EDITOR’S NOTE, May 29, 2020, 4:15 p.m.: Jasmine Yvette was arrested on Dec. 18, 2019, according to state records. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office confirmed on April 9, 2020 that Yvette has been charged with harassment and assault. On May 29, the DA declined to prosecute Cristiano Moura’s arrest.
UPDATED, Dec. 6, 2019, 5:15 p.m.: A Christie’s International Real Estate agent has been accused by a woman on social media of getting into a fight with her in a shared Lyft ride.
On Instagram early Monday Jasmine Yvette accused a man — identified in the comments as Cristiano Moura — of “beating me up and biting me” and referring to her as “one of them uneducated ignorant black bitches.” (As of early December, Yvette’s post was no longer on her Instagram.)
A representative for Christie’s International Real Estate acknowledged the incident in an email.
“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.”
Yvette, who is an intern on the radio show “The Breakfast Club,” wrote on Instagram that she entered a shared ride with Moura and he asked her to turn down the volume on her phone. She told him he was clearly looking for someone to bother. The situation quickly escalated, she said.
Yvette wrote that after the altercation, the New York Police Department arrived and told her she had two options: “go to jail because in the state of New York women are not protected if a man has scratches on him … or get in the yellow car and go home.”
“I had to get in the back of another cab and go home feeling belittled, feeling less than and feeling unprotected!” she wrote. “I’ve never had a man full out punch me as if I was another man!!!”
Moura and the NYPD did not respond to requests for comment. Yvette’s account of the incident could not be independently verified, and she deferred to her attorney Lee Merritt for comment. Merritt did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At the time of publication, Yvette’s post recounting the incident had more than 9,000 likes and more than 1,400 comments. A repost on the Instagram account of Shaun King — a controversial activist and former New York Daily News columnist with a massive social media following — received more than 41,000 likes and nearly 40,000 comments.
Multiple comments online, and even a news report, identify Moura as white, but it should be noted that he is Latino.
Moura was removed from Christie’s website as of Monday.
Other brokers have been thrust into the public eye because of bad behavior. Last year, a MySpace NYC agent was fired after being caught on a cell phone camera shouting racial slurs at a bouncer outside a Bushwick bar. He was fired from his firm. In 2015, a residential broker was charged with driving off with a taxicab while intoxicated.
Update: This story was updated to note that Yvette’s original post about the incident was deleted from her Instagram profile as of early December. It was also updated to note that Moura is Latino, not white. It also further identifies Yvette as an intern on the radio show “The Breakfast Club.”