WORST GIRLFRIEND EVER
Saboteur ex blows music scholarship
A clingy college student concocted e-mails to sabotage her boyfriend’s dream of studying with one of the world’s best music professors — and now must cough up $260,000 for nearly ruining his life.
Talented clarinetist Eric Abramovitz had no idea Jennifer Jooyeon Lee would play him like a fiddle when they first met while studying at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music in September 2013, according to papers filed in Ontario Superior Court.
The girlfriend from hell hatched the evil plan when Abramovitz applied for a two-year program studying under renowned clarinet teacher Yehuda Gilad at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles.
In February, Abramovitz flew out with his parents to audition for one of just two spots in the full-ride scholarship program. The next month, the school e-mailed the young musician to notify him that he had been accepted. Only he never got the e-mail. Lee, who used Abramovitz’s laptop and knew his passwords since the two had been living together, intercepted the acceptance e-mail and sneakily posed as him to decline the offer, saying he would be “elsewhere.”
She took her ploy one step further by creating an e-mail account in Gilad’s name, to send Abramovitz a subpar offer of studying under him at the University of Southern California on a more modest $5,000 scholarship.
“Ms. Lee knew about Mr. Abramovitz’s financial circumstances and that he would not be able to accept the fake offer she had created for a position at USC,” Judge David Corbett wrote in court papers.
“She apparently did these things so that Mr. Abramovitz would not leave Montreal and instead would stay in Montreal and remain in his relationship with her.”
Abramovitz “was completely taken in by this deception,” the judge said — and wound up staying at McGill to complete his music degree. He went on to complete a two-year graduate certificate at USC, where he finally came under Gilad’s tutelage.
Lee’s ruse was uncovered when the two men pieced together what had happened, the National Post reported.
“Why did you reject me?” Gilad asked Abramovitz, who responded by asking him the same thing, forwarding his professor the fake e-mail he’d received.
“I’ve never seen that in my life,” Gilad told him.
He and a friend used one of Lee’s old passwords to log into the fake Gilad e-mail account and saw that her own e-mail and phone number were listed.
“Miraculously, it logged right in. We felt like Sherlock Holmes,” recalled Abramovitz, who now plays for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
He claims Lee pulled the same trick twice, also declining an offer he had received from the Juilliard School in Manhattan.
The couple broke up in September 2014 for unrelated reasons. He sued his ex-girlfriend in August 2016.
On Wednesday Corbett ordered Lee, who has been a courtroom noshow in court, to pay $260,000 in US dollars.