A financial-advice writer is drawing intense criticism and sympathy after revealing that she was scammed into putting $50,000 in cash in a shoebox and giving it to a stranger. But her story is far from unusual, and falling for such scams is increasingly common.
Charlotte Cowles, a columnist for New York magazine, was tricked into believing she was a victim of identity theft and under investigation for federal crimes, and was pressured to withdraw cash for living expenses before her bank accounts would allegedly be frozen. Over the course of several hours on the phone, she was transferred by a fraudster claiming to be from Amazon
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to one claiming to be from the Federal Trade Commission to one claiming to be from the Central Intelligence Agency. She recounted her story in an article that highlighted how even a well-informed, “maddeningly rational” person can get caught up in the panic stirred up by skilled con artists. After X users roasted Cowles and questioned her authority as a personal-finance writer, she deleted her X account. But experts say that rather than criticizing the victim, the public could take away some important lessons from her story. “For every person who’s called me an idiot in public, there’s been another one emailing me in private to say that a similar thing happened to them,” Cowles said in an email to MarketWatch. Last year, American consumers reported losing more than $10 billion to fraud, according to the latest numbers from the FTC, up 14% from the previous year. A significant share, $2.7 billion, was lost to impostor scams like the one Cowles got mixed up in. There were moments during her …
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Charlotte Cowles, a columnist for New York magazine, was tricked into believing she was a victim of identity theft and under investigation for federal crimes, and was pressured to withdraw cash for living expenses before her bank accounts would allegedly be frozen. Over the course of several hours on the phone, she was transferred by a fraudster claiming to be from Amazon
AMZN,
-0.17%
to one claiming to be from the Federal Trade Commission to one claiming to be from the Central Intelligence Agency. She recounted her story in an article that highlighted how even a well-informed, “maddeningly rational” person can get caught up in the panic stirred up by skilled con artists. After X users roasted Cowles and questioned her authority as a personal-finance writer, she deleted her X account. But experts say that rather than criticizing the victim, the public could take away some important lessons from her story. “For every person who’s called me an idiot in public, there’s been another one emailing me in private to say that a similar thing happened to them,” Cowles said in an email to MarketWatch. Last year, American consumers reported losing more than $10 billion to fraud, according to the latest numbers from the FTC, up 14% from the previous year. A significant share, $2.7 billion, was lost to impostor scams like the one Cowles got mixed up in. There were moments during her …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]