Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Scamfluencers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or Apple Podcasts. A heads up, this episode contains descriptions of violence and references to sexual and emotional abuse. Please listen with care. Sachi, I know you're into astrology and I'm wondering, have you ever seen a psychic or would you ever see one? A friend of mine actually gifted me time with a psychic for my birthday. Yeah.
So I saw a psychic at the beginning of the year, yeah. Okay, well, now I need to know what the psychic said. She told me that I was in a time of transition and I am about to become very rich and famous. And the only way for me to do that is I have to freeze out my haters, quite literally. So she told me to get a bottle of water and write down the name of someone who is blocking my blessings and put it in my freezer. So I put your name in my freezer, Sarah.
I knew this was a setup. I know, I could see it on your face that you knew I was going there. You might think I'm your biggest hater, but I'm really looking out for you. And the story I'm about to tell you will make you think twice before booking an appointment with this liar psychic who said I was your hater. It's a bright, sunny day in early 1991. Jude Devereaux is on a walk with her husband, Claude. They're in Manhattan, your central park.
Jude's a petite blonde in her early 40s. She's a romance novelist, and her books are very popular. Some of them are even New York Times bestsellers. As they're walking, Jude notices a sign outside a small brick storefront. It says, Astrology Charts. She stops in front of the store and tells Claude she wants to try it. It's something she always wanted to do. Claude waits outside as Jude enters the small, dimly lit shop.
She's greeted by a woman in her early 40s. The woman is tall and beautiful with dark hair and high cheekbones. She introduces herself as Joyce Michael.
When they sit down for a reading, Joyce doesn't mince words. She says she can tell Jude has a lot of problems. Jude immediately breaks down. She pours her heart out about her awful marriage. She says Claude's jealous and controlling. He yells at her all the time. Even though she's been to therapists and lawyers, no one has been able to help. And no one's listened to her like this before. Jude feels a huge sense of relief.
Finally, someone understands. Joyce encourages Jude to come back the next day to keep talking through her problems. And by around the end of their third meeting, Joyce tells Jude she can help her get what she wants, a peaceful divorce. But it'll come at a price, $1,200. ♪
Jude is probably a little hesitant, but she figures, why not? At this point, she's making seven figures a year, so she's got the money. And if this is what frees her from her horrible marriage, it'll be worth it. She digs through her purse and takes out a checkbook.
Jude makes a check out to Joyce Michael, not knowing that this is not even the woman's real name. And she's definitely not the psychic she claims to be. It's the start of a relationship that will end up costing Jude her fortune, her sanity, and even her soul. From Wondery, I'm Sarah Hagee. And I'm Sachi Cole. And this is Scamfluencers. I feel
This is a story about a psychic who lured victims in by claiming to have the answers to all of life's unknowable questions. She's a family matriarch, a business owner, and a fortune teller. But she's also a master manipulator and compulsive liar who's so money hungry, she doesn't care if her clients live or die. I'm calling this one The Fortune Teller's Fraud. Legend.
Long before she introduces herself as Joyce Michael, the woman promising spiritual readings is a little girl named Rose Marks. It's the 1960s and she's nine years old, living near Newark, New Jersey. One day, she says she has a psychic vision. We don't know what it looks like, but Rose later claims it's a premonition of her grandmother's death. And apparently, it comes true.
Rose is scared, but her parents aren't worried. Psychic gifts run in the family. Rose comes from a long line of Vlach Romani women. And over centuries of persecution, fortune-telling became one of the only ways Romani women can make a living. Generations of Rose's ancestors relied on their spiritual powers to survive.
Now that Rose has experienced her first vision, she's ready to follow in her family's footsteps. She drops out of school in the third grade and starts training to be a psychic. When she's a teenager, her parents marry her off to a dark-haired man. He's got a thick mustache and his name is Nicholas. He's also Romani and flips real estate for a living.
Soon after they get married, Rose sets up a fortune-telling shop out of their home in Virginia. They have a daughter and two sons and apparently make enough money to buy a 1977 Rolls Royce. Sachi, take a look at this photo of them in front of it. Oh, my God.
