And You Thought You Had Roommate Drama
An NYU freshman (and Russian heiress) is suing her roommate for allegedly stealing her designer goods and selling them on The Real Real.
At any given moment, so much drama is happening at NYU. One Tisch student is choosing not to cast her best friend in her short film, a Gallatin sophomore just dumped her boyfriend for no t having a cool major, and someone is making up a rumor about Timothée Chalamet’s sex life. But in what is probably the biggest fight happening on the (city) campus right now, two NYU roommates are having a major falling out because one of them appears to have stolen the other’s luxury goods and sold them on The Real Real. Did I mention the victim is distantly connected to Vladimir Putin? Here’s what happened.
Who are these NYU freshmen?
Per the Daily Mail, Aurora Agapov is the 19-year-old daughter of a Russian gold-mining oligarch whose board of directors includes Vladimir Putin. She grew up in London and relocated to the East Village last year to start her freshman year at NYU, where she moved into the university’s Founders Hall dorms with a political-science major (and fellow freshman) named Kaitlyn Fung. Agapov told the New York Post that she and Fung were “good friends” and “spoke pretty much every day” — well, until recently.
What happened?
Based on a suit Agapov filed at the end of May, she realized earlier that month that some of her things were missing and found a receipt in Fung’s wallet from The Real Real that listed a handful of her own MIA belongings. (As she told the Post, “My heart dropped.”) When she confronted her roommate about the receipt, her lawsuit claims, Fung admitted to stealing Agapov’s jewelry and bags and listing them on The Real Real — and, at Agapov’s request, signed into her account to show her the incriminating listings, which included a $3,300 Celine tote, a $4,000 Chanel purse, and a $23,765 ruby ring. At some point, Agapov asked Fung to leave their dorm and spent the night packing up her things to move out.
Agapov also claimed in the suit that Fung was selling her things way under market value — one Chanel bracelet worth $2,000 apparently went for $175, and a $13,000 Bvlgari necklace got her $2,485. To my knowledge, this is actually a criticism of The Real Real’s murky product-evaluation practices and not Fung’s ability to price designer jewelry, but that’s for another lawsuit. A few of the items — a Gucci bag, another Celine bag, and Christian Louboutin shoes — were, per the suit, “returned” to Fung, presumably by The Real Real customers.
Is Fung facing charges?
Agapov’s suit says she reported Fung to the police on May 2, and the freshman was arrested the same day on a third-degree grand-larceny charge before being released. Her criminal case is pending, but Agapov appears to be pursuing justice by other means. Later that week, she claims she went to The Real Real’s Soho store to tell them what had happened, and an employee there told her Fung’s mother had picked up all the listed items a few days earlier. At the end of May, Agapov filed a complaint in New York Supreme Court seeking $51,000 in damages and demanding the Fungs return her things. On June 6, Fung’s father was served a summons for the 18-year-old to answer Agapov’s filing within 30 days.
I’m not sure if Fung is looking for a new friend amid all this, but I can think of someone who’d probably love to meet her.
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