Psychic and fortune-teller fraud

What it is

Psychic and fortune-teller fraud uses a reading, a tarot session or an ongoing “spiritual advisor” relationship to diagnose a problem that does not exist, a curse, a “dark cloud,” a threat to a family member, or even a curse on the client’s own money, and then charges escalating fees to fix it. Unlike a single bad transaction, the fraud typically unfolds over months or years inside what the victim experiences as a real, trusted relationship. AARP estimates the broader psychic-services industry generates more than $2 billion a year in the US, and cites Pew Research polling that roughly 4 in 10 US adults say they believe psychics are real, a large pool of people for whom the premise doesn’t need to be sold from scratch.

Most of that industry is legal: charging for a reading is not itself a crime. The fraud begins when an operator promises to return, cleanse or safeguard money while having no intention of doing so, or manufactures an escalating threat, a family curse, a dying relative’s danger, a debt owed to dangerous people, that only continued payment can supposedly stop. The FTC’s enforcement history with the telephone psychic service “Miss Cleo” in the early 2000s shows the agency has pursued this industry’s billing practices for decades; the cases on this page are a more serious variant, built around a personal relationship rather than a 900-number bill.

How it actually works

1. A relationship starts like an ordinary reading

   A storefront visit, a hotline call, or a referral from a friend already a client opens the relationship. Sandra Marks operated out of a rented house near Charlottesville, Virginia, advertised as “Psychic Catherine”; Sherry Uwanawich met her eventual victim in Houston in 2007 while working as a self-described healer.

2. A curse, threat or “dark cloud” is diagnosed

   The operator claims to sense something wrong: a family curse, a dead relative’s soul in distress, or money itself carrying bad energy. Uwanawich told her victim a witch’s curse was responsible for her mother’s death and now threatened the rest of her family.

   Where it could have stopped

   No legitimate spiritual, religious or medical practice requires handing cash, gold or bank access to a stranger to remove a curse or danger. A request to surrender money “to be cleansed” or “to protect” someone is itself the fraud, not a step toward a real solution; an independent second opinion from anyone outside the relationship would end it immediately.

3. The first payment is framed as protection, not a fee

   Rather than a flat price for a service, the first request for money is framed as urgently necessary to prevent harm. Uwanawich said she needed “large sums of money” for crystals and candles to lift the curse before it hurt the victim’s family.

4. Payments escalate over months or years

   Once the first payment succeeds, the threat is never fully resolved, only managed, requiring further rounds. Uwanawich’s relationship with her victim lasted about seven years; Rose Marks’s relationship with novelist Jude Deveraux lasted roughly two decades.

5. Secrecy keeps the story from being checked

   Victims are often discouraged from telling family or seeking outside opinions, sometimes because the “ritual” supposedly requires silence, sometimes simply from embarrassment. Years can pass before anyone outside the relationship learns what is happening.

6. The money is spent, not cleansed, buried or returned

   Sandra Marks told victims she would bury their cash near her cabin and later return it cleansed; she testified at sentencing that she simply deposited it in bank accounts and spent it with her husband on cars and jewelry. In the Washington, DC case, extorted cash and gold bars funded the operators’ own lives.

7. The scheme ends in confession, investigation or a second crime

   Some schemes end when the operator admits the curse was invented, as Uwanawich eventually did. Others only come to light when the fraud escalates into something that reaches law enforcement on its own, as when a Maryland man’s embezzlement of $4 million to pay a fake psychic’s extortion threat drew in the FBI.

Why it works

It attaches to a moment of real vulnerability. Every documented victim on this page was coping with grief, illness, depression or fear for a loved one when the relationship began. A fabricated threat lands differently on someone already afraid something is wrong.

It is a relationship, not a transaction. Because the fraud unfolds over months or years of ongoing contact rather than a single call or email, it builds the kind of trust that makes a victim discount their own doubts, the same dynamic that makes romance scams durable long after red flags appear.

Education and success are not protection. Rose Marks’s documented victims included a Naval Academy graduate with a Columbia MBA, a British lawyer, and several corporate executives. The sentencing judge in that case said he could not explain, psychologically, why rational people believed the claims made to them, only that personal crisis made them want to.

