I may be wrong, but I think the alleged victim writes a financial column at one of the pretty big houses. And covered scams before. I would be really surprised if that person stuffs $50k in cash into a shoebox for an "undercover CIA agent".
Sorry if I confused this story with something else.
thanks, you got the story right! It does sound crazy, but that also seems to be the point: scam victims are shamed and it's worth level setting on how "it can happen to anyone" because there's very sophisticated psychological warfare going on here.