South Florida Realtor Mistaken for Daughter of Russian Diplomat

A South Florida realtor who happens to have the same name as a Russian diplomat's daughter says she's been getting harassed since the war in Ukraine.

North Bay Village-based realtor Ekaterina Lavrov is not the daughter of Sergey Lavrov. Since the war, she's been getting threatening calls and texts and messages on social media.

"I'm afraid ... I started freaking out, I cried yesterday and I feel like I need to look over my shoulder and see what’s going on," Lavrov said.

She says people have gotten a hold of her personal information — including her address and phone number — and have been posting it online, claiming she isn’t who she says she is.

It’s gotten so bad, Lavrov is worried about her and her family's safety.

"They’re posting my picture and my family pictures online, and I don’t feel that it’s right thing to do to post unsourced and unchecked," she said. "If people take a minute and see what she does and where she lives, they would know she’s not working as a real estate agent."

Some have even posted reviews on her Realtor.com profile. One of them said, "She is the daughter of the war criminal Lavrov in Russia, stop financing her!”

Lavrov now changed her name to her nickname — Katya — for her business.

"People calling me on the phone, people messaging me on the email — people leaving me real estate reviews that I burned their houses in Ukraine, and now I’m selling homes in Miami," Lavrov said.

Now she says she’s worried the online harassment would escalate into something a lot worse.

"My concern is that somebody will put a message out and someone who doesn’t check is just going to go and say, you know, let me do something to her - let me do something to her house, let me do something to her family, this is what concerns me," she said.

Lavrov says police are aware of what’s happening — and she’s also been trying to dispute the social media comments slowly but surely.

Lavrov's father is from Ukraine and she moved to the U.S. more than a decade ago.

"I feel really bad for what is happening over there, I have no way of stopping what’s going on," she said.