How Charlotte Cowles was scammed for $50,000| Episode 121

Acquania Escarne 0:00

What's up y'all? Today we're gonna talk about how Charlotte Cowles was scammed out of $50,000. literally put it in a shoebox and gave it to a stranger. And she is a well educated financial expert, who is a victim of a scam

Acquania Escarne 0:25

What's up, y'all my name is Acquania Escarne and I am the creator and founder of The Purpose of Money on this platform, we talk about all things money, and how to build wealth. And today I want to talk about scams, because this is a huge story that just broke about a financial expert, a financial columnist, who knows money, talks about money, and literally got scammed out of $50,000. She's sharing her full story in "The Cut". And the full article will be in the description, if you want to read. But this tea is so interesting, and listen to it today as a podcast, and then got deep into the article. And I had to share it with you guys. So first and foremost, let's not judge Charlotte for what happened. As she notes in her story. She realises now how crazy this is. But in the time that it was happening, she was terrified. They used fear to encourage her to keep moving forward without thinking through clearly what was happening. And she was just reacting to the situation. And it was only when she said it out loud and had time to process that she really realised what was happening. And she is sharing his story not to be judged. But to encourage you guys to start to look at these scams and make sure you can identify them for yourself. Okay, so let's talk about what happened to Charlotte. So in summary, last October, when she was living our best life with her family, she got a crazy phone call that said she was a victim of her information being leaked on the dark web, right. But it wasn't even like random dark web. It was like someone who specifically calling her identify themselves as someone who worked for Amazon, and was calling her to verify these purchases she had recently made on her Amazon business account. But here's the thing, she doesn't have an Amazon business account. So that's problem number one. Secondly, she was like going to her Amazon account, and she didn't see these transactions. So she's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't see these transactions. So then the person proceeds to tell her that a lot of people have been scammed their identity has been stolen via Amazon lately. And she could be one of the most recent victims. And they had like multiple bank accounts $8,000 In MacBook and other Apple technology that was purchased under her account. And she didn't have just one Amazon business account, she had two Amazon business accounts. So now she's freaking out because she's like, Oh, my God, what has happened under my name under my identity, and how do I fix it. So this person who identified themselves as the Amazon employee is like, I'm willing to help you. And I'm going to transfer you to someone who works for the Federal Trade Commission. So she gets transferred to someone who identifies themselves as an employee for the US government and FTC. And they proceed to tell her her personal information which terrify her even more. She said she was on this phone call. And a guy tells her her social security number her address, identifies where she lives talks about it sensitive information about her personally and her family. And she freaked out. Because now she's like, not only is this government person talking to me, but other people have this information to this is terrifying.

Acquania Escarne 3:42

Now, it gets crazy, because then they proceed after they verify who she is, and give her all of this insight into what information is out there. Then they proceed to ask her how much money do you think you would need to survive for one year? And she's a freelance writer at the time, and she's been saving for a while but she thinks to herself, you know, if I had to $50,000 So they were like, Okay, here's what we want you to do. We want you to go and access $50,000 and withdrawn in cash because while we attempt to correct your financial situation and repair your identity, we are going to have to have you survive off cash. Right. So she's like, okay, good thing for her. She's savvy. She has an emergency fund. She knows that she can withdraw $50,000 easily. The whole time. She's talking to these people. We're talking not minutes, we're talking hours. She proceeds to talk to them for hours. They literally guide her to the bank while they're still on the phone. She goes to her bank withdraws and cash $50,000 goes back to her apartment on the phone. The individual tells her somebody's gonna meet us your house to come get the money, then we're going to put it in a treasury account or a creative check for you that you can then receive the next day and you can live off of that money while we resolve this issue on your behalf. She is terrified. They're threatening, you know what could happen if she tells anyone that they're really trying to investigate the root of the problem. And it's important that she doesn't share what's happening because anyone who she interacts with could be involved in the scam, right? So they even tell her like in the most recent scam, the person who worked at the bank was involved in the crime.

