Financial advice columnist gives fraudsters $50,000 in CIA scam
A FINANCIAL columnist for New York
Magazine has described how she handed fraudsters $50,000 (£39,700) cash in a taped-up shoe box after she fell for a “cruel and violating” CIA scam.
Charlotte Cowles was conned into thinking she was a victim of identity theft and that there were warrants out for her arrest for cybercrimes, money laundering and drug trafficking.
Criminals posing as CIA agents said she was in “imminent danger”. They instructed her to take out tens of thousands of pounds of her savings in cash, put it in a shoe box, tape it shut and put it in the back seat of a white Mercedes SUV which pulled up outside her home.
The scammers knew her social security number, her address, names of her family members and details about her two-year-old son. They convinced her not to tell anyone about the conversation, including her husband, over fears he was behind her identity theft.
Writing about her experience in New York Magazine’s The Cut, she said she is “not senile, or hysterical, or a rube”.
“Now I know this was all a scam – a cruel and violating one but painfully obvious in retrospect,” she said. “I felt violated, unreliable; I couldn’t trust myself... I still don’t believe that what happened to me could happen to anyone, but I’m starting to realise that I’m not uniquely fallible.”
Newly released Federal Trade Commission data found Americans reported losing nearly $8.8 billion (£7 billion) to fraud in 2022, a rise of more than 30 per cent compared with the previous year.
On Oct 31, Ms Cowles received a call f rom a woman called Krista who claimed to be from Amazon and said she had been a victim of identity theft.
She transferred her to someone who claimed to work for the Federal Trade Commission, who said that 22 bank accounts, nine vehicles and four properties were registered to her name.
The bank accounts had sent more than $3 million (£2.4 million) to Jamaica and Iraq, he said, and a car in her name was found abandoned on the Texas border with blood and drugs in the boot.
She was asked about her savings and revealed she had $80,000 (£63,500). He said he would help her keep her money safe, before transferring her to alleged CIA agent Michael Sarano.
The next scammer instructed her to go to the bank and take out $50,000.
She was told to put the cash in a shoe box, take a picture of it, tape it shut and label it with her name, a case number, her address, a locker number he read out to her and her signature. She then put the box in the car of an “undercover CIA agent” who drove to her house.
‘Now I know this was all a scam – a cruel and violating one but painfully obvious in retrospect’