Gifted clarinettist awarded CA$350K against ex-girlfriend who sabotaged his career

A Canadian musician was awarded CA$350,000 (AU$356,600) by a court after it was proved that his ex-girlfriend sabotaged his career. Eric Abramovitz thought he was rejected by a prestigious performing arts school when he applied there for scholarship, but it turned out a person he trusted sabotaged his chance.

The gifted clarinettist, who was already an accomplished musician after delivering solo performances and gathering awards, applied for a full scholarship at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles worth about US$50,000 (AU$66,000) in 2013. He wanted to complete his laws two years of his Bachelors degree at Coburn, hoping to apply to study under internationally renowned clarinet pedagogue Yehuda Gilad.

He was invited to a live audition at Coburn in February 2014. After his audition, he was told that he could expect a decision by April 1.

He was staying at the apartment of his fellow McGill University student and girlfriend at that time, Jennifer Lee. As he trusted her, he let her use his laptop and gave her his passwords.

Coburn sent him an email on March 27, 2014, accepting his application at the school. It offered Abramovitz a place to study with Gilad on a full scholarship. However, Lee saw the email. Instead of telling her boyfriend about it, she intercepted the email and responded to it in Abramovitz’s name to decline the offer because he would be “elsewhere.”

Lee then deleted the acceptance email and then created a new email address, giladyehuda09@gmail.com. She used the new email to send Abramovitz a letter of rejection, making it seem like the email was send by Gilad herself. In the fake email, Lee, as Gilad, told Abramovitz that his scholarship application had been denied but he could still study with Gilad at the University of Southern California with partial scholarship at US$5,000 (AU$6,600).

The annual tuition at USC was US$51,000 (AU$67,350). Abramovitz would be required to pay the difference plus other living expenses himself, which he couldn’t afford to do, and so he had to decline. Lee knew about Abramovitz’s financial circumstances, which was why she created the fake offer. And because Lee posed as Abramovitz to decline Coburn’s scholarship offer, Abramovitz lost the two-year full scholarship opportunity. He stayed in Montreal and completed his music degree at McGill.

Abramovitz and Lee split six months after the incident because “things were getting too intense,” he told BuzzFeed News. And because he was still bent on studying under Gilad, he auditioned for a place at USC after graduating from McGill.

Following his audition, Gilad asked him what he was doing there. “He was like, ‘You rejected me. Why are you here?’” Abramovitz was puzzled, telling the esteemed educator that he was the one who rejected him.

“And he was like, ‘No, you did,’ and we had this awkward exchange where we kept going back and forth like that and I thought maybe he had confused me with someone else.”

Abramovitz wasn’t offered another full scholarship, although he was given a position at USC’s certificate program and began studying under Gilad.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off, though, and it was confirmed a few months later when one of Gilad’s former students asked him why he didn’t study at Colburn when he had a chance. He began to investigate what happened, so he went back to the rejection letter he received from Gilad, who told him that it was not his email address.

He had enlisted the help of some “computer people” to try and trace the account but to “no avail.” When his friends suggested that Lee might be involved, he began to wonder the possibility of his ex-girlfriend betraying him. He and his friends tested passwords that he knew she used and after several attempts, he logged in on Gilad’s fake email account.

Armed with evidence, he immediately informed his professor, contacted Lee and hired an attorney. Lee tried to deny it at first, but the evidence against her was strong. She blocked her on social media and they only spoke to each other through lawyers.

On Wednesday, the Ontario Supreme Court judge sided with him. Abramovitz sued her for CA$300,000 (AU$396,000) in general damages for loss of reputation, loss of educational opportunity, and loss of two years’ of potential income. The judge on his case added CA$50,000 (AU$66,000) for Lee’s “despicable interference in Mr Abramovitz’s career.”