This is peak glamour. Okay, so it's a white Rolls and it's the two of them standing in front of it. He's wearing a tux and she's wearing a black and white floor length gown, puffy sleeves, big diamond necklace, severe bun. She looks amazing. They look amazing, but they also look like they're kind of like photoshopped in front. Oh, they look like haunted empty vessels, but beautiful gowns. Beautiful gowns. Truly. Truly.
Rose and Nicholas are clearly doing well, but they want more. So they decide to take a shot at the big time, opening a psychic parlor in New York City. You know what they say, if you can tell fortune's there, you can tell them anywhere.
Rosa's fortune telling shop is steps away from Central Park and right across the street from the Plaza Hotel. The spot attracts a lot of wealthy people with big problems and bigger pockets. They're dealing with things like divorce, cancer, and the death of a loved one. Many are brokenhearted, vulnerable, and lost.
Rose offers to help them with tarot, palm, astrology, numerology, and spiritual readings. A lot of what we know about Rose's practice comes from the testimonies of former clients. They say that Rose blamed their problems on an evil curse and that only she had the power to remove it. She tells her clients that since money is the root of all evil, they need to give her some of theirs so it can be cleansed.
That sounds like a really convenient place for evil to be in, in cash. Well, one client later says that Rose claims to have a special room in St. Patrick's Cathedral. It's supposedly where she stores her clients' monies and valuables. Rose says she harnesses energy from the money there. She falls into a trance and communicates with the spiritual realm. Then she works with angels all night to cleanse her clients' money of its evil. She calls it the work.
And Rose promises her clients that once the work is done, all their problems will disappear and she'll return the clean money and jewelry right back to them. In most states, fortune telling services like curse removals are illegal. They're protected under freedom of speech. In New York, fortune telling is fine if it's, quote, part of a show or exhibition solely for the purpose of entertainment or amusement.
What's for sure illegal, though, is saying you'll return people's money when in reality you're funneling it to your own bank account. Rose makes promises to her clients that she can't possibly keep, but she's charismatic and she listens. It's part of the reason her clients come back to see her again and again and want to believe anything she tells them. And soon she'll meet the client of a lifetime, a woman whose devotion will bring Rose more money than she ever dreamed.
It's November 1991, just a couple months before Jude walks into Rose's shop. Jude is far from New York. She's in Egypt with her husband Claude. They're celebrating his 53rd birthday by taking a guided tour of the country from a boat on the Nile. Jude's unhappy in her marriage. But on this trip, she's unexpectedly swept off her feet by her tour guide, Mohamed Montessier.
Mohammed's young and attractive, and he's into Jude. She writes about him in her diary. Sachi, want to read an entry? Oh, I love reading people's diaries. Okay, it says, From the moment we looked at each other, we recognized each other. We were as inseparable as possible considering the circumstances. At the end of the tour, he told the group that he loved them and looked directly at me. I was crying as we left.
Okay, wait, is she delusional or is this real? Because this could go either way. I mean, yes, this is something that does become real. But remember, Jude is also a romance novelist, so she's kind of living for this whole situation. When their vacation ends, she and Claude return to their upscale apartment in New York. Jude says that Claude knows her mind is on Muhammad and they fight constantly. It's awful. She cries nonstop.
That's where Jude's at emotionally when she meets a psychic under a fake name. And when Rose says she can guarantee Jude a peaceful divorce for a small one-time fee, she is all in. Rose tells Jude that while they're working together, she'll need some more money from time to time on top of the fee. You know, to cleanse it. She gives Jude the usual spiel, that when it's done,
Jude's curse will be lifted and she'll be rid of Claude forever. And she will get her money back. Jude is desperate to end her marriage, so she agrees. She starts seeing Rose four to five times a week for hours a day.
That is a lot of time to spend with anybody, but never mind someone who very much may be full of shit. Yeah, I mean, listen, we've all been there. All we can talk about is a breakup. Yes. Well, the more Rose works on Jude's case, the darker things get.