Acquania Escarne 3:42

So of course, she doesn't trust her bank, she doesn't trust her teller. And she doesn't tell anybody. So the whole time, she is only listening to the other person on the line who has identified themselves as a government employee trying to help her. So she literally gets 50,000 from her savings account, puts it in a shoebox. And then when they insist on coming to her house to pick it up. She says no, I'm not comfortable with that. That terrifies me. I have my son coming home from school. So I would rather meet you outside. So they agree to me here outside and she literally goes outside of her apartment, and needs a car and throws a shoebox, with cash $50,000 Cash in the backseat? Oh my god. I don't know about you. But this was like, so crazy to me. But at the same time, I was like, What would I have done? Would I have fallen for this? Or would I have done it? I have no idea. So she throws the money in the back. The person drives off, she goes back upstairs to our apartment. And then she is still on the phone. Right? But now the person is like, we'll get back to you very shortly by tomorrow with a chat. But they took a picture of a treasurer's track and her name was on it. And they said this is your cheque. We're going to mail this to you tomorrow. And then you'll be able to take it to the bank and cash it. Yeah. Now ya know what happens next? She gets back to our apartment, she starts to process what's happening. But she doesn't get that as a scam just yet. It wasn't until she hung out with them. And then she had a question because they gave her a direct number to call to ask questions. So keep talking to them. And she calls the number back. But this time the person who she'd been on the phone with for hours hours, I think she said in the interview, she was probably talking to this person, four to six hours that day, did not answer a colleague answered. And this colleague was like, oh, he'll get back to you tomorrow. That was the first time she realised that what they said was not aligned with the other things they had told her. And that was when she started to question what the heck is going on here. And that's when it's sunk into her that maybe this isn't real, that maybe I just gave $50,000 to a stranger. And she freaked out. Her husband came home, she told her husband what happened he immediately supportive, you know, husband, and he is he told her to call the police you call the police and she reported it. But she didn't stop there. Mind you. My girl is a columnist. So she used her platform to get the word out about this scam and what happened and to also educate people about financial scams in general, because scammers are on the rampage, they are high, they are getting more sophisticated. And they are doing scams that are literally blowing people's mind. And they're tricking people every day. And the hard thing is like Everyone just assumes I'm highly educated. I would never fall for a scam. But there are some people in the tech space who fall for crypto tech scans.

Acquania Escarne 8:43

There are people in the financial space who fall for financial scams. And a lot of it is because of the way the scams are set up. They're created to make you feel fear, anxiety, and they really close your options. And she said that while she was on the phone with these people, she was really limited in her ability to talk to someone else or exit the conversation. Now granted, I know what you're thinking you're probably like she should have just hung up. But at the time, she was like trying to protect her family, her identity. She was told all these bad things that were going to happen if she didn't cooperate, and that they were trying to help her catch the scammers. And so she needed to do everything that she could to cooperate with the agency. I think she had even talked to someone who allegedly was a CIA agent, also trying to help her identify who was at the root of this scam. And in disclosing her personal information on a dark web. So she literally was like overwhelmed with the contact, right.

Acquania Escarne 9:39

But this was a super sophisticated operation. They she reported it and then she started to do her research, right. So here's some of the key things that she learned by being victim of a $50,000 scam. First and foremost, it can happen to anyone. All right, so let's not judge her But secondly, she also learned that a lot of times the people who they identify to scam is because they actually have been a victim of a breach, right. And your information is out there on the dark web, but it's out there for so many different breaches, that when they see enough cases of you in a bundle that they have purchased on the dark web, they tend to go after those individuals, because they have so much information on you, they literally were able to tell her her dog's name, isn't that crazy, maybe she used her dog's name for a password or some other type of situation. But they were able to tell her her her children's name, her address her social security number, her dog's name, to the point where she really believed like, they have so much information on me, this must be the government. And I don't want whoever could get this information on who's trying to use it against me with this Amazon purchase to use it. So let me cooperate. So that's the first thing is just know that at this day and age, everybody's getting breached. Everybody's information has the potential to be out there. And when you have more of your information out there, scammers may identify you as a potential victim because they have a lot more detail on you than the next person. And they can leverage that to their abilities. Right. The other thing she noted is that one of the issues is we get embarrassed about what happened and what's happening, that we don't report the scam. So she said that statistically, there are probably 50% of scans that happen out there that never get reported. If they're never reported, the data can't be tracked. And we also can't warn other people that these types of scams are happening because we don't know they're happening. So if you are a victim of a scam, I encourage you to report it to let the police or whoever else needs to know that it happened. So it can be documented, tracked and potentially even saw, right like it's really hard to solve them. But at least when they see a pattern, they might be able to track down the culprits, right because now they're identifying commonalities between the scans, and they can identify the root of them. Okay. Another thing that she shared really openly is the mental health factors that come along with being scammed is bad enough that you fell for something that's not real. But now you have to deal with the aftermath, she is out of $50,000, her family or whoever hears the story could judge her or feel some type of way. And she already feels some type of way about what happened, she already feels a particular way about being a victim of the situation and allowing it to go so far right to giving up so much of her savings for something that was not real.

