“Joe has flipped hundreds of properties since he was 20 years old,” he told PEOPLE in a statement. “He has a very successful real estate business, and relied on a social media person in his office who helped him with all that stuff. Unfortunately, it was just an error that person made that Joe didn’t catch.”
The rep continued: “He never intended to do anything but be truthful, and is sorry to have been misleading to his followers.”
The rep added: “Joe had helped fund that project, and not flip it. It was a mistake and Joe’s going to definitely be more careful with what he’s posting in the future.”
The father-of-three came under fire for a since-deleted photo he shared on the social media platform, which featured a house-flipping project he claimed was completed by his company.
Joe claimed the photo in his post was a before-and-after shot of the same home, writing, “Look at this flip worth $1.9m. Took me 6 months to turn this around. Ripped off the roof & added to the second floor. I think I might move in.”
However, Instagram user Caley Svensson, of Park Ridge, New Jersey, reposted the image on her Instagram Story, claiming that the “after” photo was her house — and it had not been flipped by Joe.
“When @JoeyGorga tries to rip off your house and claim he flipped it…. [eye roll emoji] can I get a Watch What Happens Live over here…” Svensson wrote, referencing Andy Cohen’s Bravo talk show.
“It was a new construction, the foundation was new,” Svensson told Good Morning America on Wednesday morning, noting that the home couldn’t have been flipped by Joe because it was built so recently. “Everything about it was new, it was built from the ground up.”
The “before” photo appears to show a completely different property located on the other side of town, according to property records obtained by Page Six.
Svensson told Page Six that she was alerted about the topic after her friends began tagging her in the comments of Joe’s Instagram post. She said that she then commented and messaged the Bravo reality star to take the post down but she claims that he never responded.
“We felt like he was using our house to advertise his business, and you can’t be making mistakes like that,” Svensson told GMA. “You have to check your facts and make sure anything you put out there is true.”
Photo Credit: Getty Images
