Who’d of thought a fortune teller would scam people out of their money? It has always been such a fruitful and benevolent profession. Alas, NYC psychic Sylvia Mitchell has received up to 15 years in prison for conning multiple clients over $100 grand. Her attorneys attempted to prove there was no evidence she didn’t help her unsuspecting customers, but he victims provided damning evidence according to CBS News:
One former client testified she paid more than $120,000 after Mitchell said she’d help rout “negative energy.” Another said Mitchell told her she needed to break her attachment to money and persuaded her to hand over $27,000 to hold. She said Mitchell balked at giving it back but eventually refunded some.
I wish I could tell the government that they needed to break their attachment to money, at least for me and my student loan debt.
It’s hard to really firmly stand behind anyone in this story. Yes, Mitchell has been found guilty of scamming these folks and is heading behind bars. At the same time, they chose to go to her and believe what she was offering instead of doing a little research. I think I would buy a dog before I paid a soothsayer six-figures to cast a spell on me to change my life.
Interestingly enough, a similar case recently surfaced in Florida according to ABC News:
The 30-year-old victim told Boca Raton police in September 2012 that [Stephanie] Thompson, who has also used the name Stephanie Lee, convinced her to hand over $115,000, of which she would return $90,000, so that she could take a “curse” off of the victim and also off the money. The victim said Thompson told her she had to give her the money, which she had received from her mother, “so she could clean it,” according to police.
The catch here is that Thompson allegedly took the money and gambled it away, I assume proving that the curse was real and she was powerless against it.
Both situations give me a chance to look back at my favorite chain-smoking psychic, Sylvia Browne and her many appearances on ‘Montel‘. It takes a special kind of person to speak with someone who has lost a loved one and proceed to drop a load directly on their memories. Either way, I’m off to begin my new career being a psychic in order to change lives and bank accounts.
Via gettyimages