Shame keeps people from reporting it. Admitting you paid a stranger hundreds of thousands of dollars to lift a curse is humiliating in a way that admitting you were hacked or phished is not, which is part of why private investigators who specialize specifically in psychic fraud, a niche that exists because general fraud units often miss this pattern, play an outsized role in several of these cases reaching court at all.

It can escalate into something larger than the original lie. The Washington, DC case shows the fraud is not capped at what one victim can personally pay; once a victim’s own funds are exhausted, the scheme can expand into sex work, extortion of people connected to the victim, or pressure that pushes a third party into an unrelated crime like embezzlement.

Where it comes from

Every documented case on this page is domestic to the United States, running through ordinary storefronts, rented houses and personal referrals rather than an overseas call center or scam compound. Several of the cases involve operators from extended family networks who share surnames and operating methods across multiple, separately prosecuted schemes, a pattern of family-based psychic businesses passed down across generations, documented independently in Florida, Virginia and the Washington, DC case on this page.

Enforcement is federal and reactive. Every sentence on this page followed charges of mail fraud, wire fraud or extortion, brought years after the relationship began, usually once a victim stopped paying, confided in someone, or, in the Washington, DC case, once the fraud produced a separate, more visible crime that drew in the FBI.

The broader industry provides cover. With roughly $2 billion a year in legal psychic-service revenue in the US and a large share of the population open to the premise, a fraudulent operator does not need to convince anyone that psychics in general are credible, only that this particular curse is real.

Real cases

Red flags

• A reading escalates into a claim that you, your money, or a family member is cursed.
• You’re told to hand over cash, gold or valuables to be “cleansed,” “protected” or temporarily held, rather than paying a stated price for a stated service.
• Every payment solves one problem but reveals a new one, keeping the relationship, and the payments, going indefinitely.
• You’re told to keep the arrangement secret from family, a partner or anyone who might question it.
• The explanation shifts from your fortune to your safety or a relative’s safety, raising the urgency and the stakes of refusing to pay.
• You’ve been paying the same person, in escalating amounts, for months or years without the underlying problem ever actually resolving.

If it’s happening to you

If you or someone you know is paying a psychic, medium or spiritual advisor to lift a curse or protect someone, treat it as a financial emergency, not a belief to argue about.

1. Stop payment immediately and do not explain why to the operator. No legitimate practice requires uninterrupted payment to avoid harm; stopping does not make anything worse.
2. Gather records. Bank statements, wire transfer receipts, texts and any written promises to return or cleanse money are what a prosecutor or investigator will need.
3. Talk to someone outside the relationship, a family member, friend, bank fraud department or attorney, even if it feels embarrassing. Every case on this page only ended because someone eventually did this.
4. Report it. File with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3.gov) and local police; if a bank wire or gift card was used, the bank or retailer may be able to flag or trace it if contacted quickly.
5. If you’re a family member trying to help, don’t expect confrontation with the psychic to work. Focus on the money: ask to see statements, involve another trusted relative, and consult an attorney about financial exploitation if large sums have already moved.
6. If the demand has shifted from “pay for yourself” to “pay to protect someone else,” recognize that as extortion, documented in the Washington, DC case on this page, and treat it as urgent: contact law enforcement rather than continuing to pay.

Where the money goes

There is no overseas network or cryptocurrency wallet in any case on this page. The money moves through the most ordinary channels available: cash, wire transfers, and in one case gold bars, straight into the operator’s own accounts and spending.

Cash and valuables go directly into the operator’s own finances. Sandra Marks told victims their money would be buried and later returned cleansed; she testified she simply deposited it into bank accounts and spent it on cars and jewelry with her husband, the same placement step every launderer of illegally obtained cash has to solve.

Escalation can convert the fraud into a different crime entirely. In the Washington, DC case, the “psychic” relationship evolved into coerced sex work and then extortion, with a third victim embezzling $4 million from his employer, in cash and gold bars, to meet the group’s demands.

Restitution recovers only part of what was taken, and only after years. Court-ordered restitution across the cases on this page ranges from $1.6 million to more than $5.4 million, ordered years after the underlying payments were made and spent, with no guarantee of actual recovery for victims.

By the numbers

No published dataset breaks this scheme out as its own category yet, so there is no chart to show. The data page explains which agency categories exist and why some schemes are invisible in official statistics.