Rose tells Jude that she's looked into Claude's mind and that he is the most evil person she has ever seen. According to Rose, he's Satan's right-hand man. She says it's going to be a brutal and violent divorce unless Jude gives her more money. She tells Jude that money is evil and that it's bringing evil things into her life like Claude.
But if Jude gives the money to Rose, she can get it all cleaned up and keep Jude safe. She promises to prove her powers by making predictions about Claude. Jude's terrified, so she pays up. A couple thousand here, a couple thousand there. And it seems to work because Rose's predictions miraculously come true. Rose says that if Jude stops sending her paychecks into an account she shares with Claude, he'll want a divorce. And
And sure enough, a couple of days after Jude reroutes her payments, she's served with divorce papers. Rose even predicts when they'll arrive down to the hour. To be clear, Claude disputes all of Jude's claims. We don't actually know how Rose pulled it off. I mean, it seems pretty likely a divorce was coming anyway, but these experiences turn Jude into a total believer.
Rose later claims that Jude begs her to stop seeing other clients so that she could be available for her 24/7.
And that's when Rose jokingly said that it would cost a million dollars a year. And Jude's like, okay. She apparently believes that the million will only be used for cleansing and she'll get it back within a year. But unsurprisingly, that turns out to be a lie. Jude doesn't know it yet, but she's just one of dozens of faithful clients filling Rose's bank account.
About a year after Jude walked into Rose's shop, a woman named Janice Florendine is in New York for work. Janice has dark hair and sparkling blue eyes. She's opening a high-end clothing boutique in British Columbia, so she's looking to buy clothes and see what's trending. ♪
Janice is on her way to dinner near the Plaza Hotel when she spies a sign that says "Psychic." Like Jude, Janice is intrigued. So she stops in for a reading. She's greeted by a woman who introduces herself as Joyce Michael.
Except this time, the woman introducing herself as Joyce isn't Rose. It's probably her daughter-in-law, Nancy. Nancy's in her early 20s. She works as a fortune teller, along with some of Rose's other relatives, like Rose's sister, daughter, and other daughter-in-law. They work out of the storefront in Manhattan and a few of the family's other shops along the East Coast. By this point, they've basically become a fortune-telling empire.
When this Joyce gives Janice a reading and tells her she has problems in her life, Janice feels seen. She's divorced and unhappy with her love life. She's also stressed out raising a daughter and starting a new business. Joyce says she can clear her energy field for $1,500. Janice believes in psychics, so she goes for it. Joyce promises to get to work. Janice gives Joyce her number and then heads back to Canada.
Barely two weeks later, Joyce calls and says she can help Janice find her soulmate. But to do that, she needs a sacrifice of cash. She assures Janice that she'll return it when the work is complete. So Janice takes out a line of credit on her house and wires over the equivalent of about $150,000 U.S. dollars.
After a while, Janice meets a new man. When she tells Joyce about him, Joyce says, this guy is the one. So Janice invites him to a New Year's party she's throwing at her house. But during the party, she walks in on him in bed with another woman in her own home. Ugh.
Electric chair. Electric chair! Yes, and Janice feels totally ripped off, so she calls Joyce and says she wants her money back. Joyce says she hasn't finished yet, but Janice is through. She actually flies to New York twice and goes to the psychic parlor to demand a refund.
When she gets there, she assumes she's gonna see Joyce, but Joyce is nowhere to be found. Instead, a random woman hands her an envelope of cash, but it's nowhere near the amount she's owed. When she returns a second time, she's met by a strange man who hands her another envelope of cash. Still, it's way short.
Janice eventually sues Joyce Michael, and in 1999, she wins. But Joyce Michael doesn't actually exist, so Janice can't collect the rest of the money she's owed.
she never sees Joyce again. Meanwhile, Rose and her family are spending big on Gucci bags, Rolexes, Mercedes, and Lamborghinis. They've become accustomed to the fabulous life. And to maintain it, Rose is going to have to think of new and terrifying ways to keep her clients under her spell.
