High-flying finance executive and girlfriend sued by nannies who say they called them ‘dirty Jamaicans’

A high-level Wall Street financier and his girlfriend are being sued by two nannies they hired for their four children, who accuse the couple of racism.

Cordia Foster was hired by Ian K. Snow and his girlfriend Elyse Dula as a nanny in August 2017. Cislyn Wright was hired a year later in September 2018.

The two Jamaican women lived with the couple in their Manhattan home and in their summer rental in the Hamptons.

Snow, whose firm, co-founded with Gilded Age scion Ogden Phipps II, has $2.4 billion in assets, paid $2 million to rent the Bridgehampton home for three months in the summer of 2020.

But the two women say they were racially abused in Manhattan and the Hamptons, referred to as “dirty Jamaicans” and “black bitches,” and charged with robbery and trespassing.

Snow and Dula have vehemently denied using racial slurs and accuse Foster and Wright of threatening to “use black magic” on the family. They say the nannies were fired for a litany of grievances, including excessive use of their cell phones and being “hostile” to Dula.

Foster and Wright were fired in August 2020, and the following year they were sued for discrimination.

Court papers filed shortly before Christmas in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York agreed to the terms of the jury’s verdict and a trial is believed to be imminent.

Foster and Wright, in their complaint, claim they were stereotyped from the start.

They were recruited through an exclusive and prestigious New York City-based agency, British American Household Staffing.

Snow and Dula are believed to be living between Manhattan and a Long Island mansion formerly owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Snow paid $9.1 million in 2011 for the 11-room turn-of-the-century colonial mansion, which Murdoch asked presidential decorator Michael Smith to remodel.

The house is listed in court documents as Snow and Dula’s primary residence.

“Throughout much of their employment with Defendants, Plaintiffs were stereotyped as large, caring, non-threatening black women who exist solely to serve,” the couple allege.

They claim they noticed differences in the way they were treated, compared to other staff members.

“Both Defendants often conspicuously treated Plaintiffs as if they were ‘invisible’; for example, upon entering a room occupied by Foster or Wright and a non-Black servant, Defendants would often wave, smile, and talk to the worker not black while acting like Foster or Wright didn’t exist.’

Foster and Wright claim that a personal assistant, Tamela Walsh, told them, “Elyse hates you Jamaicans.”

He further added, Foster and Wright allege: ‘Elyse [Dula] he always tells me to spy on you.’

They say they shrugged off the perceived slights and continued to care for the four children.

The situation escalated, they claim, in January 2020, when the family got a kitten named Scotty.

The kitten escaped and Wright, running after it with a broom, managed to corral the animal back into the house.

Wright claimed that Dula, upon learning the kitten got away, blamed the babysitters, exclaiming, “Those black bitches!”

In May 2020, as work was nearing completion on the servants’ quarters at the Hamptons home, Dula reportedly said: “I’m

Happy to get these dirty Jamaicans out of my house.

The babysitters claim Dula forbade them from the pool house and guest rooms, and aggressively challenged them when they did. Dula, in her statement, said that the rules were clear that the space was reserved for her guests.

“Given that a soiled diaper was found in a trash can inside the pool house, Ms. Dula had reason to believe that either Ms. Foster or Ms. Wright had entered the pool house in violation of his instructions,” the court documents state.

‘EM. Foster was not disciplined; Ms. Dula simply acted to reaffirm her clear instructions in this regard.’

The nannies further allege that, after these tense encounters, their salary was cut in half, from $1,075 a day to $500 a day.

Snow, in his statement, said he realized he was paying above market rate.

‘Defendant Snow believed that he was paying substantially above market for Plaintiffs’ services; his performance had become poorer and poorer; and the nature of his responsibilities had changed at least six months prior to June 2020, as they no longer had to care for a newborn,” the court documents state.

“As the children grew older, Plaintiffs were unable to keep up with the children’s physical activities, requiring Defendants to hire others for such purposes.”

Dula and Snow fired the couple in August 2020 and insist they were fired for a litany of misconduct.

The couple accuse Foster and Wright of spending too much time on their cell phones, ignoring the children and bathing them in water that is too hot.

They add that nannies bought the children a terrifying Joker mask from the Batman movie in 2018, and say the last straw was finding a wireless monitoring device in one of the children’s bedrooms.

“When Ms. Dula confronted Ms. Foster with her shocking discovery, Ms. Foster refused to even respond,” the court documents state.

Dula and Snow say the children were disciplined by being put in a windowless room, but the babysitters countered that the couple told them to.

They flatly deny any racist attitude or comment.

“The defendants vigorously object to any claim that their trials and decisions were based on negative racial stereotyping of the plaintiffs as African-American and/or Jamaican,” the court documents state.

‘Plaintiffs’ services were terminated, not because of the color of their skin, and not because of any alleged ‘retaliation’, but because they had lost Defendants’ trust and faith, a necessary and non-negotiable component of the will to Defendants to allow any person, of any color or racial composition, to care for their young children.’

Gerard Riso, representing Snow and Dula, told The New York Post: “The defendants deny all the allegations and we will fight this vigorously.”

Scott Lucas, who represents Bronx-based Wright and Foster of Mount Vernon, has not yet responded to DailyMail.com’s request for comment.

Snow is currently in the middle of a divorce battle with his ex-wife, Mary. The couple filed for divorce in 2018.