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In an email sent out to the entire student body, University President Christina Paxson announced that she had accidentally given away Brown’s entire $3.3 billion investment in an email phishing scam. Paxson reportedly thought the money would help a traveler stranded in London get home to the United States, at which point they would repay the University tenfold. Paxson found the email, which was sent from ttthxxx09049@hotmail.com and addressed her as “Dear Kind Sir,” convincing enough that she thought it prudent to transfer the endowment to the linked account.
“It was an honest mistake,” wrote Paxson in the email. “I thought, ‘This guy needs to get home. He’s stranded with his wife and kids!’ It’s a blunder, but I hope a blunder that a lot of people would make. I’d rather lose a few billion dollars by trusting somebody than gain a few by believing that people are deceitful.”
Paxson explained that after she read the email, she immediately began to free up the several billion dollars from Brown’s extensive investment portfolio so she could hand the money over. “I check my spam folder every night. This one looked important, so I restored it,” reported Paxson, who was so moved by the man’s story of a vacation gone wrong that she forwarded the email to several other university presidents to see if they’d want to help. “I was glad I did. This family was going through dire straits and I could help them, let alone increase the endowment! Now I’m kicking myself! Of course that was spam.”
Describing the experience as “disappointing,” Paxson expressed frustration with they type of world where people are always trying to take advantage of each other. She said she was shaken by the experience but liked to think that she’d do the same thing again. “After all,” she wrote at the end of the email, “we all find ourselves in trouble, and I’d hope that I could count on all of you to help me if something like that were to happen to me.”
Unfortunately the University will be closing, and you all have to go home.
