It's the Brian Laird

on WNYc. Good morning again everyone.

Here are two recent headlines very much in conversation with each other.

Both of these were written by personal finance columnists.

Here's the first. The day I put $50,000 in a shoebox and handed it to a

stranger. I never thought I was the kind of person to fall for a scam. And here's a second, put your smugness away, you are not too

clever to be conned. Now that first headline, the one about the person being

scammed out of 50 grand in cash cash is from a first person story by a

personal finance columnist at the cut named Charlotte Cowles. Cows gets a call she

believes to be from Amazon and the representative on the other end of the line alerts her to some

apparent fraudulent activity on her account.

They then transfer her call to what they say is the Federal Trade Commission, who then connects the fraud to a scary

criminal case and tells her she and her family are in imminent danger.

From there the call is transferred to the CIA, they claim, and eventually she's out 50 grand.

And if you're unsure how even an experienced personal finance columnist could fall for a scam of that

sort, consider this from Michelle

Singletary. Natural born skeptics might shake their heads at what they view as the

gullibility of scam victims. You may consider yourself scam proof, but the sophistication of today's

schemes can snare even the most cynical among us.

Well, Michelle Singletary, personal finance columnist for the Washington Post, who wrote that, is the author of the other headline you heard at the top, put your smugness away, you are not too clever to be conned, she joins us now Michelle welcome back to WNYC. Oh, thank you so much for having me

And listeners we're gonna take calls for Michelle Singletary.

How do you avoid scams or if you fell victim to a scam?

...