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Just use the code SCAMPOD. That's happymammoth.com, M-A-M-M-O-T-H, with the code SCAMPOD to get 15% off your entire first order. It's 1993 and Jude is sitting in her apartment in Cairo. She's recently been spending most of her time here with Mohammed. They're having a passionate love affair. But there's one person in New York she can't seem to cut ties with.
Rose. Over the phone one day, Rose tells Jude that she's heard from an angel and has bad news. Claude is looking for her and he's gonna do bad things. Jude needs to wire Rose money for protection. By now, these calls happen every week. Jude absolutely dreads them. They make her feel like bursting into tears.
But what choice does she have? If she doesn't follow Rose's instructions, things will get worse with Claude. So each time, she sends the money to Rose. It's not just money though. Rose controls Jude's every move.
When Jude hires a divorce lawyer, Rose warns her that he would side against her, so Jude fires him. She replaces him with one of Rose's hand-picked replacements, somebody who had never handled a divorce case before. Rose also pressures Jude into signing a settlement that guarantees escalating payments to Claude until his death. Rose says it's fine because Claude will die within three years.
Jude's also got a lot going on. It's not just her divorce, her new relationship, or her career writing two books a year. She's also trying to get pregnant. Jude has wanted to be a mother for a long time, but she's suffered miscarriages in the past. She wants to adopt, but the agencies don't like that she's unmarried and in her 40s. And she runs into the same issue when she's looking for a surrogate.
Over the next two years, things fizzle out with Muhammad and Jude returns to the States to start IVF. Of course, she asks Rose for help finding a doctor. She also gives Rose more money so that she can use her psychic powers to help her have a child. At one point, Jude even sells her million dollar apartment after Rose predicts that her future child will fall over the side of the building and die. She also convinces Jude to give her all the money from the sale.
Eventually, IVF works and Jude gets pregnant. Suddenly, everything Rose has demanded seems worth it. Jude is finally happy. But she also has to be careful. Rose says that the baby won't survive unless Jude keeps paying her to protect it. She isolates Jude in a little apartment in Manhattan until the baby is born.
It sounds like Rose is taking advantage of a woman who's probably going to be a pretty anxious mother. Well, yeah, I mean, she has a true grip on Jude's life in a way that at this point, Jude can't do anything without running it by Rose. And Rose is still offering protection from all of these calamities that are sure to happen. And then they don't happen. And then it's because, you know, Rose is protecting Jude. So it's just like the cycle of her thinking that Rose is correct because
bad things that she predicts will happen aren't happening, right? And Rose doesn't loosen her grip even when Jude is about to go into labor. She insists that Jude still needs her. She says that if she's not in the delivery room with her, the baby will be in danger. Jude can't say no. But when she gives birth to a healthy baby boy named Sam, it's a wake-up call.
On some level, she must know Rose is controlling her life. And she doesn't want Sam to be controlled the same way. So 11 days after he's born, they move to England. Jude will do anything to protect her son. Unfortunately, that also means keeping Rose in her life.
A little over a year goes by, and even as Jude is trying to start over and make a new life for herself, Rose keeps predicting horrible things like that Claude is going to find Sam and sexually abuse him. So Jude keeps sending money to Rose for protection. ♪
Between Rose's constant fear-mongering and the demands of being a working single mom, Jude is not in the best place mentally. She moves back to the U.S. and does pretty much everything Rose tells her. At one point, Rose tells Jude that she's an advisor for the FBI and ultra-famous celebrities and political leaders.
She says she works with Prince Charles. She also claims to be responsible for the Iraq War because of her influence over Secretary of State Colin Powell. Rose says she advises him too, and that she's made another decision for him. He's going to marry Jude. Jude believes her. She starts writing him letters, and Saatchi, she gets replies. Can you please read part of one? Well, Colin here says...
I am sure that you can imagine how occupied I am with the potential war crisis in place. But I was thinking, barring any changes in my itinerary, I plan on being in Colorado the second week of February for a private vacation and thought perhaps I could break away and meet you. Perhaps I could arrange for a private dinner just exclusively for us so I could protect my public appearance.
