FORTUNE SELLERS
Fortune telling is a highly profitable industry in Toronto. Psychics call it spiritual guidance. Victims who’ve lost thousands call it exploitation.
First, Jack was diagnosed with clinical depression after his father died in 2006. Two years later, his 14-year marriage collapsed and he had to fight for access to his two children. Four years after that, he fell in love with a co-worker and got engaged, but the relationship fell apart just before the wedding.
In 2013, his ex-fiancée filed harassment charges and he spent a night in jail. Almost immediately, he lost his job.
On the road to rock bottom, Jack, an educated professional in his 40s, did what most of us would do: he reached for something to turn around his fortunes.
But seeking spiritual guidance from five Toronto fortune tellers only pushed him deeper into turmoil. By the time he was finished, he had lost as much as $25,000 and had to sell his house.
The Toronto Star, Ryerson University’s School of Journalism and W5 have spent months investigating Toronto’s thriving fraudulent fortune-telling industry that uses spells, potions, sleight of hand and smooth sales patter to collect small fortunes from thousands of vulnerable victims.
Interviews with a dozen clients of psychics — including a teacher, real-estate agent, doctor, corporate manager and Bay Street stockbroker — and hidden-camera visits to psychics reveal the secrets of an industry estimated to be worth $2 billion (U.S.) in the United States alone. One in four North Americans believes in some form of paranormal activity, according to a 2005 Gallup poll.
A skilled, convincing fortune teller can earn as much as $500,000 a year, says Miki Corazza, who has been in the business for 42 years and is increasingly concerned it has become rife with fraud.
“There are people in this business who are not legitimate, and there are people — a lot of people like myself — who are legitimate, that have gifts and varying degrees,” she says. “Part of my service is providing empathy and support to people. I’m not in the business of false hope. I’m in the business of truth, whether you like it or not.”
But most victims are too embarrassed to turn to police. Those who do realize quickly that this cash-ondemand business means there is often no paper trail or evidence.
The business is a combination of grooming and sales techniques linked to sometimes extravagant fees: charging hundreds of dollars for candles and bath salts to ward off evil spirits; asking clients to purchase gift cards and expensive items so the psychic can pray over them; the promise of wishes fulfilled through animal sacrifice; and signing up clients cursed with the “evil eye” to longterm cleansing.
All this happened to Jack and he knows what you’re thinking.
“I know it sounds ridiculous. It’s like how could you fall for such a thing,” says the 46-year-old single father who asked that his name and appearance be changed to protect his job and his family. “But depending on the stage of your life and the vulnerability and what you’re going through, they’re very good at making you believe.”
Jack’s financial descent began in 2009 when he visited Marina, who works from an office in a cavernous strip mall in Woodbridge. Pictures of Jesus hung on the walls, scented candles flickered and a small, black Bible sat on a large mahogany desk.
He sat and poured out his troubles. When it came time to pay, Jack was stunned — it was hundreds of dollars for a single session. But he paid and kept on paying, moving from psychic to psychic based on streetside advertisements and ads.
Before he finally quit a couple of years ago, he had been taken in by the tool box of psychic offerings.
One told him he needed to sacrifice a lamb or a pig to lift a curse. Another told him that since he bought his former girlfriend a television, he needed to buy a Best Buy gift card the psychic could pray over.
He never saw what happened to the gift cards but now assumes the psychics used them for themselves.
Jack blew so much on bogus psychic services and supplies over the course of a decade that he had to sell his house. He now lives there as a tenant.
“It’s not like I have the money to go put on a down payment on another house,” he says. “I used to own this, and I just threw money away to psychics who were supposed to help me.” Lumped in with prohibitions against the practice of witchcraft, sorcery and “enchantment,” the Criminal Code makes it illegal to fraudulently “tell fortunes” for profit or “pretend from skill in or knowledge of an occult or crafty science to discover where or in what manner anything that is supposed to have been stolen or lost may be found.”
Yet victims tend to have little hard evidence. And fraudulent fortune tellers look exactly like those who earnestly believe their psychic powers can be used to help people.
Fraud is difficult enough to prove, says Toronto police Det. Alan Spratt of the financial crimes unit, but the challenge is greater where the law and spiritual beliefs intersect.
“I would be reluctant to charge anyone just solely on the basis that they could tell the future. If that’s their belief system and there is genuine intent and they don’t have criminal intent, I think it would be a difficult charge to prove.”
Since 2010, Toronto police have charged15 people with fraud relating to psychic practice, “fortune telling” or “witchcraft,” says Spratt.
Shame surrounding the crime is a major impediment to prosecution. Most victims are skeptical about what the police can do to help them.
