A guitarist who grew up in Santa Cruz and San Jose, played Saturday Night Live, shared a stage with Bruce Springsteen, opened for Bob Dylan and Van Morrison and toured for 17 years with Natalie Merchant claims in a lawsuit against Airbnb that The Bay Area firm booked a prostitute into his Paris apartment who had him imprisoned and then kicked out of the upscale neighborhood.
Airbnb did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gabriel Gordon, who said in the lawsuit that he also opened for George Benson, Leonard Cohen and Al Jarreau, and worked with Miles Davis, Seal and Alanis Morissette, alleged his nightmarish experience of renting the apartment began oddly, with a woman named “Svetlana L.” reserving her unit in a building full of celebrities, but with the person who introduced herself introducing herself as “Alisa Prada” and saying “Svetlana” was a nickname.
Yet after checking his phone to make sure the reservation was properly registered with Airbnb, Gordon welcomed the woman into the home he rents and shares with his filmmaker wife Lea Gordon, according to the lawsuit filed in court. San Francisco County Superior regarding the 2017 rental. “Mr. Gordon trusted Airbnb and its verification process completely, as do millions of other people who open their homes to complete strangers every day,” the lawsuit said.
Prada told her she was in Paris from Moscow and was working in television, appearing in “movies for television,” according to the lawsuit.
“Mr Gordon was recording an album and told her he would come over when he was done to make sure everything was satisfactory. She told him not to come between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. because she would sleep during those hours.
But when he contacted Prada to arrange his visit, she pushed him away for two consecutive days, according to the lawsuit. “Mr Gordon didn’t feel good about it, especially with the other oddities that had happened, and decided to visit the apartment, wait for him to return, and then cancel the rest of the booking,” according to the suit. “Something was wrong.”
At 8 a.m. on a Friday morning, Gordon arrived at his apartment, knocked, received no response, and walked in to find Prada absent, the suit said.
“Her laptop was open and the web page that was open was sexmodel.com, which in itself may be cause for concern, but combined with the additional fact that it was (Prada’s) profile on the screen , it was quite alarming,” the suit said. claims. “A quick look around the room revealed a list of men’s names with phone numbers and sums of money written beside them. There was a long list. The unpleasant smell in the apartment was the last clue and Mr. Gordon figured out that (Prada) had prostituted herself from their home.
Gordon canceled Prada’s reservation and put all of her belongings in three bags, according to the complaint filed this week. Later that morning, Prada appeared, “accompanied by a young Frenchman who looked very sheepish and embarrassed,” according to the lawsuit. Gordon refused her entry, gave her the bags and demanded the return of the apartment key, but she refused to hand it over, according to the suit. Gordon closed the door and Prada left, according to the suit.
Gordon, planning to leave Paris that night and holding an envelope filled with important documents, left the apartment for the metro and found Prada following him, according to the lawsuit. “She suddenly started screaming that Mr. Gordon had stolen her passport and money, and was trying to snatch the envelope from her hands,” the lawsuit alleged. “Mr Gordon rushed down the steps of the subway with her in tow. She’s just managed to snatch the envelope from his hands, and he’s struggling to get it back.
“Frustrated and desperate, she started screaming that Mr Gordon had hit her. Within seconds, concerned citizens had Mr. Gordon by both arms and the police were on their way.
Gordon, heavily bruised from the altercation with Prada, was handcuffed and taken to the police station, where he was arrested, fingerprinted, photographed and questioned four times, according to the prosecution. “Eventually, he was placed in a holding cell littered with feces and urine, without sufficient ventilation,” the suit said.
Police then brought him back to the apartment so they could search him for Prada’s belongings, according to the lawsuit.
“Police escorted Mr. Gordon out of the squad car and paraded him in handcuffs through center court,” according to the lawsuit. “All of the Gordons’ neighbors ran to their windows to look outside.”
Gordon “had never been so humiliated in his life” and police found nothing of Prada in the unit, according to the suit.
However, Gordon was kept in jail overnight, undergoing several further interrogations while not sharing the “disgusting holding cell” with four men, “more than one of whom was a convicted violent felon with a criminal record. charged judiciary,” according to the lawsuit.
“At 9am the police woke Mr Gordon up and told him they weren’t pressing charges because Ms Prada’s story was not supported by evidence. Mr. Gordon was finally released at noon,” the lawsuit alleged.
Gordon, who started as a musician as a child in Santa Cruz before moving to San Jose and then to the East Coast with his family, claimed in the lawsuit that the events in Paris damaged his reputation and caused him to lose his job as a touring guitarist, as well as than the apartment because the landlord broke the lease and evicted him and his wife. He alleged that the experience gave him nightmares and put him in therapy.
Gordon’s wife is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit. The Gordons claimed that Airbnb was negligent in allowing Prada to book the apartment and that the company was engaging in racketeering by profiting from providing rental accommodation to prostitutes. The couple are seeking unspecified damages.
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