Okay, sure. Did he dot all the I's with hearts or was it a handwritten note? To me, it's just the randomness of being like, I can make this woman believe anything. I will catfish as Colin Powell. Of all the people in the world, to me, that is just so bizarre. And to also claim responsibility for the Iraq war. Why would you want to have done that? Some people just want to see the world burn, Sarah. Well...
Jude never suspects that it's Rose writing her these letters, even after it goes on for years. By 2005, Jude and her son Sam have moved to rural North Carolina. She later calls it the deep country. She's been sending so much money to Rose that she can't afford city life anymore. Now it's just her, Sam, and fake Colin Powell.
She spends her days writing him letters in between working on books. She also grows most of her own food in her garden. Jude has been paying Rose for years in order to stave off disaster. But even after handing over all this money, tragedy is about to strike. One day in 2005, Sam's outside playing with a neighborhood friend. He's eight years old.
He notices it's getting dark, so he hops on his dirt bike to give his friend a ride home. On his way back, he turns onto the road and gets hit by a truck going 60 miles per hour. He's killed instantly. Jude is beyond devastated. She feels like her life is over. Desperate, she turns to Rose. She calls and calls, but Rose doesn't answer the phone. Jude checks herself into a hospital where they sedate her with pills.
She's out of it for days. Her neighbors plan a funeral for Sam, but Jude barely notices. Finally, Rose calls back. She convinces Jude to get on a plane to see her in Florida. She's been living in a waterfront mansion there with her family. Jude is in such a state of despair that she agrees, along with handing over even more money. ♪
It gets so bad that Jude stops paying for everything else. She loses her car. Rose sells her house and puts her stuff in storage. She even convinces Jude not to pay her taxes and to give her the money instead. Jude later says that she believed if she did all of this, Rose would transfer her son's soul into someone else's body.
This is a very painful, delusional place to be in. Yeah, Jude is not well. Yeah, and for Rose to be so consistently like taking advantage of this person who is so unwell, it's really slimy. Yeah, it's awful. And Rose isn't being subtle about how she spends all the money she's making off of Jude.
One year, Rose loses more than $200,000 at a single casino. She tells Jude that without more money, her son will burn in hell. She also says that Jude is going to die soon. But she offers a twisted glimmer of hope.
She tells Jude that a beautiful young virgin named Cynthia Miller has given birth using one of Jude's leftover embryos. And if Jude can get enough money together, Rose can use the energy to transfer Jude's spirit into Cynthia's body. Rose will even be able to transfer Sam's spirit into Cynthia's son. In reality, Cynthia is Rose's other daughter-in-law. And the boy that's supposedly Sam's brother is Rose's grandson.
Rose arranges for Jude to meet Cynthia and her boy, and Jude agrees to the spirit transfer. Then, Rose tells Jude to make a will, leaving everything to Cynthia. This way, Jude can still have access to her belongings once the spirit transfer is complete and she's living in Cynthia's body. Jude agrees and literally signs away her soul.
About three years later, Detective Charles Stack knocks on the door of room 224 of the Hilton Boca Raton. Charles is in his early 50s. He's tall and balding, and he's into martial arts and boxing. He worked with the DEA and the FBI and once went undercover investigating a Russian crime ring. Now, Charles is helping lead an investigation into Rose's family. He calls it Operation Crystal Ball.
About a year ago, one of the family's victims filed a police report about potential fraud. Charles followed the money and it led him here to Jude. Charles tells Jude that the police have records showing she's given the woman she knows as Joyce more than $3 million. He tells her she might have been scammed. But he's shocked when Jude says she doesn't care. She just wants to die and be with her son.
He'll later learn that she's been leaving her room unlocked and her belongings packed, so that it'll be easy for Rose to collect her body and take over anything she has left. Jude asks Charles if she can show him photos of Sam. He hesitates at first, but says yes. As she cries, he puts his arm around her, and he assures her that no matter what anyone says, Sam is in heaven.
As Charles tells her more about the case, Jude asks if he knows who Cynthia Miller is. He tells her that she's Rose's daughter-in-law and runs her own psychic parlor. Jude seems shocked. Learning that Cynthia isn't a spirit vessel breaks something open in Jude. It finally hits her. Her relationship with Rose, the last 16 years of her life, have all been a giant scam.
