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Christie’s International real estate agent Christina LaBarbiera details getting duped out of $70,000 by a fellow real estate agent she met on Hinge.
Stefan Jeremiah for New York Post
Christina LaBarbiera, a Christie’s International realtor from Bergen County, New Jersey is suing her ex-boyfriend Rob Harris, alleging he conned her out of more than $70,000. He has not responded to her suit or to The Post. She tells her story to Jeanette Settembre.
He was my perfect match. Then he swindled me out of $71,640 — my life savings. Now I’m suing him for fraud.
When I matched on Hinge with Rob Harris, a blonde haired, blue-eyed 30-year-old real estate agent who worked at Real Brokerage last April, he love bombed me.
He was a real estate agent from New Jersey, like me. He was very funny, witty. We cracked jokes. He was light hearted. A family guy who loved dogs. Charming. Entrepreneurial.
His prompt that got me to message him on Hinge was: “I’ll fall in love with you if you make me laugh.” I responded, “That won’t be a problem.” I sent him my number and we continued the conversation.
The chemistry was instant and eventually, we talked about moving to Miami and putting an offer on a condo.
We were talking all day non-stop. About our jobs in real estate, about silly nostalgic things like “Sponge Bob.” I looked him up to make sure he was a real estate agent. That checked out.
He told me personal things about his life, he said, “A few girls I was talking to were taken aback by this, but I need to tell you, about a year ago, I was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a thickened heart wall.
“Just so you know, some days I’m able to get up and go and other days I’m so exhausted because I could be sitting still and my heart is pumping at 150 beats per minute.”
My grandmother had something similar. I wasn’t going to write him off because of a heart issue.
He was helping pay his mom’s mortgage and taking care of things for his family because his stepdad was having a serious back surgery, he told me. I thought, “that’s really honorable, he stepped up to the plate as the other man in the family.”
We set a time to meet — he was going to drive into the city. Then at 7 p.m. that night I got an audio message saying: “Christina, I’m really sorry. Something is going on at the hospital I need to make sure my stepdad is okay. I’m really sorry. I do see a future here, please don’t be mad.”
I can’t be the a–hole and get mad at that.
I also had compassion for him and his situation because my mother had breast cancer, kidney cancer and a form of bone marrow cancer in the span of three years. I had to make a lot of concessions in my life. It was easy for us to connect on that level.
He was sending me NYU Langone sites about the surgery — everything he was saying was checking out.
In May, we finally went out on our first date. When we met, he opened the car door of his Tesla Model 3 for me. I thought, “What a gentleman.” We went to Catch Steak in Chelsea.
He was a very nice dresser, wearing a black T-shirt and gray jeans with a designer watch. He came off as a very sweet, nurturing guy. When I met him in person I was like, “He’s not just…
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