In this week’s eye-opening episode of The Dark Side of Finance, Darryl Lyons unpacks the harrowing story of Charlotte Cowles, a successful financial journalist whose expertise couldn’t shield her from becoming the victim of a sophisticated scam. Charlotte, known for her insightful personal finance columns, fell prey to a group of con artists who manipulated her trust, used fear tactics, and ultimately stole $50,000 of her savings.
Darryl explores how scammers exploited Charlotte’s vulnerability with a chillingly calculated methodology, including fake calls from Amazon, the Federal Trade Commission, and even the CIA. Through deceitful claims of fraud investigations and threats to her family’s safety, the con artists meticulously blocked Charlotte’s access to outside advice, leading her to unwittingly hand over her hard-earned money.
Key show highlights include:
- How scammers convincingly impersonated legitimate organizations like Amazon and the FTC.
- The psychological manipulation tactics used to isolate victims and gain their trust.
- A breakdown of the red flags Charlotte missed and how to spot them in similar situations.
- Why even financial experts can fall for well-crafted scams—and how to protect yourself and your loved ones.
Join Darryl as he examines the dark psychology behind modern scams and shares valuable lessons to safeguard your finances in an increasingly deceptive world. Don’t miss this episode if you want to stay informed and vigilant. As always, keep your head on a swivel as we navigate the dark side of finance together.
Transcript:
Hey, this is Darryl Lyons, CEO and Co-Founder of PAX Financial Group. And you’re listening to The Dark Side of Finance. This information is general in nature only. It’s not intended to provide specific investment, tax, or legal advice. Visit PAXFinancialGroup.com for more information. So, she was a freelance journalist, a columnist. I guess they’re one in the same, a journalist and a columnist.
I mean, the odds of getting rich are stacked against you. You’re not exactly going to live in mansions, I guess. Supposedly there’s some that, some that make it to the top. But not Charlotte Cowles. She was doing well. I think by all accounts, she was considered successful in her own right. And she had a passion for writing and research and, you know, just the idea of being a journalist, a columnist, the idea of discovery and meeting new people.
And I think if you looked at her passion, it was oftentimes making complex thoughts, in the financial space, appear simple or at least relatable. And along the journey, she was able to squirrel away some money for her future. About $80,000, actually. And that’s relevant as we move along here. Now, when you squirrel away money, there’s purpose for that money.
She had put some money aside because she was freelance, so she had the responsibility of her taxes herself. So, a portion of that 80,000 was for taxes. A portion of it is rainy day means sometimes she might not get gigs. And so, you need money set aside to weather the ups and downs of the business. And then some of the money was from her granddad, who had made a point, to leave money to the next generation.
So, there was purpose to the 80,000 she had set aside. But she was able to get a job. She actually did some work for the New York Times and other New York magazines. She lived in Brooklyn. She wrote personal finance columns. And when you write personal finance columns, especially at the level she did, you really need to dig deep into personal finance and interview experts.
She never claimed to be the expert. She just claimed to take expert ideas and articulate them in a way that people could grasp. And I think that’s what made her popular. But you do need to interview experts. You do need to know the marketplace trends. What’s going on out there? The new technology pieces. And, you know, the idea behind money is that there’s just so much involved in terms of the interpersonal relationships that exist between family members.
So, you have to be able to have some nuanced idea of how to articulate those nuances. And then, of course, you have to know something about scams. And that’s what we’re going to talk about. She lived in an apartment with her husband, and they had a two-year-old son and, and most of the money that she had represented.
Well, most of her net worth. So that was important money to her. And then one Halloween, things changed. This Halloween was in 2023. She was getting her son ready for trick or treating. He was going to be a pizza. And about midday she got a call from Amazon. The caller ID was Amazon, picked up the phone.
She’s working by herself. She works from home. And a slight accent from the caller, but nothing peculiar necessarily. It was a woman. Clear and concise. This call is being recorded for quality control purposes. Okay. Normal kind of call. Ma’am, did you make any large purchases recently? No, I don’t think so, Charlotte replied. We have about $8,000 in various technology purchases.
You know, she checked her phone, checked her Amazon orders, and no, nothing in there. And she wasn’t thrown off necessarily because, at that time, there was a time, maybe not today, but there was a time that Amazon did make these proactive calls. So that didn’t throw off necessarily. And given the fact that it was caller ID had Amazon.
So, she’s not thrown off yet. But she did. She checked her credit cards. The caller asked if she had business accounts. No, I don’t have any business accounts. I see you have two business accounts here. Let me just I’m just going to flag them and close them out. Make sure that you don’t. You know, there’s no more suspicious activity under your name.
Let me give you the case ID, but apparently there’s some fraud here. And this fraud is covered by the Federal Trade Commission. So, it appears that this is under investigation. So, if you’d like for me to transfer you to somebody that has more authority, maybe more information where I can transfer you, if you’d like. Sure.
