(New York Post) - A financial advice columnist for New York Magazine admitted she was scammed out of $50,000 by a con man who claimed to be a CIA agent and ordered her to stuff a shoe box full of cash and hand it to a courier in a white Mercedes.
Charlotte Cowles, who pens a financial advice column for The Cut, the digital fashion news site that operates under the umbrella of New York Magazine, wrote a first-person account on Thursday 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.”
According to Cowles, a mysterious man called her one evening in October and got her attention after he knew her Social Security number, home address, the names of family members and that her two-year-old son was playing in the living room of her Brooklyn apartment.
Cowles wrote that the man “told me my home was being watched, my laptop had been hacked, and we were in imminent danger.”
The man also claimed that Cowles had 22 bank accounts, nine vehicles and four properties registered to her name.
The bank accounts, according to the mysterious man, were used to wire more than $3 million overseas, “mostly to Jamaica and Iraq.”
Cowles was then asked if she knew someone named “Stella Suk-Yee Kwong.”
“He texted me a photo of her ID, which he claimed had been found in a car rented under my name that was abandoned on the southern border of Texas with blood and drugs in the trunk,” she wrote.
Cowles was told that “there were warrants out of my arrest in Maryland and Texas” and that she was being charged with cybercrimes, money laundering and drug trafficking.
Believing that she was the victim of identity theft, she texted her husband: “I’m in deep s–t.”
“My identity was stolen and it seems really bad,” she wrote to her husband.
Cowles said she checked her credit score, bank and credit card accounts. “Nothing looked out of the ordinary,” she wrote.
“I can help you, but only if you cooperate,” the man is reported to have told Cowles, who was instructed that she was not to alert her husband, the police or a lawyer about the phone call.
She wrote that on a Tuesday evening this past October, she “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.”
According to Cowles, she told the strange man on the other line: “Don’t let anyone hurt me.”
“You won’t be hurt,” the man reportedly told Cowles. “Just keep doing exactly as I say.”
Moments later, a white Mercedes SUV pulled up by the curb. The man on the phone told her that she was to “put the box through the window, say ‘thank you,’ and go back inside” without looking at the driver.
Failure to cooperate would result in the CIA needing to “freeze all assets in my name, including my actual bank accounts,” according to Cowles, whose resume includes being a columnist for The New York Times’ business section.
“My office is in Langley,” the scammer told Cowles. “We don’t have enough time. We need to act immediately.”
Cowles was told that she needed to hand over the $50,000 in cash because they needed to issue her a government check “under your new Social Security number” — which would replace the old one which needed to be shut down as a result of her falling victim to identity theft.
“Then, by monitoring any activity under my old Social Security number and accounts, they would catch the criminals who were using my identity and I would get my life back,” she wrote.
After handing over the money, she said she received a text message from a man named “Michael” who sent over a photo of a Treasury check made out to her for $50,000.
The hard copy of the check would be hand-delivered to her in the morning, Cowles was told.
When Cowles tried to secure an appointment at the Social Security office, she was told by a strange woman on the phone that “Michael” was “busy” and that he would “call you in the morning.”
“You are lying to me. Michael was lying. You just took my money and I’m never getting it back,” Cowles told the woman.
“You’re a f—king liar,” she told the woman.
When Cowles told the police what happened, a cop informed her that “no government agency will ever ask you for money.”
Cowles wrote that the day after the incident, “it all came crashing back, a fresh humiliation, and I curled into the fetal position.”
The Post has sought comment from Cowles.
By Ariel Zilber
February 15, 2024
