9 ms·

I agree with you that this part is fishy as hell. I can swallow the Mercedes (pay a random dude money to collect the box without reading him into the scam), but

• tptacek 3y ago
  I'm on a Slack trading stories about trying to take 5 figures in cash out of major banks, and (1) all of them are more complicated than getting stacks --- you get neat little envelopes, btw! --- at the teller, and everyone has stories about things escalating to managers and getting quizzed about what was going on, and (2) nobody has ever seen this supposed high-dollar withdrawal room or floor in a major bank (in fact: if you're doing HNW banking, you're less likely to see bulletproof glass, not more). I think the Internet is hypnotized by the debate about how dumb you have to be to get taken by a scam like this. Smart people get taken by these kinds of scams all the time. The story is directionally and importantly true. But I think it's almost certainly false. I've got a FOIA out for the police report. Someone should roll into a Citi or Chase and try to pull 50k out on no notice next week. I bet they freak out. One person I talked to was told they had to give advanced notice to take $15k out. And pay attention to the timeline given on this story! Everything had to have taken place between the hours of 2:00PM EST (when she got the call) and 5:00PM EST (when all the banks in Brooklyn close). At 6:00PM EST she's home giving the money to the guy in the SUV, who she's not allowed to look at, because he's UC. On Halloween. And the scammers picked the day to do this on. Come on.