No problem. So, no red flags. So far. So far, so good. So, let’s go to this next call. This is transferred to the Federal Trade Commission. And this person’s name is Calvin Mitchell. Spoke with authority, with confidence. Didn’t have this call center field. Right. It’s very professional. Sound perfect English. Just a slight accent, but perfect English. So, he apparently gives her enough credibility that, that she listens in with confidence and conviction every time she tried to try to kind of overcome some of the concerns.
Well, look, I don’t know why you’re calling me. I don’t have business accounts or anything, but he was very quick to overcome the objections. He had conviction. He had confidence. I mean, there was even a point in the conversation where he said, look, if you’re having and I’m paraphrasing here, if you’re having trouble with having this dialog with me, why don’t you go ahead and go to the Federal Trade Commission website?
You can go to the home page right now. She went to the homepage. Go ahead and look up the phone number there and hang up, and I’ll call you back and you’ll see on your caller I.D. It’s from the Federal Trade Commission. So, she did exactly what she said. And, sure enough, when she hung up with him, he called back.
And the number on the Federal Trade Commission homepage matched the caller I.D. So, her skepticism went down a notch. He continued. Calvin continued to talk very confidently about her name being connected to 22 bank accounts, nine vehicles, and four properties. Calvin had the last four digits. He had the last four digits of her Social Security number, her address, her date of birth, and what concerned her most is he had her son’s name.
She was concerned for the safety of her son all over the phone. Calvin also told her that there was a warrant out for her arrest. You know, in the dialog as she started to get nervous, as you could imagine in the dialog, he even said, and this is a quote I say, it’s a quote I’m hearing. I’m getting this information from various sources.
But he asked her, have you ever used an airport wi-fi before? And her response, I don’t know, maybe. And then she goes, oh yeah, I did, just recently. He is, that’s it. That’s how many of these breaches start. Of course she’s embarrassed. She felt like, I don’t know, she said, I felt like I left my fly unzipped.
How could I be so thoughtless? I mean, we’ve all kind of needed to access Wi-Fi in a coffee shop before and or a hotel or an airport. And she did it. Maybe just need to check something real quick. And he made the claim that that’s how these breaches started. So, she listened warrant out for my arrest. Oh my gosh.
Yeah. There’s in in the southern border of Texas, there’s been drugs and blood connected to a truck, an abandoned truck, all in your name. In fact, I’ll actually send you. Let me do this. Let me send you a picture of my badge and my badge number so you can feel comfortable with this continued dialog. But I also send you pics of the car that they found.
I mean, at that point, she’s full of fears, still skeptical to a certain degree, but there’s nothing that he’s asking of her. This is just information shared. He even mentioned that there’s $3 million that is in her name associated with transfers to Jamaica and Iraq, and as a result of the international nature of this ID theft, it falls under not the Federal Trade Commission, but actually the CIA.
And he needs to transfer her to a department with the CIA. Okay. So, she follows along again, no requests being made here she goes, the CIA transfer and sure enough, somebody confident on the phone begins to have a dialog with her. Several hours now, no food, just walking in and out of her apartment building, knowing that tonight is trick or treating.
She lives in an apartment building. People are going to be in and out, and she’s having dialog with strangers who may be friends or foes, but if they are friends and there’s people out there that are, connected to me that are a part of this crime spree, I’m really nervous because I’m going to be out of my apartment and there’s going to be people in costumes everywhere, and they could be the bad guys.
And my son’s involved. I mean, my son is going to be out with me. I need to get to the bottom of this and make sure our family is safe, that that’s what’s going on in her mind. So, she’s not being asked to do anything. She’s just continuing to have a dialog with several people, starting with Amazon, then the FTC, and now the CIA.
And the CIA says because of the international implications of this and the arrest warrant for you in Maryland and Texas, these are cyber. They’re cybercrimes connected with your name. There’s money laundering and drug trafficking. Your family is in danger. So, we’re going to have to help you resolve this, but you need to carefully follow our instructions.
Your accounts, all of your accounts will be frozen, and we will have to assign you a new Social Security number. So, she’s listening. She’s like, okay, well, that’s what we got to do. That’s what we got to do now. Several times she thought, I need to talk to my husband. And apparently, she and at this point we’re all, you know, if you’re hearing this story, for the first time, or maybe you’ve heard it before, I think to myself, why didn’t you talk to your husband?
Like, why did you have a dialog? Well, she was nervous that he would be implicated as a part of dialog and exchange of conversation of information. And so, she was warned by the CIA not to have dialog with anyone. They wanted to close the door to the outside world. So, the dialog was simply between the CIA and Charlotte.
So, she didn’t talk to her husband the whole time. She’s on the phone for several hours now. But the CIA was going to help her again. They’re not asking for anything. We’re going to help you get on the other side of this. But you have to listen to these instructions very carefully. We’re probably going to there’s probably going to be some work to clean up your credit and, your ability to use debit and credit cards on a go forward basis.
So, you’re going to need about a year of cash. That aside, so how much is that? And she said, for a full year, I guess I’ll need about 50,000. Okay, fine. You’re going to need to take 50,000 out of cash for yourself. Okay. Well, I’m still nervous about this, but yes, I can do that. You’re not asking me for anything, so.
