An Instagram post accusing a Christie’s International Real Estate agent of attacking a woman during a Lyft ride in which they were both passengers has gone viral, receiving more than 9,000 likes on social media.
Cristiano Moura
On Monday evening, New Orleans resident Jasmine Yvette published an Instagram post in which she described the man in the photo of “beating me up and biting me” and calling her “one of them uneducated ignorant black bitches” during the shared ride in New York City.
Both Lyft and Uber offer options to share rides with other passengers to cut down on costs.
After the post went viral, some of the commenters identified the man as Cristiano Moura, a real estate agent at Christie’s International.
“This is a face of a man that just fist fought me in the back of my cab!” reads the post, which vividly describes Moura asking her to turn the music on her phone down and allegedly fighting with Yvette after she told him that it would only be on for two seconds.
According to the post, the New York Police Department told Yvette that she could “either get in the back of a yellow cab or the police car.” Neither Moura nor Yvette, who has been deferring press questions to her lawyer, immediately responded to Inman’s request for comment.
Meanwhile, the post received even more attention after prominent social justice activist Shaun King published it on his own Instagram account. King’s repost got 42,000 likes.
“New York Friends. WHO IS THIS MAN? What’s this name? He just assaulted a woman, my friend @jahzetv,” King wrote on Instagram. One of the commenters on King’s post wrote “let’s find who this MF and ruin his life.”
A Christie’s International Real Estate spokesperson told Inman that the man identified in the incident was a contractor working for the company. Following the incident, Moura’s bio page was taken down from the company website.
“One of the individuals involved is an independent contractor with a team of agents associated with Christie’s International Real Estate,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “An ongoing investigation is underway and we are taking the matter very seriously.”
Over the years, social media has ensnared numerous real estate agents, both because of things they posted and due to things other people have posted about them.
In 2018, an Alabama RE/MAX Realtor lost nearly $200,000 in attorney’s fees and lost business income after an acquaintance wrote a post calling her a “homewrecker” on the RE/MAX Facebook page. In 2017, a Keller Williams agent was fired after posting a meme that showed Charlottesville anti-racism protesters being hit by a car.
