WASHINGTON - U.S. Senate investigators found a former Johns Hopkins University financial aid director accepted more money from lending companies than previously disclosed.
Documents and interviews reviewed by the investigators revealed Ellen Frishberg, who for 18 years was known as a stickler for ethics at the university, accepted at least $133,695 in gifts from eight lending companies, more than twice as much money as previously reported, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
Frishberg resigned from the university earlier this month after the school concluded she violated ethics policies by accepting $65,000 from a lending company she encouraged students to use.
The former official defended her actions, saying she never viewed the money from lending companies as conflicts of interest. She said the companies she ultimately recommended to students were the companies that offered the best deals.
"I worked tirelessly for Johns Hopkins and its students and their parents," she wrote in an e-mail to The Post. "I have been vilified, I believe unfairly, in the media. I am no longer able to serve the students, parents and this university that I devoted much of my professional career to serving."
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