{"id":194070,"date":"2026-04-12T06:08:37","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T06:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/194070\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T06:08:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T06:08:37","slug":"columbia-professor-allegedly-swindled-nyc-man-72-to-buy-house-in-greece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/194070\/","title":{"rendered":"Columbia professor allegedly swindled NYC man, 72, to buy house in Greece"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Columbia University psychiatry professor allegedly romanced a frail, retired Wall Streeter \u2014 then swindled him of $1.3 million so she could buy a home in Greece, his family claimed in a lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Frank Watrous Hamilton III, then 72, was \u201cvulnerable\u201d after suffering a 2018 stroke \u201cwhich had a debilitating effect on his mental and physical health,\u201d his son said in Manhattan Supreme Court papers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear how he met Maria Karayiorgou, a professor emerita of psychiatry at the Ivy, but Hamilton\u2019s son alleged the \u201caccomplished psychiatrist\u201d should have realized the Florida resident \u201cwas a frail, vulnerable, and disoriented, elderly man,\u201d before launching into an intimate relationship when they met in 2021 or 2022.<\/p>\n

\"MariaDr. Maria Karayiorgou of Columbia allegedly swindled a frail old man out of
$1.3 million to purchase a home in Greece, according to a lawsuit. Columbia University<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Karayiorgou was embedding herself into Hamilton\u2019s life to take advantage of Hamilton\u2019s impaired state, earn his trust, and manipulate him, with the goal being to take his assets for her benefit,\u201d the family alleged in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Hamilton, a father of two, had a nearly 50-year career on Wall Street<\/a> and served as an executive at the financial services firm Promontory Interfinancial Network, which later became known as IntraFi.<\/p>\n

The alleged age-gap honey trap saw Karayiorgou, then 57, flying from New York to Florida to spend Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, Easter, and both of their birthdays with her love interest, the family claimed.<\/p>\n

During several of these social gatherings, Hamilton referred to Karayiorgou as his fianc\u00e9e or wife, according to the allegations.<\/p>\n

While she whispered sweet nothings, the alleged golddigger had her sights set on a house in Athens, Greece, persistently requesting, pressuring and guilt-tripping Hamilton into footing the bill, the family contended.<\/p>\n

After just a few months of love-bombing, Hamilton wired her $100,000 on April 4, 2022 and then $1.2 million on May 18, 2022 for the $1.3 million pad in Athens, Greece, they claimed in legal papers.<\/p>\n

\"FrankFrank Watrous Hamilton III met the doctor at age 72, just a few years after a
stroke left him \u201cvulnerable\u201d and \u201cdisoriented,\u201d the suit claimed. Millennium Cremation Service<\/p>\n

Though there was an unspoken agreement to put the house under both their names, Karayiorgou was listed as the sole owner, and then allegedly cut ties with Hamilton, they said in the court filing.<\/p>\n

A lawyer for the family, who discovered the wire transfers after his Jan. 26, 2025 death, did not return messages seeking comment.<\/p>\n

The Columbia professor \u2014 who studies the genetics of schizophrenia and has 146 published scientific papers that have received more than 16,876 citations in other papers, according to Science Direct<\/a> \u2014 \u201cintentionally exploited Hamilton\u2019s vulnerabilities and used her position of trust and confidence to influence\u201d him, his family alleged.<\/p>\n

She is currently listed as the Acting Chief of the Division of Medical Genetics in the Department of Psychiatry at the Morningside Heights institution.<\/p>\n

Karayiorgou, who owned a $1.7 million dollar home in the tony Riverdale section of the Bronx, records show, could not immediately be reached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Columbia University psychiatry professor allegedly romanced a frail, retired Wall Streeter \u2014 then swindled him of $1.3…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[19817,77421,3137,2850,57,9,11,10,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-194070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-columbia-university","9":"tag-gold-digger","10":"tag-greece","11":"tag-lawsuits","12":"tag-metro","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-headlines","15":"tag-new-york-news","16":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}