Best Of
The emails they probably wish hadn't been preserved. Curated collections from 1.23 million messages.
12 collections
In December 2001, the Department of Justice subpoenaed Enron’s email servers looking for evidence of fraud. They found it. They also found 1.23 million other messages – ring shopping questionnaires, stadium ejections, satirical memos from fictional CFOs, a lawyer’s crow-augury index tracking the company’s collapse, fantasy football trades, Nigerian 419 scams addressed to the General Counsel, and a cease-and-desist letter from one employee to another over the intellectual property rights to a photograph of golf balls.
Every collection below is built from the corpus. Every email is real. Every quote is verbatim. The SQL queries that found them are embedded in each exhibit.
You Have No Idea What Pressure I'm Under
In April 2001, a Nigerian prince emailed Enron's General Counsel about an over-invoicing scheme worth $30.5 million. He had come to the right place.
The HYDA Index
For three weeks in November 2001, an Enron attorney in Portland tracked the company's collapse by watching crows on the Willamette River.
The True Believers
As Enron collapsed in late 2001, a handful of employees wrote to Ken Lay not to rage or demand severance, but to say thank you. Their letters are the saddest documents in the archive.
The Good Ones
Before the fraud, before the hearings, before the shredding -- there were people who mentored junior staff, thanked their bosses, and held each other up as the building came down. The kindness is what makes the rest of it unbearable.
Lay It on the Line
In August 2001, Ken Lay asked 20,000 employees to tell him the truth. Over 4,000 did. He published their answers, promised to fix everything, and the company collapsed 61 days later.
After Hours
Seven emails that were never meant to be evidence of anything except friendship, vanity, boredom, and the fact that nobody at Enron had a personal email worth checking.
The Big E: Fantasy Football During Bankruptcy
From 1999 to 2001, a group of Enron traders ran a fantasy football league through CBS SportsLine.com. The company collapsed. The league did not.
Everything Is Fine
Between August and November 2001, Ken Lay sent a series of all-company emails assuring 20,000 employees that Enron had never been stronger. The stock went from $36 to $0.26.
Life During the Collapse
Four emails from Enron's final weeks that have nothing to do with fraud and everything to do with being human while the building falls down.
Gallows Humor
An Arthur Andersen auditor joked about shredding documents three days before the DOJ opened its investigation. He was trying to schedule lunch.
Five Office Romances
Between trading floor instant messages and pipeline scheduling, Enron employees found time to plan dates, write poetry, and scope out dark parking lots -- all on infrastructure designed for natural gas logistics.
Delete Everything, Cancel the Party
In October 2001, Enron ordered the destruction of its emails. Six weeks later, it canceled the holiday party. The emails survived. The party didn't.