Acquania Escarne 12:37

And they say that a lot of victims of scams will experience some type of mental health, depression, anxiety, sadness, you name it, it is a potential outcome of being a victim of a scam. So if you are going to talk to someone who's had a scam, have been a victim of a scam, try to be compassionate, and try to understand that they may want to or not want to talk about what happened. And you need to be patient as they are going through what is the aftermath of something very tragic. And depending on the severity of the situation, it could impact them for a while, right? Because now they might second guess or question everything and anything that's happening to them, because they don't trust anyone or anything she really was transparent about. It depends on the time of day and what's happening. She feels much better than she did in the beginning. And the more she talks about it, the better a good, but it depends. I mean, some people don't want to talk about it right away or ever want to talk about it, which is why the scams don't get reported. And you just have to have some compassion when it comes to things like that. But let's happen to some tips on how can you avoid this from happening to you. Now real talk, this happened, this scam didn't happen to me. But a few years ago, somebody called me and said that they were from a collection agency, and they were trying to collect some past debt for my husband, and they were calling my phone. So I definitely thought this was crazy. And so one of the tips that I recommend, and she recommended as well is take the information, right? Get as much information from the person as possible. Take the number, the issue, whatever they're telling you is the problem. But then verify, right. So in my situation someone is from a collection agency, and they say that they're the collection agency on behalf of the State of Maryland to take collect past due taxes. But I didn't give up too information, too much information to them. I just asked questions, right. I just continued to listen to see what it is that they had to provide. And then I went to the state of Maryland's tax collection website, and I looked up the number for them, I called them I verified whether or not this tax debt was real, and I'm verified the collection agencies that collect money for the state of Maryland.

Acquania Escarne 14:55

Now you'll have to check out my blog for the full story. Short, Long story Very short, the collection was real but the debt wasn't we ended up not really owing these taxes. But Maryland thought we did once we prove we didn't owe Maryland taxes, they immediately erased the bill and the costs that but I did what I did, because the scammers will normally tell you call me back, call my number, call this number. And you will continually be in a loop of only talking to the people in the scam. But if you terminate that phone call, and you go to the sources, they're referencing the websites, they're referencing the companies they're referencing, you can call those companies directly and you can verify if this is indeed a real issue. She said the same thing she said Had she hung up the phone, because you have to try to get out of the situation, tell them my phone is dying, I gotta go, I don't want to continue this call, I'll call you back, whatever you need to do, but you disconnect from the scammers, right? And then she could have called Amazon, she could have called the Federal Trade Commission or whoever she was allegedly talking to about these transactions, and verify that these things weren't actually real, she could have sought deeper into our Amazon account to realise there were no fraudulent Amazon transactions. There was no fraudulent Amazon business account.

Acquania Escarne 16:20

But she was so stuck on the phone and getting into the lies of this scam. She didn't have time to process what actually was happening. Okay, so it was really important that you find an opportunity to collect all the information you need to potentially call them back, but hang up the phone and then have a reality check. Another thing Charlotte really shared was getting a gut check from another person, like had she called her husband before she would do $50,000 He probably would have told her stop what's going on, I'm coming. Let me help you or less sort this through or talk it out, right? Instead, she did it in silo and with them on the phone the whole time. So she didn't have time to listen to another person to get a gut check on what is really happening is this real is this normal, and scammers will be very persistent in her situation they threatened her, they were very aggressive. They used a little bit more pushy, aggressive language when they wanted her to take certain action and didn't want her to hang up or take other action. So you have to be aware of these things when the scam is happening. Another thing you can do is just understand that your information might be out there, a lot of breaches have happened over the last couple of years. And there's been a lot of efforts to provide either insurance to protect your identity or even to lock your credit report. So only you have access to it looking at it making changes processing certain transactions. You may also just want to have alerts right so that when somebody is running your credit, you get notified when somebody is doing an inquiry to approve you for loans or credit you get an inquiry. These will protect you from the wrong people using your credit but you need to remember you put these systems in place. So when you try to use your credit, you will turn those things off so you can use your credit okay, but I strongly encourage you to listen to the interview or read the entire article. It is very captivating. It's very interesting and it really dives into how sophisticated scams are getting these days and what you can do to protect yourself and your finances.

Acquania Escarne 16:20

My name is Acquania Escarne and this is The Purpose of Money. If you liked this, please subscribe, leave a comment or share it with someone else who needs to hear it. Thank you so much. Until next time, keep building generational wealth.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai