Student loan officers got pay from CIT

CTI chief executive Jeffrey Peek said his company is cooperating. (Mark Lennihan/Associated Press/file)

ALBANY, N.Y. -- A student loan company under investigation by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo paid consulting fees to a student loan officer at Johns Hopkins University, paid some of her graduate school tuition, and also paid consulting fees to officials at two other colleges, investigators said.

In a letter sent to the president of Johns Hopkins, William Brody, Cuomo investigators said they believe Student Loan Xpress, a unit of CIT Group Inc., paid more than $21,000 for the school's director of student financial services to attend graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania between August 2002 to January 2004. Investigators also believe the official, Ellen Frishberg, was paid $42,000 as a consultant from April 2004 to October 2005.

Frishberg was placed on paid leave pending an inquiry by the university into the circumstances of the payments, said a Johns Hopkins spokesman .

The other schools cited are Capella University, an online school based in Minneapolis, and Widener University in Pennsylvania .

Earlier yesterday, CIT said it placed three top executives at Student Loan Xpress on paid leave following Cuomo's investigation into stock transactions with a high-level US Department of Education official and college financial aid officers.