NY magazine columnist confesses losing 50K: money woes, yikes!

NY magazine’s financial advice columnist, Charlotte Cowles, has revealed that she lost $50,000 to a scammer who claimed to be a CIA agent. Cowles received a call from the man who knew personal details about her, including her social security number, home address, and the names of her family members. He told her that her home was being watched, her laptop had been hacked, and that she was in imminent danger. The scammer claimed that Cowles had 22 bank accounts and was involved in cybercrimes, money laundering, and drug trafficking. Cowles was instructed to put $50,000 in cash in a shoe box and hand it over to a courier in a white Mercedes SUV. She complied with the instructions, believing that she was a victim of identity theft and cooperating with the CIA. However, after handing over the money, she realized that she had been scammed and contacted the police. The police informed her that no government agency would ever ask for money in that manner. Cowles wrote a first-person account of the scam titled “The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger: I never thought I was the kind of person to fall for a scam.”