“Going to the police is probably going to reveal a lot of personal stuff about me,” says Jack, who remains too embarrassed to tell his family what happened. “How do I prove that I went there? There’s no receipts, there’s nothing other than some candles, right, or some bathing salts. . . . What’s the point?” He’s right, experts say. “There’s no mechanism for getting that money back,” says Toronto private investigator Richard McEachin, who says he has worked on at least 50 spiritual fraud cases in his career. “For any of these kinds of confidence scams, the people who are victims are seen to participate in their own problem.”
And that makes them poor witnesses in the eyes of prosecutors, he says.
“This type of person would be considered the type that would not hold up under cross-examination — he was so easily duped, therefore he would be easy to manipulate, confuse, or get flustered during the cross-examination. . . . Prosecutors only want slam dunks and plea deals and this is a long way from that.” Spratt agrees recompense is rare. “The percentage that gets their money back through the criminal justice system is very, very low — and I think a lot of the public knows that,” Spratt says. “It becomes a choice: If I’m not going to get my money back, do I want to go through this process that’s going to take a couple of years? They know it could be publicized. . . . They just don’t want to go through that experience.”
The social stigma aimed at victims helps the industry continue to flourish, experts say.
But the stigma is unfair, says Dr. James MacKillop, a leading addic- tions researcher at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton.
“These kinds of behaviours are not to be dismissed simply as crazy, or as (a) character defect, or moral deficiencies. They’re clearly causing people a great deal of distress. Certainly they have some responsibility for their behaviour, but also in terms of perspectives, I think we have to try to help people. And both from the mental health community standpoint and also from the legal standpoint, I think we have to minimize the harm that comes from these predatory behaviours.”
Jack’s life has improved dramatically since he’s stopped seeing psychics, from his relationship with his children to his performance at work.
He’s confident his addiction has been overcome and that the next time something goes wrong, he will be able face it independently, uncertain of the future and simply doing the best he can.
“You just let it go, and you start living your life,” he says. “This has been a very tough lesson learned.”
“There’s no mechanism for getting that money back.” RICHARD MCEACHIN PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR
Emma’s cover story: I’m a 20-something professional woman who is newly engaged. While I’m happy about the engagement, lately I’ve felt my fiancé is pulling away. The emotional distance has me worried.
Rob’s cover story: I’m a 40-something man who recently broke up with my girlfriend, who I love. I want to know if she is the right person and, if so, how I can get her back. She is refusing to speak with me.
PSYCHIC JASMINE
Location: Steeles Ave. E. and Yonge St.
Tip: Three confidential sources complained about “bogus” readings by Jasmine. One paid her $5,000 for “guaranteed success” in restoring his relationship, including buying her gift cards for items such as running shoes to “pray on.”
Setting: Visitors are ushered through the back door of a modest bungalow to a low-ceilinged basement filled with psychic paraphernalia: religious statues, candles and a deck of tarot cards.
Rob’s reading: Jasmine pulls out her tarot cards and asks me to pick several. I quickly learn that psychics can be tough on the ego.
She tells me that while I’m successful in my career, with a good head on my shoulders, I have been “pulled down for years.”
She studies the Queen of Wands with a grimace.
“(It has) been turned upside down. Your love life is upside down.”
I ask if my fictional ex-girlfriend could be “the one.”
“You know it’s (my fictional girlfriend) the one,” says Jasmine, who charged $40 for the reading. “That’s why it’s eating you up inside. . . . A lot of pain, a lot of suffering, a lot of tears, a lot of heartache. And people just walking away from you.”
“You have a downfall in love. And that needs to be removed before you could be set free. . . . Once that is removed, she’ll come closer to you.”
Within six minutes, Jasmine has diagnosed my problem and set a price for her services.
“You’re looking at about $1,200 now to remove everything and bring her back into your life.”
“At the present moment, you have a chance,” she said sternly. “That’s what I’m saying, you need to act fast. I know you want time to think about everything, but don’t leave it too long. Because if we wait too long, we’re going to lose her. And then it’s too late. I can’t get her back.”
For $1,200 I would get herbs and oils for bathing, and her professional interaction with “spirits” to remove my curse permanently.
“I’m getting rid of the bad and putting in the new and the good. It’s simple.”
I tell her I’ll think about the $1,200 service. I ask how many couples she has reunited. “I lost count.” “It didn’t always work, come on.” “It always works.” A couple of weeks later, I returned to Jasmine to seek comment on the reading and the complaints from former customers. At first, she claimed she wasn’t Jasmine. When reminded her I had recently sat across from her for a reading, she said: “Was it me or my twin sister?”
Emma’s reading: Jasmine suggests a tarot card reading for $40.
“You’re very confused,” she says. “Both of you (my fiancé and me) feel like you’re trapped and you can’t escape from everything.”
The first few cards show tears, heartache and pain.
