Media: Miss Cleo: Another One Bites The Dust

Like many others, over the last couple of years I've found myself being entertained in the wee hours of the morning by Miss Cleo's infomercials for Tarot readings, despite the fact that it was obvious that she was a fraud. Being a professional Tarot reader myself, I often found myself wondering how the heck she came to her conclusions from the cards she turned over on camera, even while being highly entertained by her larger-than-life persona, the cool mystical trappings on the set, her gypsy costuming and her thick and phony but oh-so-endearing Jamaican accent.

Again, it was obvious that she was a sham, a shill to entice viewers to call incredibly expensive 900 numbers for a fake "Tarot reading," but her folksy manner was as fun to watch as a rerun of Everyone Loves Raymond or Friends.

About a year ago I started getting emails from her with messages that were reminiscent of the letters I'd received a couple of years earlier from Raylene Van Worth, another psychic fraud. In these emails, Miss Cleo said that she'd had a special vision about me containing important information that was vital for me to hear. She was so concerned for me that she'd talked with her people and arranged for me to talk with her for free.

I already knew that scam. The first couple of minutes would be free, then I'd be charged $4.99 a minute - and I would never ever talk to Miss Cleo herself.

But now Miss Cleo and the Psychic Readers Network, Inc. (PRN), the company she represented, are no more, put out of business on November 14th by the Federal Trade Commission. Just like Al Capone, who's downfall wasn't murder and racketeering but tax evasion, Miss Cleo and PRN weren't brought down because they couldn't really perform the psychic readings they offered, but because of deceptive billing practices in which "free" readings cost callers $600 and more. Unlike Capone, no one involved will see a single day in jail.

Under the terms of an agreement reached with the FTC, Steven Feder and Peter Stolz, the real owners of PRN, agreed to cancel $500 million in customer bills, pay a $5 million fine to the FTC, stop using pay-per-call numbers for their service, and return any uncashed checks to customers. In other words, the feds managed to do something right by putting these crooks out of business. After the agreement was reached, Howard Beales, director of the FTC's consumer protection bureau, had a tongue-in-cheek warning for others running the same scam: "I'm no psychic but I can foresee this: If you make deceptive claims, there is an FTC action in your future."

Although she was not a part of the FTC action, Miss Cleo (whose real name is Youree Cleomili Harris) does not emerge from this mess with her reputation intact. While testifying in June of this year, she repeatedly invoked her fifth amendment rights while being questioned over the issue of her birth certificate. It turns out that she's not a Jamaican "Shango Shaman" as her infomercials claimed, but was born in Los Angeles to American parents.

According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Florida Assistant Attorney General Dave Aronberg, who questioned her, said she testified that there is no such thing as a Shango Shaman. She also admitted that she was not a master Tarot reader.

Last January, the Court TV web site reported that the "psychic readers" employed by PRN under a loose agreement as independent contractors did not have to know anything about the Tarot to be hired and were instructed to keep callers on the phone for long periods of time or face being fired. One telephone reader explained, "We're obliged to keep people on the line. We have to make things up, because we need the priority rating or we won't get calls. It's impossible. Last week, even though I had a 61-minute call, I didn't get anything for six days."

The "reader" went on to state that one of the most effective ways of assuring that callers stay on the line is to tell them that their lover is cheating. "If you say there is cheating, there are a ton of questions they will want to ask," he said.

Putting fraudulent outfits like Miss Cleo and PRN out of business is a good thing on a variety of levels. First, there's the obvious: this stops them from cheating other unsuspecting folks out of hard earned dollars. The second: it helps the metaphysical community. In every city across America, there are talented and honest psychic readers who are trying to help people, and charging much less than the $4.95 a minute that's the average for the telephone frauds. Crooks like Miss Cleo taint those who are genuinely trying to help.

©Copyright 2003 by AlternativeApproaches.com