THE AGE OF SCAMS

Why you're constantly baited by grifters and more vulnerable than you think

- Alana Semuels

NOT LONG AGO, MONICA COTELINGHAM FOUND HERSELF stuffing cash into a Bitcoin machine at a gas station in suburban Maryland and weeping.

Earlier that day, she had received a call from a phone number with the same area code as Cotelingham's father in Louisiana. When she answered, someone identifying themselves as a U.S. customs officer said the government had found a package addressed to Cotelingham that contained stolen passports and driver's licenses. She was in a lot of trouble; law enforcement was going to call her back. When Cotelingham's phone rang next, the number that came up was from local police, who told her the FBI would be in touch. Minutes later, she got a call from a number that matched the bureau's. The person on the line told Cotelingham that she could get out of the mess by depositing $18,000 into a Bitcoin machine.

In retrospect, Cotelingham says, she should have known it was a scam. The game of law-enforcement telephone made no sense. All the callers had heavy accents. Each instructed her not to tell anyone what she was doing. The bank teller at Truist, where she withdrew the $18,000, asked if Cotelingham was OK, and warned her of scams. Even the Bitcoin machine where she deposited the money had a warning, in big red letters, to beware of scams and fraud.

But Cotelingham, who received the calls on her first day of a medical leave of absence from her job as a psychiatrist, believed at the time that they were legitimate. And so, sobbing in distress, she stuffed $10,000 into the machine until she asked the clerk for help to stop. "Even then, I think part of me knew," she says. "It was incredibly traumatic."