Elizabeth Lyn Vargas tells Inside Edition that she was extorted and pistol-whipped before cops rescued her.
A former "Real Housewives" star had a real-life night of terror when she says a man she had been dating burst into her home and held her at gunpoint during a two-hour standoff with police.
Elizabeth Lyn Vargas, former cast member of "The Real Housewives of Orange County," says she was blackmailed and threatened with death by the man she was dating after he entered her home in Newport Beach, California.
“I didn’t know how to handle it. I had no idea, I just didn’t know how to handle someone putting a gun to my head,” an emotional Vargas tells Inside Edition.
Surveillance footage captured his chilling threat to end her life.
“You're the closet one next to me. So, I'm taking you out and then everybody else. They can shoot me if they want. I don't give a f*** anymore,” he tells her in the footage.
Vargas says she was hit with the gun when he walked in the door. A photo she provided Inside Edition shows her bruised eye and nose after being pistol-whipped.
Vargas had just finished filming “The Real Housewives of Orange County" when she met Ryan Geraghty at a bar in 2022. At first, she says she was impressed with Geraghty, who she found very charming and to be a good dresser. "I had no idea he was 100% a con artist," she tells Inside Edition.
Soon into their relationship, the 48-year-old reality star says Geraghty began extorting her for tens of thousands of dollars by claiming he'd drugged her and taken photos of her while she was naked.
“He goes, ‘yea, I can’t wait to show your ex-husband and your partners who you really are.’ He just started threatening says he took compromising pictures,” she says.
Vargas, who had just launched a new vodka company, feared she'd lose everything if she didn’t pay up.
“I thought if I just pay him, he won’t show the pictures,” she says.
She says his threats became increasingly violent and that he would come to her home and physically assault her. Finally, she called police, who arrived as Geraghty held her at gunpoint.
Following a two-hour standoff, cops arrested Geraghty.
Geraghty, who the Orange County District Attorney says had a violent criminal past, was charged with assault with a firearm and domestic violence. He pleaded guilty to attacking Vargas and was sentenced to six years in prison.
