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Financial columnist shares how she was scammed out of $50,000 by fake CIA agent [1]
['Mark Frauenfelder']
Date: 2024-02-15
Charlotte Cowles, the financial-advice columnist for New York Magazine's The Cut, shared her enthralling story about being scammed out of $50,000 by a man posing as a CIA agent.
Here are the first three paragraphs:
On a Tuesday evening this past October, I put $50,000 in cash in a shoe box, taped it shut as instructed, and carried it to the sidewalk in front of my apartment, my phone clasped to my ear. "Don't let anyone hurt me," I told the man on the line, feeling pathetic. "You won't be hurt," he answered. "Just keep doing exactly as I say." Three minutes later, a white Mercedes SUV pulled up to the curb. "The back window will open," said the man on the phone. "Do not look at the driver or talk to him. Put the box through the window, say 'thank you,' and go back inside."
With a lead like this, how can you not keep reading?
Cowles is an intelligent person. How did she fall for this scam? It turns out that being intelligent has nothing to do with your propensity for being conned. In 2016, I interviewed Maria Konnikova, author of The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time. In her research, she learned that everyone is vulnerable to the con artist's game, even other con artists, and there isn't much we can do to protect ourselves from getting conned.
After Cowles was robbed of her $50,000, she interviewed a number of experts about what had happened to her. They all agreed with Konnikova's conclusion:
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