This story reads like a social engineering attempt itself. As in, fully made up, never happened. I realize the person is a pentest consultant. And before that

This story reads like a social engineering attempt itself. As in, fully made up, never happened. I realize the person is a pentest consultant. And before that they were a journalist. As the story says, "trust but verify"? Which in this case I guess it doesn't make enough difference to verify and the events "could" have happened which is enough for the story. It just feels made up to me though.