A former eXp broker filed a lawsuit against the brokerage late last week, saying she was retaliated against after she filed a report about sexual harassment and other “illegal activity.”
Noelle Nielsen — a broker from Minnesota who is now with the Real Brokerage — alleged she acted as a whistleblower regarding events that took place as early as 2020, but that her reports weren’t thoroughly investigated by eXp. She also said she was “blacklisted” from speaking at eXp events.
In her lawsuit, filed on Aug. 7 in a District Court in Minnesota, Nielsen specifically alleged that she had been drugged during a business trip to Puerto Rico in 2019.
Nielsen goes on to say that she was recruited to join eXp by Mike Bjorkman and David Golden. The two men are former eXp agents who were named in multiple lawsuits and accused of drugging and sexually assaulting women at industry events. The suits accuse eXp and founder Glenn Sanford of looking the other way and ignoring the problem.
(Bjorkman filed his own lawsuit that pushed back against the characterizations in the suits against him and names eXp Realty and Sanford as defendants.
In Nielsen’s case, she alleged that she was “effectively the whistleblower” who shed light on the alleged misconduct at the heart of the lawsuits against Bjorkman and Golden after having been sexually harassed by the pair.
“In early 2020, Nielsen learned from another agent at the company that Bjorkman and Golden were trying to obtain illegal drugs while they were traveling for an eXp recruiting event,” Nielsen alleged in her complaint. “At the time, eXp’s internal infrastructure was not well built out.”
In response to Nielsen’s lawsuit, a spokesperson for eXp said the case had no merit.
“We are aware of the recently filed lawsuit and take the allegations seriously. However, the claims are entirely without merit and we intend to defend the case vigorously,” the statement said. “EXp is committed to maintaining a workplace and community that is inclusive, respectful, and aligned with our core values. We have robust policies in place to address misconduct and retaliation, and we do not tolerate behavior that violates those standards.”
In her complaint, Nielsen alleged that eXp’s revenue sharing model created disincentives for agents to report misconduct. Such reporting could lead to retribution or lost revenue should the brokerage terminate a sponsoring agent.
“As a result, eXp has created a culture that discourages reporting, downplays serious issues, and in some cases, encourages shaming, blaming, and silencing of victims and others who report issues,” Nielsen wrote.
Nielsen further alleged that she reported Bjorkman and Golden directly to eXp’s president at the time. The complaint also describes documentation of the alleged harassment and other company violations, as well as a memo outlining proposed changes to help improve the reporting process at the brokerage.
Nielsen said there was no evidence that eXp followed up with an investigation into the reporting, and that Golden stayed on with the company for two more years after she filed the report.
She also alleged that she would have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars more through eXp’s revenue sharing recruiting and retention model had she not left the company, and that eXp had allowed others who had been attracted to the brokerage by Nielsen were allowed to switch to a competing agent.
