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“He said my house was being watched, my laptop was hacked, and I was in immediate danger.”
That’s the scenario that unfolded in October to Charlotte Cowles, a financial advice columnist for The Cut, a lifestyle and women’s publication owned by New York Magazine.
Since 2016, Ms. Cowles has written a regular column on the site called “My Two Cents,” in which she answers readers’ questions about personal finance, saving, budgeting, and, among other things, avoiding scams. .
But on Halloween last year, Cowles found herself on the other side of the exchange, unable to prevent herself from becoming the victim of a complex scheme despite her expertise. As a result, she ended up giving away much of her life savings to scammers.
She wrote about the experience in an article for The Cut, detailing the many signs and red flags she ignored while passing a shoebox containing $50,000 in cash to a stranger.
It all started with a phone call from someone claiming to be from Amazon.
“A polite woman with a vague accent told me that Amazon customer service was calling to check on unusual activity on my account,” Cowles wrote, adding that the caller ID did not confirm her claim. He said that it was confirmed.
The Amazon representative asked her if she had recently purchased $8,000 worth of Apple products. Ms. Cowles did not do so and she also checked recent orders to confirm the same. Cowles said the woman on the other end of the phone identified herself as “Krista” and told her Amazon had records of two accounts, one personal and one business. It is said that
Cowles said he does not have a business account.
The columnist, with Krista’s help, determined that this must be a scam against her account, which was clearly a major problem for the world’s top online retailer.
“It was so pervasive that the company was working with a Federal Trade Commission liaison and referring defrauded customers to him,” Cowles wrote.
Krista asked if they could connect them, but Cowles said okay.
She then connected with a man named Calvin Mitchell who claimed to be an FTC investigator. He gave her his badge number, gave her a callback number, and even claimed that her calls were being recorded.
Cowles said he knew the last four digits of her Social Security number, her home address and date of birth.
“I’m happy to talk,” he told her, as she had been implicated in a serious international crime.
“He said there were 22 bank accounts, nine vehicles and four properties registered in my name. The bank accounts transferred more than $3 million overseas, most of it to Jamaica. and were sent to Iraq,” the article details. She then sent her an image of the woman’s ID and said it was found near the Mexican border with blood and drugs in the trunk of a car he had rented in her name.
The man then told her he was being charged with cybercrime, drug trafficking and money laundering in both Maryland and Texas.
“I Googled my name with ‘warrant’ and ‘money laundering,’ but nothing came up. Was the arrest warrant released? I wasn’t sure. Google directed me to truthfinder.com. , where they asked for my credit card information and no,” she wrote.
The stranger on the other end of the phone told her not to tell anyone about the conversation, even friends and family. “Everyone around you is a suspect,” he said.
She told the man how much money she had in her savings and checking accounts. As a freelance journalist, Cowles keeps a health emergency fund, she said.
Things progressed from there.
Calvin forwarded her to a “CIA colleague” and wished her luck.
“The next man who answered the phone had a deeper voice with a slight British accent that I couldn’t identify,” she wrote. His name was Michael Sarano, at least that’s what he claimed.
Again, the person on the phone told her not to tell anyone about the conversation, including her husband. “You’re being investigated for a serious federal crime… By keeping her husband out of this case, you’re protecting her husband,” he apparently said.
Michael warned her not to consult a lawyer. If she did so, she would be considered “uncooperative” and she would be threatened with having her home searched by the authorities. Her brother and her best friend are both lawyers, but she was too scared to contact either of them, she said.
He warned that his assets were likely to be frozen and he would have to survive on cash for more than a year. He then urged her to go to her bank and withdraw as much cash as her family needed. The amount, she calculated, was about $50,000.
She headed to the bank, but her phone was still connected and her cell phone was hidden in her pocket. She asked her teller to withdraw $50,000 in cash from her savings.
“The woman behind the thick glass window frowned, disappeared into a back room, returned with a large metal box containing $100 bills, and counted them in a machine. I shoved a wad of banknotes into the slot along with a slip of paper warning me not to do so.”
The “CIA agent” praised her for following his instructions, and despite telling him multiple times that she did not trust him, she continued to do as she was told.
She put the cash she had just received in a shoebox and prepared it for the “undercover agent” to come and collect it. They then told her that the federal government would issue her a check for her “clean” full amount.
“A white Mercedes SUV pulled up to the curb.” The man on the phone said, “The back window will open.” “Don’t look at or talk to the driver. Take the box out the window, say ‘thank you’ and go back inside,” she explained.
After the driver left, she was struck by the realization that she had been kidnapped.
She confessed to her husband, called 911, filed a police report, and tried to move on with her life. In the weeks that followed, she researched her fraud and spoke to other people who had been victimized. She realized that much of her personal information was relatively easy to obtain online via the dark web or just by browsing her social media pages.
Throughout the ordeal, Ms. Cowles ignored her better instincts: fear and the authoritative voice that motivated her to do what she swore she would never have done if she had thought clearly.
“If it was a scam, I didn’t understand the situation,” she wrote. Her police officer reminded her that her government agency would never ask her for her money, which she said she knew. “I didn’t really feel like he was asking,” she said.
This story is written as a cautionary tale that even intelligent and knowledgeable financial professionals can fall victim to scammers.
But online commenters criticized the story as a display of arrogance and a story so unbelievable that some openly questioned whether it was fiction.
Some were amazed that a financial columnist was willing to expose his reckless behavior and put their credibility at risk. “You cannot waterboard this information from me,” multiple users wrote to X.
Unlike the FBI, the CIA does not operate domestically. Others added that she could have dodged a bullet if she had known the difference between the two agencies.
Still, some on social media praised Cowles’ vulnerability and willingness to be the butt of a joke, at a time when many fraud victims are often too embarrassed to admit they were deceived.
And the irony of her position as a financial columnist was not lost on her.
“Scam victims tend to be single, lonely, financially unstable, and have low financial literacy. I’m none of those things. I’m more of the opposite,” Cowles wrote. “In other words, I’m not the kind of person to panic under pressure or fall into conspiracies involving drug smuggling, money laundering, and CIA agents that come my way. Until suddenly it happens.”
The FTC, which actually investigates consumer fraud, has compiled a list of four signs that an apparent emergency is a scam.
Scammers pretend to be part of an organization that the target knows or is aware of, such as the FTC, CIA, or Amazon.com. They’ll say there’s a problem, like your account is frozen because you’re wanted for an international crime. They may pressure you to act quickly and order you to go to the bank immediately. You will also be instructed to pay in a certain way, often through cryptocurrency, gift cards, or payment apps, but there is no mention of shoeboxes.
If you’ve been a victim of a scam, you can file a report with the FTC. Local law enforcement should also be contacted. The FTC also has instructions on what to do if you get scammed.
To read Cowles’ full text on The Cut, click here.
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