all," she said.

4. Autopay discount

With just over a third of student borrowers regularly paying their loans, the Education Department is pushing for more people to sign up for automatic billing to ensure they don't miss payments.

Borrowers who do so by Sept. 30 will be eligible for a 1% interest rate reduction. Those enrolled already get a 0.25-percentage-point rate deduction, but that will increase to the full 1%, education officials said.

Any interest rate reduction will be especially helpful now, Craig said, because new student loan interest rates are reaching some of their highest levels in years.

Beginning Wednesday, the interest rate for undergraduate loans not subsidized by the government will be at 6.52% and for graduate students at 8.07%. Five years ago, the rates were at 2.75% and 4.3%, respectively. (The changes are unrelated to the bill.)

The new 1% discount, however, will only last through June 2028 and does not apply to some older loans.

"This interest rate reduction will help borrowers as they consider new, affordable repayment plans and work to repay their loans on time," Kent said in a statement.

Bañez, of Protect Borrowers, said the reduction is a sign that the Trump administration is facing pressure to provide some relief to borrowers, however small.

"This is essentially a Band-Aid on a bullet wound," she said.