A financial columnist New York Magazine has gone viral after she admitted to being scammed out of $50,000 by someone posing as a CIA agent.
Charlotte Cowles, a writer living in New York City, recently shared how she was tricked into believing she was a victim of identity theft in an essay published in The cut on February 15. Since then, the first-person essay, titled “The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoebox and Handed It to a Stranger,” has generated much online debate about scams.
Cowles began by explaining that he received a phone call from an Amazon customer service agent, who told him there was fraud on his account. While Cowles did not notice any unusual activity on her Amazon account, she said it was connected to an investigator supposedly from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) who knew her Social Security number, her Brooklyn address and the names of their relatives. and her two-year-old son.
The man, who gave his name as Calvin Mitchell, told Cowles he was in “imminent danger” with 22 bank accounts, nine vehicles and four properties registered in his name. He also claimed that her bank accounts were used to transfer more than $3 million overseas and that there were warrants for her arrest related to cybercrimes, money laundering and drug trafficking.
The scammer convinced her not to tell anyone about their conversation, including her husband, for fear that he was behind her identity theft. He transferred her to someone pretending to be a CIA agent named Michael Sarano, who ordered Cowles to withdraw $50,000 from her bank account so he could freeze his assets.
She was told to put the cash in a shoebox, tape it shut, and label it with her name, case number, address, a locker number that he had read aloud to her, and her signature before sending it to her. a text message with a photo of the box. When an “undercover CIA agent” arrived at his home in Brooklyn that night, he put the shoebox filled with $50,000 in cash in the back seat of the van.
The alleged CIA agent then texted Cowles a photo of a Treasury check made out to her for $50,000, telling her that a printout of the check would be personally delivered to her in the morning. When she tried to make an appointment with the Social Security office to receive a “new Social Security number,” a woman told her over the phone that “Michael [was] busy” and he “will call [her] in the morning”.
Realizing she was the victim of a scam, Cowles told the woman: “You're lying to me. Michael was lying. “You just took my money and I will never get it back.”
“I felt violated, untrustworthy; “I couldn’t trust myself,” Cowles wrote. “I considered keeping the whole thing a secret. I was worried it would damage my professional reputation. I still do it”.
He added: “If I had to point to one moment that made me think my scammers were legitimate, it was probably when they read my Social Security number.”
Since its publication on February 15, Cowles' essay has received a lot of attention online. On X, formerly Twitter, many users debated whether it is easy or difficult to fall for a scam. NBC reporter Kat Tenbarge defended Cowles from critics, emphasizing how emotions can run high in the midst of a scam.
“Everyone reading this thinks they would never fall for a scam like this, but the truth is, you would,” Tenbarge wrote on X. “You simply have no idea how you will react when your emotions are played with at this level. “Everyone is susceptible to being abused, manipulated and defrauded.”
Some people used it as an opportunity to educate others about the warning signs of a scam, like one person who posted: “THE FTC DOES NOT DEAL WITH FRAUD OR HAVE BADGE NUMBERS.”
“There's no gentle way to say this, but I think it would be great to teach people to avoid scams and instill in them that they CAN be prevented rather than the 'it can happen to anyone' thing that sometimes turns into helpless coddling.” . pointed out another user.
Others simply explained that they would not be victims of a scam because they do not have money or because they would never answer calls from an unknown number.
“One of the reasons the $50,000 scam didn't work on me is because I don't have $50,000,” one person said, while another user said, “I'm surprised to find out how many of you are still answering phone calls from numbers I won't recognize on 2024.”
In 2022, the FTC found that young adults, including those in Generation fraud. Most recently, American adults lost a record $10 billion to scammers in 2023, according to the FTC. These types of scams were related to investments, business decisions, romances, and government services.
In fact, scams that imitate government officials and services, like the one in Cowles' story, grew 15 percent between 2022 and 2023.
The independent Cowles has been contacted for comment.
