A financial advice columnist wrote an article Thursday claiming to have been the victim of an elaborate scam where she handed $50,000 over to a fake CIA agent.
Charlotte Cowles, a New York Magazine columnist, described in her article in The Cut how she was strung along on Oct. 31 after a person supposedly from Amazon’s customer service called her about a mysterious $8,000 charge on her account for MacBooks and iPads. (RELATED: Teen Miraculously Found Alive After ‘Cyber Kidnapping’ Scam)
Cowles wrote that she checked her account but found no such activity. Cowles noted that when it was determined that something was amiss, she and her caller agreed this was likely a case of identity theft. The caller then connected Cowles with an alleged liaison at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) who worked on fraud cases.
Cowles wrote that the supposed FTC representative told her that she had 22 bank accounts, nine vehicles and four houses under her name. The representative also claimed that there were arrest warrants for her in Maryland and Texas for drug trafficking, cybercrime and money laundering. Cowles wrote that what got her attention was that the representative knew her home address, Social Security number, the names of her family members and that her 2-year-old son was playing in the living room.
He offered to help Cowles by forwarding her to “his colleague at the CIA” who he claimed was “the lead investigator on [Cowles’] case,” Cowles wrote. This agent told her not to alert her lawyer, the police or even her husband and that failure to cooperate would result in her house being raided, her assets seized and possibly her arrest. Cowles wrote that the agent insisted that the only way to resolve this was by issuing her a new Social Security card and that she needed to hand over $50,000 in cash to an “undercover agent” he sent for this purpose. Cowles wrote that she complied with this agreement but regretted it, suspecting a scam. She then called the police who informed her that “[n]o government agency will ever ask you for money.”
“I’m saying this with love and an acknowledgment that this could happen to me too but the deal is that our financial advice columnist gave $50,000 to a scammer in cash out on the streets,” Choire Sicha, editor-at-large at New York Magazine, tweeted in reaction to this story.
I’m saying this with love and an acknowledgment that this could happen to me too but the deal is that our financial advice columnist gave $50,000 to a scammer in cash out on the streets. https://t.co/8ZvsytJCkO
— Choire (@Choire) February 15, 2024
This elaborate scam is not the first time that someone fell for an alleged plot involving a fake CIA officer. Garrison Kenneth Courtney, a former public affairs officer for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), pleaded guilty back in June 2020 to defrauding at least a dozen businesses of over $4.4 million through the pretense of being a covert CIA agent seeking “commercial cover.”