• New York Magazine's personal finance writer just published a personal essay about how she was scammed.
• Believing she was talking to the FBI, she handed a shoebox with her $50,000 in savings in cash to a stranger.
• Trust me, you have to read this. 

We all like to think we're too smart to fall for a scam, like the kind where someone tricks you over the phone into liquidating your bank account, putting the cash in a shoebox, and handing it to a stranger in a car. And hopefully, you are!

But the truth is, people get scammed all the time — even smart people.

New York Magazine published an astonishing personal essay from one of their writers (a personal finance writer, no less!) who says she was the victim of a phone scam that bilked her out of $50,000 by convincing her that she was a victim of identity fraud and that to fix it she would need to transfer money.

Charlotte Cowles says she was scammed out of $50,000. She spoke on a panel with two other women in 2019. Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

That's selling it short — the details of the scam are SO MUCH more wild. I don't want to spoil it all because reading it for yourself, your eyes popping further and further out of your head, and your stomach churning, is all part of the fun.

This story is being endlessly dissected on social media by readers who are either appalled or sympathetic or simply believing that even under waterboarding, they'd never reveal they had fallen for this.

Just read it: The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger