A cell phone screen warns of a potential scam call.Tolgart—Getty Images
Who among us has not handed $50,000 cash in a shoebox to a purported undercover CIA agent in an SUV with tinted windows because a fake FTC investigator told us to?
Well, I haven’t. Nor do I have a stray $50,000 to give. Still, a February 9 report from the real Federal Trade Commission reveals that the saga Charlotte Cowles describes with painstaking detail in her recent viral essay isn’t entirely unique.
In fact, consumers reported losing more than $10 billion to fraud last year, the FTC said. It’s the first time fraud losses have reached the double digit billions, and marks a 14 percent hike over losses in 2022.
Investment scams made the top category of fraud, with people reporting losses exceeding $4.6 billion. Imposter scams, such as the one Cowles fell victim to, was the second-highest money loser with reported losses nearing $2.7 billion.
To summarize Cowles’ experience—which you really should read for yourself—the financial-advice columnist lost $50,000 to an elaborate con in which a phony Amazon customer service imposter called her about fraudulent charges for iPads on her non-existent business account. After clearing up that she didn’t purchase tech products, the faux-Amazon employee offered to connect Cowles to a supposed FTC investigator, who informed her that her identity was connected to bank accounts that had wired more than $3 million overseas, and that a car rented under her name was found with blood and drugs inside. He said there were warrants out for her arrest. Cowles would need to immediately give a CIA officer $50,000 cash from her compromised bank account, which the government would kindly convert into a Treasury check that her family could live on for up to a year until all of this identity fraud nonsense was sorted out.
None of that was legit, obviously. But it didn’t seem so obvious to Cowles at the time: The scammers offered her government badge numbers. They spoofed a legit FTC phone number. They knew Cowles’ social security number.
“Scams where fraudsters pose as the government are highly common,” FTC commissioner Lina Khan wrote on social media as Cowles’ essay made the rounds.
FTC data shows that roughly 70 percent of scams result in losses of $2,000 or less, but 2023 saw more than 98,000 reports of instances in which Americans were scammed out of at least $10,000. It’s a 12 percent uptick over the number of such high-dollar scams the year before.
The fact that Cowles wasn’t alone in being robbed of such a high sum offered her something resembling solace as she set out to build back her emergency fund.
“I felt a guilty sense of consolation whenever I heard about a scam involving someone I respected. If this could happen to them, maybe I wasn’t such a moron,” Cowles wrote.
Cowles’ essay might offer the same limited relief to other members of the growing ludicrously-scammed club. Better yet, perhaps her cautionary tale will keep others from joining it.
