At the Cut, a freelance financial-advice columnist named Charlotte Cowles weaves a story of credulousness and incompetence that is so absurd as to be nigh-on impossible to believe. Cowles’s piece is titled, The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger: I never thought I was the kind of person to fall for a scam, and, somehow, its contents are more remarkable than that headline suggests. Across more than 5,000 self-indulgent words, Cowles tells the tale of a single day last October, on which she fell for one of the most far-fetched and obvious con-jobs I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. The saga takes a while to unfold, but the bottom line of the thing is that Cowles received an unsolicited phone call from someone purporting to be from Amazon, and ended up handing 50 grand in cash to a stranger in a white Mercedes. If you’ve ever spent any time wondering whether our elite class might be a touch misnamed, then this is the essay for you.
I have read Cowles’s story four times now, and I must confess that I am still struggling to believe that it is real. I offer that judgment in spite of, rather than because of, my low regard for most journalists — who, in the twelve years since I moved to the United States, I have found almost uniquely gullible as a class. If, indeed, the events of last Halloween went down as Cowles insists that they did, then she ought to be congratulated for her achievement: She has, in a single day, demonstrated exactly why Americans have such a low regard for the press. And if the events didn’t go down like that? Then I’d like to know what did. Given the professional humiliation to which Cowles has subjected herself with her confession, it’s hard to imagine that she has made up the whole story. Nevertheless, there are elements of her tale that have given me pause, and, in the interest of laying down a marker, I thought I’d flag them here for posterity.
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