A Westchester doctor infiltrated his wife’s email account — turning it into a “Trojan horse’’ that mined for details of her personal life to use against her while they were splitting up, jurors were told Monday.
In an unprecedented case, radiologist Adel Abadir’s ex-wife is suing him, alleging that he violated federal wiretapping laws by peeking at her account.
Anesthesiologist Annabelle Zaratzian says her ex not only tapped into her emails but shared some of the information with others — including his lawyer and their children.
She claims he was the one who set up the email account, and that he fixed it so that her emails would be forwarded to him without her knowledge.
Among the tidbits he gleaned from her messages was info on other lovers his wife had taken in the year after their 2006 divorce. He even sent a message to her that said, “At my last count the kids have now been exposed to 3 of your significant others in the last several months.”
He also told their daughter to “add loser idiot’’ when describing Zaratzian’s then-boyfriend, Harold Burke — who is now the plaintiff’s husband and lawyer.
That phrase is how Burke’s ex-wife described him in an email forwarded to Zaratzian.
In addition, Abadir — who claims the email account was jointly held — sent his ex-wife’s 2008 tax filing to his lawyer. It reported her earnings as $400,000. The pair were involved in a battle over who would pay for what at the time.
Abadir is “a very controlling individual,” Burke said in opening statements in federal court in White Plains on Monday.
“In 2003, something perverse happened . . . The control changed on [Zaratzian’s] email account, and in reality, this turned out to be a literal Trojan horse that wasn’t discovered until 2010,’’ Burke said.
“Dr. Zaratzian’s email turned into surveillance . . . Thousands of messages were intercepted and sent to Dr. Abadir’s email account. He had a digital dossier on his former wife.”
But Abadir’s lawyer, Nathaniel Marmur, told jurors that the plaintiff was well aware that her husband had access to her account — they set it up together while still married to make sure both were aware of things involving their three kids.
“It’s not a Trojan horse if she gave him access to the account,” Marmur said. “All he ever did was set up autoforward with his wife’s permission. She never told him to remove it.”
Marmur admitted his client didn’t inform his ex he was still getting her emails after they split, but he insisted “not telling her is not illegal.”
Abadir is set to testify Tuesday, followed by his ex-wife.