Okay, so she then, this is again. Probably. She’s been on the phone several hours at, at the whole the whole time she’s been on the phone 5 or 6 hours, including this last piece here where she puts the phone in her pocket while she’s still on with the CIA. And the CIA suggests to her that he needs to stay on the phone and walk her through this process.
And so, she goes into the bank now, the local bank, with the phone in her pocket. The CIA’s on the phone, and the woman behind the thick glass. Ask her, how can I help you? And she goes, I need $50,000. So, of course, that’s a peculiar request. We don’t all ask for 50,000, but she acknowledges it anyways, and she goes to the back and comes out with a large metal box of $100 bills and counts them out in the machines, and she pushes the stacks of bills through the slot.
And of course, she gives her piece of paper. The teller gives her a piece of paper that says, watch out like a little warning, like a pre-made warning against scams. Charlotte noticed it but didn’t really. It didn’t really trigger anything. So, she now has 50,000 and where she’s really nervous is walking from the bank to the apartment, but she’s got her head on a swivel and she gets to her apartment, and the CIA guy gets on the phone with her and he says again, they’re not asking for anything.
What I’d like you to do is take this box and tape it and put this case number on the top, and then an agent will tell you what to do next. Okay. What do you mean, an agent? Well, he’ll come to your home and tell you the next steps, because what we’re going to have to do is we’re going to have to, we’re going to have to take that $50,000, get you a new Social Security number, and then we’re going to issue a Treasury check for $50,000, so you can start your credit again and start your life again.
So, we’re going to pick up that $50,000 from you. And then we’re going to issue a Treasury check. And he actually sent her a text of the new Treasury checks she would receive, and that they would call the Social Security office and set up a number. Well, her primary concern is the safety of her family. She says, well, I would rather you not come into my home because I’ve got a two-year-old, but I can go out and meet with you.
So sure enough, the CIA agent pulls up in a, dark tinted window, rolls down the window. She puts the $50,000 box of $100 bills through this window. As he rolls it down, they drive off and her money’s gone forever.
She called back. The number on the caller ID, and for the first time in this whole dialog, there was a degree of inconsistency. A lady answered and said, well, we’re still trying to get with the Social Security office, and we’ll call you back as soon as we’ve scheduled something. Now, up until that point, these con artists have been absolutely impeccable in terms of their strategy.
But at that point, she realized there’s inconsistency in the dialog. And I’ve just been conned. At that point, she just realized it. And they didn’t care it that the con artists had no longer cared. They could fumble whatever they needed to. They got their 50,000 and they took off. Now. Charlotte makes the case that there were two feelings that she had.
One, of course, tears balling, that she goes to her husband, but one I just got scammed of $50,000. And then two, the other feeling is my family is going to be saved. And she was reconciling these two emotions.
How could this happen? How could this possibly happen? Part of this strategy that’s done a very, very sophisticated strategy uses a methodology called Blocking the Exits. They were masterful in ensuring that she did not talk to anybody while they were on the phone with her. Not her husband, not her best friend that was a lawyer. No one. Because as soon as they the victim, Charlotte, being talked to anybody from the outside.
That would blow the whole thing up. They would just poke holes in this whole thing. But they kept the doors blocked. And this financial advice columnist for the New York Times, Money Matters, New York Times, was conned on Halloween in 2023. Now, as I digested this, I couldn’t help but ask myself, is this real? Like, could this really happen?
Now, I also asked myself, is this a publicity stunt? Is this somebody who’s in the financial business that just really wants to get a lot of airtime?
I’ve watched a lot of and read a lot about this, and I’ll have some links in the show, notes about Charlotte’s experience. And, you know, it’s hard to argue with her sincerity and her level of detail to not believe it isn’t. I mean, it appears to be true. But gosh, how could this happen to anybody? If you ever watch, have you ever decided to, you know, dig into this story a little bit more?
There’s plenty of information out there about her story and plenty of videos. But what’s interesting to me is also going into the comments. What did people think just when they hear this for the first time? Here’s some of the comments from some of the YouTube videos.
From Macro. Rodriguez, he said, or she said and she’s a financial advice columnist. She should be fired immediately. Somebody else said, God bless this woman for telling her story. It takes courage to do this. These awful human scammers know how to manipulate otherwise intelligent and cautious people. Be careful everyone. Oh, and she goes on to say, and go to hell, you awful scammers.
Deborah said glad she came forward. However, if there could have been details shared on what the scam was, it would have been more helpful to the public, Big fish said unlikely. I would listen to financial advice from someone so easily scammed. And then Matt Covert says no one is stupid enough to put $50,000 in a shoe box and hand it over.
So, I believe that hearing this story with a degree of skepticism is worthy. But at the same time, I think it also reminds us to be very cautious, keep our head on a swivel, protect our friends or family, even those that you might think would never fall victim. Make sure they know these stories and make sure they’re cautious.
For you, for your loved ones, and for your community. Keep your head on a swivel. Have a great day.
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