A financial advice columnist for New York Magazine has admitted that he was swindled out of $50,000 by a scammer claiming to be a CIA agent and ordered to hand over a shoebox full of cash to a courier in a white Mercedes.
Charlotte Cowles, who writes a financial advice column for The Cut, a digital fashion news site run by New York Magazine, says: I wrote a first-person account on Thursday. The title is “The day I put $50,000 in a shoebox and gave it to a stranger: I never thought I’d be the kind of person who would fall for a scam.”
Cowles said a mysterious man called her one night in October and provided her Social Security number, home address, names of family members and that her 2-year-old son was playing in the living room. He found out and got her attention. Brooklyn apartment.
Cowles wrote that the man “informed her that her home was being monitored, her laptop had been hacked, and that she was in immediate danger.”
The man also claimed that Ms Cowles had 22 bank accounts, nine cars and four properties registered in her name.
According to the mystery man, these bank accounts were used to send more than $3 million overseas, “primarily to Jamaica and Iraq.”
Ms. Cowles was then asked if she knew anyone named “Stella Squee Kwon.”
“He texted me a photo of his ID, which was abandoned at the southern border of Texas with blood and drugs in the trunk of a car he had rented in my name. “He claimed to have been found in his car,” she wrote.
Cowles was told there were “warrants out for his arrest in Maryland and Texas” and that he was being charged with cybercrime, money laundering, and drug trafficking.
Believing she was the victim of identity theft, she texted her husband, “I’m in serious trouble.”
“My identity has been stolen. I feel terrible,” she wrote to her husband.
Cowles said she checked her credit score, bank accounts and credit card accounts. “Nothing was out of the ordinary,” she wrote.
“I can help you, but only if you cooperate,” the man told Cowles, who was instructed not to tell her husband, police or his lawyer about the call.
On a Tuesday night in October, she wrote, “I put $50,000 in cash in a shoebox, taped it up as instructed, and carried it to the sidewalk in front of my apartment, holding my cell phone to my ear.”
Cowles said she told the stranger on the phone, “Please no one hurt me.”
The man reportedly told Cowles, “I’m not going to hurt you.” “Just keep doing what I say.”
Moments later, a white Mercedes SUV pulled up to the curb. Without looking at her driver, the man who called her told her to “take the box out of her window, say ‘thank you’ and get back inside her vehicle.”
If I don’t cooperate, Cowles says, the CIA will have to “freeze all assets in my name, including my actual bank accounts.” His career includes being a business columnist for the New York Times.
“My office is in Langley,” the scammer told Cowles. “We’re running out of time. We need to act quickly.”
Cowles was told she would need to hand over $50,000 in cash because a government check would need to be issued “based on her new Social Security number.” The check replaces an old one that had to be closed because she was a victim. Identity theft.
“Then by monitoring my old Social Security number and all activity on my account, the criminals who used my identity will be caught and I can get my life back,” she wrote. Ta.
After handing over the money, she said she received a text message from a man named “Michael” who sent her a photo of a $50,000 Treasury check.
Ms. Cowles was told that a hard copy of the check would be handed to her in the morning.
When Cowles tried to make an appointment at the Social Security office, an unknown woman on the phone told her that “Michael” was “busy” and would “call in the morning.”
“You’re lying to me. Michael was lying. You just stole my money and you’ll never get it back,” Cowles told the woman.
“You are a total liar,” she told the woman.
When Cowles told police what had happened, the officer told him, “No government agency will ever ask you for money.”
The day after the incident, Cowles wrote, “Everything was turned upside down and I felt a new humiliation. I curled up in a fetal position.”
The Post has reached out to Cowles for comment.