But now that she knows the truth, she can reclaim her power and fight to win back her life.
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Jude moves to a different hotel so she can hide from Rose. Then she works up the courage to end things for good. She even sends Rose a breakup email. Check it out, Sachi. It says, in three weeks, I give Claude the money and then I'm free of him forever. Sorry, but I won't need you anymore. I hope you have a nice life and that you find a good husband for poor Cynthia. Yeah.
That's a pretty gentle kiss-off, I'd say. Yeah, and of course, Rose doesn't back down. She starts sending Jude faxes and emails saying that Sam's talking to her and that they need to get back to the work. Jude ignores the messages. A few weeks later, she's in her car in the hotel parking lot when she hears a banging on the window.
It's Rose. She tracked her down even though Jude had checked in under the name Hector Gonzalez. Jude cracks open the window and yells at her to go away. But Rose shoves her hand through the gap, unlocks the door, and jumps in the car. Jude drives up to the front of the hotel. She says that if she screams, the hotel staff will drag Rose away. Rose gets angry and storms off.
God, she's like a bad boyfriend who won't go away. She really got her hooks into Jude. Big time. And Jude is trying to cut Rose out for good, but she agrees to stay in contact with her to help with the investigation. She records phone calls with Rose and even meets with her in the lobby of a hotel. The furniture is wiretapped and the police monitor the whole thing.
All the while, Charles is watching the Marks family, taking nearly 4,000 photos. That's on top of tracking down and interviewing other victims. He also has an officer get a reading from Rose's daughter while undercover. And he even travels to New Mexico to speak with Claude. Claude refuses to talk, so Charles serves him with a grand jury subpoena. Jude's convinced that Claude and Rose are in cahoots, but Charles doesn't find any evidence.
Jude is starting to get back on her feet. She starts training with Charles at a gym every morning at 6 a.m. She also starts writing a book about an undercover cop from Fort Lauderdale who takes down a ring of fraudulent fortune tellers. It's eventually published under the title Scarlet Nights. She even includes Charles in the acknowledgments. Sachi, can you read it?
It says, I'd like to thank the person who made this book possible, my consultant, and most of all, my friend, Detective Charles J. Stack. I can never adequately express my gratitude to Charlie for his help, his intelligence, his kindness, and his never-ending patience. Thank you, Charlie. You're a true hero.
Well, I kind of love that. I know. Do they fall in love? I'm rooting for that. It would be perfect. I'm so excited. I was like, wait, do they? I hope they do.
I'm really glad that Jude finally found a real friend, most of all. But yes, love on top of this would be truly amazing. And while Jude's getting stronger by the day, Charles and the feds are closing in. If Rose and her family were really psychics, they might have sensed their reign coming to a close. Instead, they keep their scam going throughout the years-long investigation. And they don't stop until the bitter end.
It's the summer of 2011, about three and a half years after Charles first knocked on Jude's door. Rose's son Ricky and his wife Nancy are hanging out at the psychic parlor in New York
Suddenly, they hear a crash. A battering ram breaks down the door. Ricky tries to slam it closed, but it's too late. A group of federal agents storm in and one of them tackles Ricky to the floor. Nancy runs to the back, but someone grabs her. They're both arrested and the feds search the parlor.
The feds are also raiding Rose's Florida home. Rose gets cuffed along with several other family members who have been running similar scams. The cops find a dragon's den of valuables at their shops and at Rose's house. There are diamonds, designer jewelry, several luxury cars, and they find bills for a ton of different credit cards in Rose's nightstand.
Rose and her family are charged with multiple counts of fraud. The indictment names Rose, her daughter Rosie and her husband, Rose's two sons and their wives, and Rose's granddaughter. It's a multi-generational fortune-telling empire.
The indictment alleges that Rose and her family scammed their clients out of roughly $40 million. Prosecutors allege that about half of that came from Jude. And it seems like the family spent it all on luxury goods. Everyone pleads guilty except Rose. She maintains her innocence and says that whatever money she made off Jude was absolutely not enough.
