For sure, good on Patrick for going in-depth on "well my hot take was wrong". But his accusation was more than a twitter hot take; he accused the NYMag writer (and basically, everyone who worked with her) as brazenly committing the most unforgivable crime in journalism. If I were to shoot off my mouth and say "Based on what I know about software engineering, Patio11's [insert one of his ventures here] is almost certainly the Theranos of code" — I would most certainly give a thorough reflection on how my priors and knowledge about software engineering seem to be deeply flawed. Not just "I read 1000 of his blog posts and published articles, and turns out Patrick is a more experienced engineer than I assumed he was. Guess I could've googled more before going off on him."
I seem to have set you off somehow, and I do not understand precisely how, but I feel this is important: I did not publicly accuse the writer of anything. (I did heavily imply publicly that I thought that the publication had no real fact checking; when they told me otherwise, after I requested a statement, I swiftly corrected that publicly.)
I had some doubts that the story, as presented, was true. I did what I hear journalists do, and went out and reported the story. Some people apparently believe this was an aggressive action, and some people believe that the original story was strictly true, and I can understand either of those beliefs separately but holding both at the same time seems tricky.
I did not believe that New York Magazine was complicit. I harbored the suspicion that they might be incompetent. This suspicion was exacerbated by unambiguous evidence of them being incompetent, in failing to detect that a 17 year old claiming to have made $72 million trading stocks, and then doubling down on that story because their fact-checker had passed it.
You have made, in this thread, several claims that I am wildly miscalibrated with respect to banking procedure. I do not believe I am. For example, I seem to be able to make confident predictions like "Oh, if the teller window is on the second floor, that narrows the selection of bank branches sufficiently to be probably uniquely identifying given any other piece of information" and be proven retrospectively right on those predictions.
If you would like to take issue with my other claims about banking procedure, pick the one that looks fishiest to you, and then propose odds.
> I did not publicly accuse the writer of anything
C'mon, what scenario do you have in mind where New York magazine "materially disavows the article" [0] but the writer, Cowles, is not guilty of fabulism (presenting a creative writing exercise as non-fiction would count as that level of deception)?
> You have made, in this thread, several claims that I am wildly miscalibrated with respect to banking procedure.
I am very confident that you know far more about banking policy and conventions than I do. So when you assert that the facts of NYMag do not seem reconcilable with the reality of American banking, I'm happy to take your word for it. Now that you've essentially retracted that doubt, a doubt so strong that you were willing to spend thousands of dollars to investigate it over a year, I'm very confused about your priors. Was Cowles being richer than you had thought possible your only flawed assumption? Like if she had only written "btw I'm from a rich family and I live in an owner-occupied home in Brooklyn", that alone would have been enough to resolve the many issues you raise about the unlikeliness of a $50k cash withdrawal? What's the threshold of wealth in which that $50k transfer is given cursory approval? Is the $50k easy because she's a one-percenter? Would it be easy if she is/were merely in the top 5% or 10% of household wealth
One of my main frustrations about your writeup is that it sets up these questions and then fails to answer them, as if the fact of Cowles' unspecified wealth is alone the self-evident answer? Speaking as a layperson, I assume that being a 30-something living in New York who had $80,000 in savings and checkings alone -- which she explicitly states in her article -- would be enough to qualify for a no-hold-up same day $50k withdrawal from a New York bank. Is that not the case?
> I had some doubts that the story, as presented, was true. I did what I hear journalists do, and went out and reported the story
And genuine kudos to you, the world would be a better place if "trust, but verify" were our default modes of operation. I guess what bugs me is that your article opens with a detailed examination of how NYMag fumbled that 2014 profile of a teenage millionaire, but you end your own investigation after being apparently satisfied with a fact-check that seems almost as facile as the one purportedly done for their retracted 2014 profile.
Presume a universe in which Cowles did indeed publish a fabrication; it would require an extreme motivation for her to risk torching her career and in such a highly public and scrutinized fashion. Such a motivated person could easily put in the work to make sure that the bank they allude to vaguely fits the description they choose to publish (tbh, we should ask ourselves why would an ostensible fabricator would even choose to publish that "upstairs" detail, when they can easily formulate a description that vaguely applies to a dozen New York banks?). The fact that it's in a police report is, as you say, not a big deal given the light consequences of a false police report (and not a big deal, especially compared to the consequences of career suicide).
> This would be a very different piece if that police report, or any other documentation at a trusted institution, named e.g. 266 Broadway instead.
Why exactly would it be different? What if she had named 266 Broadway to the police, and omitted literally just a single word from her published article ("upstairs"); how would that change the thrust of your dogged investigation, which seems so premised on your knowledge and assumptions of the banking system? So many words and so much effort (again, kudos to putting in the infuriating work needed to get the NYPD to respond) are devoted to this one detail that one can't help but think it was a significant factor in quelling your doubt. Ironically, it reminds me of the strategy that Cowles' alleged scammers used: provide her with seemingly hard-to-know real world information (her SSN, her physical address, that her "2-year-old son was playing in [her] living room") to lull her into believing something much more significant (that the scammer is a CIA agent about to arrest her husband).
You aren't scamming us of course (hey it's not your fault for us choosing to read your article). But asserting that this second-story bank detail is worth attention, implying that a fabulising Cowles wouldn't have put that much thought into her lie, feels like a disservice to the rigorous investigation that your article promises. And without an equally significant number of words dedicated to how you may or may not have had miscalibrated assumptions wrt banking procedure, this is why your article feels incredibly frustrating.
> Speaking as a layperson, I assume that being a 30-something living in New York who had $80,000 in savings and checking alone -- which she explicitly states in her article -- would be enough to qualify for a no-hold-up same day $50k withdrawal from a New York bank. Is that not the case?
I'm no banking expert, but I'm pretty sure no-hold same day withdrawals of that size need much more than that. I wouldn't be surprised if her family has contracted with Bank of America for private banking and family office services, which is usually economical around the $10M assets under management mark (wikipedia says 50M[1] but I've seen lower numbers cited in FatFIRE). In which case the savings and checking figure is essentially nominal, as the wealth is there, but tied up for estate planning (read: tax minimization) purposes; if someone needs money, family offices can set up credit lines. I imagine in that scenario they're basically paying themselves interest.
In any case I doubt any bank is willing to publicly state what the thresholds are in a way anyone could cite, for fear of scammers using that info against them or their clients.
That's one of the things I thought Patrick's article would shed more specific light on, e.g. is it necessary to be in that kind of rarified group (e.g. someone rich enough to have special services with the bank)? Or is being rich enough to own a $3M+ home enough?
The reason why I think the threshold may be much lower than what Patrick insinuates it to be, is because similar big cash scams have been reported by people seemingly much poorer than the NYMag columnist:
> What happened next is tragic for Colleen as she went to her bank. “I told him how much I had in there and he told me to withdraw everything but the $700. I told the lady I need to withdraw $19,000. I said I needed it cash.” Colleen said.
$19,000 is of course less than $50k, but it's still well above the $10k anti-laundering reporting threshold, and it involves a victim in Knoxville for whom that $19k represented her "life savings", yet it seems the bank didn't stop her from a same-day total withdrawal.
(note: this Knoxville incident happened in Dec. 2024, so it's of course possible the victim is perpetrating a copycat fabrication after reading the NYMag article)
