What Amazon, the F.T.C. and C.I.A. Won’t Say When You’ve Been Scammed

When New York magazine’s finance advice columnist dropped an article that went viral on Thursday about falling victim to a $50,000 scam, my heart skipped a beat.

My own financial planner had gone to jail years ago, which I’d chronicled in a few columns. Nearly all of us are vulnerable to scams, at least sometimes. What would I have done if someone called and insisted that my children, in particular, were in grave danger?

The writer, Charlotte Cowles, who once had a weekly business column with The New York Times, described crooks spinning a fantastical tale: First, they impersonated Amazon and told her she’d been a victim of identity theft. Then, one thief passed her on to someone who impersonated a Federal Trade Commission investigator, who told her that nine vehicles, four properties and 22 bank accounts were registered to her name. Finally, a supposed Central Intelligence Agency “lead investigator” persuaded her to withdraw money from her bank and give it to them for safekeeping while her husband and son watched.

But what would any of those entities do if they thought that any one of us was actually a victim of some kind of identity fraud? What would they say, request and tell us to do?

I called them all and asked. Here’s what they said.

Amazon has no direct line to the Federal Trade Commission.

Ms. Cowles’s story begins with a call in October that was supposedly from Amazon, when a woman on the line told her about $8,000 of fraudulent purchases and said she was a victim of identity theft.

The woman then offered to connect Ms. Cowles with Amazon’s liaison at the F.T.C. Soon enough, he was on the line.