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.
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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!”
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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.