Rose goes on trial in August 2013. Jude takes a stand along with several other victims. Then, about a month later, the jury reaches a verdict. When the foreperson stands to announce Rose's fate, her family quietly sobs. Like a true matriarch, Rose puts a finger to her lips and shushes them. But the cries only grow louder as the jury declares Rose guilty on all 14 counts of fraud.
She's sentenced to 10 years in prison, but doesn't serve her full sentence. She's granted supervised release in May of 2022. As for Jude, she's still writing. Her newest book, "My Heart Will Find You," came out in April of this year.
Sachi, how are you doing? Well, this was upsetting. I mean, the level of manipulation is so terrifying because Jude is clearly a smart, capable woman who's been able to like build a romance writing empire. And she was in a bad enough place in her life for someone like Rose to ruin it. And I think this is one of those things that could happen to a lot of people if someone catches them at the right desperate moment. Yeah.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of sneering at people who go to psychics or go to fortune tellers because they're trying to get something. They're trying to get some certainty in their lives and who are especially susceptible to getting a little bit of good news for a price. Or in this case, like trying to get out of a really bad marriage and needs help. Mm-hmm.
And they're thinking, well, it's just $1,200 and I'll get an easy divorce. And then, you know, a couple of years later, it's everything. I also think there's something here with how they targeted people who were in like a rich, well-to-do area, possibly staying at an expensive hotel. I think Rose knows that...
rich people want a semblance of control in their lives. Like they have what they want. There's so much that they can do. And I personally feel like people go to psychics a lot because they want to have a say or control and things that they can't control and things that they can't predict. And she got the best marks, which are rich people who were, you know, 1200 isn't a crazy amount of money for them. Well, it's making me think a lot more about my psychic experiences.
I genuinely think that no matter what happens, people will always want answers. If someone wants to believe a psychic, they will do whatever it takes to believe a psychic. I feel like the more contemporary version of the psychic scam is like a wellness idiot, like a wellness astrology, social media branding creep. They exist. They're out there. I feel like all the psychic and forgive me for saying this,
A lot of that astrology, psychic stuff is tied into the wellness world now, I feel. Yeah. Like with crystals and this and that. And I know a lot of it has to do with people's actual spiritual and cultural beliefs. And I'm not knocking that. But I do think it is all kind of tied together that if you do this one thing, this thing will change. And, you know, make sure you're charging your crystals. Sarah, would you like me to read your fortune? Ugh.
Sure, make a prediction for me, Sachi. I predict that you are going to be irritated with me for the rest of the day. Was I right? I mean, we'll find out. I'll text you at the end of the day and tell you if you're right. And if you are, I'm going to give you some of my money. Clean it for me. Just clean it. I will. You're in New York where the magic happens. I've been offering to do it for years.
This is The Fortune Teller's Fraud. I'm Sarah Hagee. And I'm Sachi Cole. We use many sources in our research. Jane Musgraves reporting for the Palm Beach Post and Paula McMahon's reporting for South Florida Sun-Sentinel were particularly helpful. In this episode, we discuss violence and abuse. If you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, the National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 1-800-799-SAFE.
That's 1-800-799-7233. Liz Galalis wrote this episode. Additional writing by us, Sachi Cole and Sarah Hagee. Our senior producer is Jen Swan. Our producer is John Reed. Our associate producers are Charlotte Miller and Lexi Puri. Our story editor and producer is Sarah Enni. Eric Thurm is our story editor. Sound design is by James Morgan. Fact-checking by Gabrielle Jolet.
Additional audio assistance provided by Adrian Tapia.
Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Freesound Sync. Our coordinating producer is Desi Blaylock. Our managing producer is Matt Gant, and our senior managing producer is Ryan Moore. Kate Young and Olivia Richard are our series producers. Our senior story editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Our senior producer is Ginny Bloom. Our executive producers are Janine Cornelow, Stephanie Jens, Jenny Lauer Beckman, and Marshall Louie for Wondery.
If you like Scamfluencers, you can listen to every episode early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.