“That’s not a good thing, honey,” Jasmine says. “When did everything start going down?”
Finally, we reach the last card in the pile: the Magician.
“What does he do? He tears people apart,” Jasmine says, dropping the card on the table for emphasis. “It’s like a curse.”
It took a little more than eight minutes for Jasmine to promise happily ever after — for a price.
“If you don’t do something and you don’t remove it. . . . I don’t want to say this, honey, but (the relationship) is not going to last. I know what’s going on and I see what’s happening and you are going to be miserable. You’re looking at about $950 to complete everything.”
For that money, Jasmine will pray to create a circle of happiness around me. When I press for more details, she mentions bath salts, a candle or some oil. But she won’t be precise until she sees my name, date of birth — and $950.
She’s scared for me and warns that if I wait, the distance between my fiancé and me will grow and I’ll lose him forever.
“We’ve got to move our asses, honey.”
After making excuses, I pay Jasmine $40 and leave without signing up for the curse removal. Jasmine called twice the next day, leaving one voicemail, to follow up on our treatment plan.
I didn’t answer.
PSYCHIC THERESS
Location: King St. W and Bathurst St.
Tip: Two sources claim their encounters with Theress were exploitative, including one who paid $425 for spells and prayers to get a boyfriend back.
Setting: A teeny apartment wedged between a popular downtown bar and an Asian restaurant. A giant blue sidewalk sign welcomes passersby up a narrow staircase where a small table and two chairs are perched on the landing.
Emma’s reading: “You wanted to channel into your grandfather?” Theress asks, seated in front of a crystal ball.
Theress knows this is exactly why I’m back at her table. At a reading the day before, she told me that my upcoming marriage was under threat from “darkness.”
For $500, Theress would perform a “spiritual cleansing” to remove the dark energy around me.
But I was more intrigued by her offer to reach my grandfather who had passed away last year. Theress’s medium service costs $150 and lasts 45 minutes.
She asks me to write my grandfather’s name, date of birth and the date of his death. I also must write down one question for Granddad Ross.
For a few seconds, Theress closes her eyes, her fingertips perched on the crystal ball.
“I do feel his presence. . . He’s not at peace right now; he’s a bit upset,” she says. “There’s some unfinished business. There’s something that I feel that he wants you to do.”
Theress explains my grandfather’s spirit can’t rest because he believes my fiancé is hiding something.
“He don’t trust this man. That’s what your grandfather’s speaking to me. Your grandfather wants this darkness to be lifted off of you,” she intones.
One of the clearest signals she gets is about the spiritual scrub down I need.
“That darkness needs to be released from you so you can go forward in your life in your spirit and heart has gotta be released. . . . I want you to consider the spiritual energy work,” Theress says.
When I ask how she’s communicating with him she says, “I’m seeing an image in my mind.”
I glean a few answers about life on the other side: Granddad Ross is my angel; he’s watching over me from a better place where there are “mansions in the sky and no sickness.” He loves me.
Then, just like that, our reading is over. Theress says she can’t tell me anything more at this time.
But she reminds me as I leave to “think about the spiritual work.”
Rob’s reading: After I lay out my heartache, Theress asks for $75 for a reading and then turns to the tarot cards. What she finds is strikingly similar to what she had told Emma an hour earlier — it’s an almost verbatim patter dispensed to us both.
For example, her first warning to me comes seconds into my reading: “The ground is a bit shaky right now. You can’t make big decisions or try to make changes. There’s someone’s eyes watching you. . . Someone wants to pull the rug out.” At the same point during Emma’s reading, Theress said: “The ground is very shaky that you’re walking on. You can’t make haste, quick decisions. Someone is watching you, someone wants to see for the rug that’s being pulled from underneath your feet.”
Theress told both of us that the “shaky ground” would last until mid-April and we were advised to refrain from signing any important documents until then.
“You’ve got to be careful through documents,” she tells me. “Make sure you read the document very carefully before you make any decisions.”
To Emma, she says: “You’ve got to be a little bit careful the first three months that you sign with your name. . . Make sure. . . you read the fine print.”
My fictional girlfriend is being poisoned against me, Theress concludes, by people around her.
“Maybe her friends have been influencing her. It’s a man. I don’t know who this man is yet. They’re trying to pull something from underneath you. . . . Her mind is very sedated.”
Emma’s fiancé is apparently under the same spell: “His mind is sedated because someone is talking darkness in his ear. Someone is putting some kind of poison in his mind.”
In the end, Theress says my love life is beyond help, too dysfunctional for even the spirit world to fix.
“In love, you’re very weak,” she chastises. “You’re a Leo, you’re a little bit demanding, selfish. . . . If you let go of her . . . you’re never going to get married to anybody.”