Brian Ach/Getty for New York Magazine
New York magazine’s financial columnist Charlotte Cowles has written about everything from how people could get their bills lowered to managing their credit card debt. Her Thursday report, however, highlights how even the smartest financial minds can be deceived.
Cowles admitted in her column how she put “$50,000 in a shoe box and handed it to a stranger,” a mystifying tale that explained how a scheme involving fake Amazon, Federal Trade Commission, and CIA agents led Cowles to believe she was under investigation for money laundering.
To survive the imminent freezing of her assets and Social Security number while she was under investigation, she wrote, the schemers told her to withdraw $50,000 from her bank account. She would then deliver that money to an agent who would take it to the Treasury Department, which would then mail her a check for that amount.