SCAMMERS PREY ON THE DESPERATE
There’s no one type of person who falls for these scams. Victims interviewed included men and women of all races and cultures, all income brackets and professions. What they had in common when they spent money on the scams was desperation. All names have been changed. AMAL Amal is a 26-year-old sales professional from Toronto who began seeing a psychic when she was a teenager in 2007. She stopped five years later when she was a university student at York and the woman began demanding her OSAP money.
“My parents are from the Caribbean and we grew up around superstition. I grew up hearing about these things. I’m a very spiritual person and I do believe there are people who have gifts and can tap into things. People use it for good and people use it for bad.
“She just wanted money all the time to do all of these things and it didn’t make sense. She talked about selling me $800 candles she would light and pray for me. I said, ‘Are you insane?’ ” SAMANTHA Samantha is a 30-something sales professional. Many in her Guyanese community believe in some form of black magic. Desperate to rekindle a relationship, Samantha turned to three different psychics and spent nearly $9,000 over five years beginning in 2007. Two psychics told her that she was cursed and that while the man she loved wanted to be with her, another woman wanted him. One asked for $1,700 to be paid in instalments. The other was more ambitious — she asked for $6,600.
“I was very desperate. I was so in love. I struggled and made the payments. They ask for money for candles and incense to remove the darkness around me. I would pay a couple of hundred dollars at a time.” MARIAN Marian is a Toronto stockbroker who, between 2010 and 2012, was in seven car accidents, watched both of her children become severely ill, divorced her husband and lost her 13-year position at a major bank. When a Mississauga fortune teller told her she was cursed, her response was, “of course.” She spent about $5,000 on six fortune tellers between 2008 and 2014.
A devout Roman Catholic, Marian eventually became convinced that all things “occult” were the cause of her problems. She swore off fortune telling, burned her tarot cards and booked a flight with her sister to Vatican City. She was looking for an exorcist.
One of the psychics offered Marian a $1,000 package of special bath salts, an amulet and candles to rid her of her curse.
“You’re afraid of what’s going to happen next,” she says. “You live in fear. And, at that point, you look at how to rescue yourself.” ANTHONY Anthony, a 30-year-old high school teacher, “wasted” $2,000 on a psychic after a breakup five years ago. What began with small fees for readings, then hundreds of dollars for prayer candles, quickly became a scene from a horror film. He ended his visits.
“There was this girl I liked. Things fell apart and I wanted her back. He did a prayer thing over this water before I drank it and then told me to look up and gargle with it. I did what he told me. But when I spit on the piece of paper, there were all of these insects. It grossed me out completely. Centipedes and crawling bugs. I was just like, ‘That didn’t come out of me.’ He said, ‘Yes, it did.’ His reaction was like I was going to die. He said I was cursed. When I wasn’t looking, he obviously tossed these bugs onto the desk. Then he asked for money to lift the curse on me — $2,500. I never even got the girl back. I’m embarrassed to talk about it now.”