Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 1: The Psychic Readers Network Part I – CLEO 2020

Episode Date: August 29, 2020

Check out the newest show on the Last Podcast Network: FRAUDSTERS. This is episode one. And you can find Fraudsters right here on Spotify. We'll be back with Side Stories and Last Podcast on the Left next week. Hail yourselves!---It’s crime! It’s funny! It’s true-cromedy! In this pilot episode of Fraudsters, hosts Seena Ghaznavi and Justin Williams will take you back in time to revisit Miss Cleo and the Psychic Readers Network to find out how they swindled people out of millions, one fake reading at a time.

It's a fake. Hey, Fugazi, Fagazi, it's a wazzy, it's a woozy, it's a fairy dust. It doesn't exist, it's never landed, it is no matter. It's not on the elemental chart, it's not fucking real. Brothers and sisters, this evening my service concerned, none but my family. Hi, I'm Cena Ghasnavi. And I'm Justin Williams. This is Fraudsters, a podcast where we educate,

enlighten, and entertain you on Fraudsters from back in time to around the world. What's up, what's up, what's up? Oh my god. Fraudsters! Yeah! I'm Cena Ghasnavi, welcome to Fraudsters.

Hey, I'm Justin Williams, welcome to the show. This is us, this is our pilot episode. This is what's happening, baby, the newest thing coming. We are passionate about making fun of Fraudsters. Absolutely. One of the reasons I'm so happy we're doing this show is because I've seen all these fraud stories start coming around, especially with Theranos, the Fire Festival.

I think this is, I thought it was quintessentially American, and I thought this was capitalism at work, but really, the more I started reading and talking with you about it, we realized it's like, this is a humanities problem. This is a, the human condition lends itself to people that will just take advantage of others, and take advantage of others' vulnerabilities. And I think that is what really is going to drive this show.

When we're going to try to talk about the people that are the Fraudsters, right? So often we talk about the 2008 financial collapse in AIG and Lehman Brothers and all these places, who are the Lehman Brothers? Yeah. Who are the Lehman Bros? Who are those guys? But like, who are the people that were behind these things?

The people, and what makes them tick? What was happening in their brains? And we're going to do one episode every time we talk about a Fraudster. We're going to do one episode, it's just going to be you and me, just chit-chatting and going through a lot of research and kind of the story of this Fraudster. In another episode, we're going to try to talk about who that person was through the eyes of the victims

and try to interview those victims or get an expert, whether it's a journalist or a criminologist. We actually are friends with Dr. Michael Skiba, who's a, aka, the Dr. Fraud. He's a great guy that's been studying this stuff for two decades, more than two decades now, so he's got a lot that he can offer. And I think this is going to be a great way to kind of get an insight into what makes us so gullible, too.

That's not just about talking about who these people are, but like, why are we so stupid? Yeah, you know, like you said, it's a humanity problem. There's always going to be somebody that's going to be looking for something and someone that's going to falsely try to provide that for them. Do you think this is going to help at all? I hope it does, but it never does, you know what I mean? Because the part of the thing that makes Fraud possible

is always people's belief and doubling down on belief, right? Yeah, that's the way cults work or anything else, right? It's like, it doesn't matter what happened to me, I know it's still true, right? Exactly, and I think, you know, with the fraudster in chief in the Oval Office right now, there's a lot of fraud that we could talk about with Donald Trump and everything like that, but you guys have all heard this stuff before, so we'll probably wait to do those episodes on the big head marquee lineup ones.

But I think it's important to know that, like, if we can arm ourselves with a little bit more information on how we are able to be manipulated so easily, because we're not that evolved. No. I look at my hairy back and I realize I'm an ape. I just look at my Facebook feed, it's like, if you're posting dumb memes, it's like you're an adult posting like misleading political memes on the internet, dude.

And people buy into this, I think the internet has also become this collective tapeworm that has throughout all of our subconsciousness and that was just sucking the life force out of us and influencing us in a number of different ways. And the internet sort of helps facilitate fraud, right? Because you can always be connected with other believers on there. Very easily. And then also it gives them a direct pipeline to be like your phone now.

Remember when the internet started, they were like, hey, are you a lonely guy? Are you like a misfit? Well, the internet's a great place for you to build community. Yeah, and then all those people became Nazis. And then 4chan happened and then the world blew up. So I think, you know, our first fraudster is someone special that I think we all remember and love. Let's see if you can guess who it was.

Don't you really want to know? Okay, I was wondering who the father of my baby was. All right, let's take a look. The Miss Cleo DNA test. I'm solely searching for the father of your baby. Oh, it's the one that's very unpleasant. Okay. And he's also the one that had another girlfriend while he was sleeping with you.

Yes, he did. Yep, that's him. That's the daddy. Okay. But you knew that. I wasn't sure. I don't know how the baby looked just like him. Yes, he does. Yeah, so you were in denial because he has a funny little chin, doesn't he?

Yes, he does. Yeah, and the baby have that same little chin. Oh my God. Oh my God. The cards can reveal things that you will never see by yourself. Call me now for your free tarot reading. Call 1-800-980-8637. Okay, Justin, before I get into who this person was,

we've been doing this pilot episode and Henry has been helping us get it, like dial it in, get it right. And one of the things that he said was that you need one sentence, every second tops explaining who Miss Cleo was because you have to assume that your audience has no idea who she is. And I said, hey, Henry, hey, everybody knows who Miss Cleo is. And so I thought, okay, let me put it to the test. Let me go and ask people who Miss Cleo is because obviously I'm talking about this podcast.

I'm talking to my friends and saying, yeah, we're doing this podcast. It's called Fraudsters. Our first episode is going to be on Miss Cleo and they're like, who's Miss Cleo? And I'm like, what? Miss Cleo, you don't know who Miss Cleo is? And people are like, nah, who's Miss Cleo? And I asked more people, they're like, no, I don't know who Miss Cleo is. And I realized something, man.

We're old. Yeah. We are old, man. Yes, we are. We got that old state of mind that makes you think you're not old. Well, because we're like mid-level old. Yeah, we are just at that denial old stage. We're old enough to where we're creepy in the club,

but we're not sad at the club. Exactly. We're not sad at the club. But then after the club, we have a two-day hangover. Yeah. Yeah. So just so that we can just wrap this up very neatly for anybody, because this is 20 years ago. We're talking 2001.

We're talking like 2001, people born in the late 90s. You were like a single digit years old. So Miss Cleo purported herself to be a psychic. She was not a psychic. She was not Jamaican. She did not have a real Jamaican accent. She worked with this company called the Psychic Readers Network, and she faked this psychic reading business with the Psychic Readers Network

to defraud nearly a billion dollars from people over four years. She worked with this company. They had a fake 800 number that you heard in the commercial. Then they made you call back with a 900 number. Then they kept you on the phone for at least 15 minutes at 4.95 or whatever it was per minute. And they took your money. And anyone that called vulnerable people, they got hosed. Lies on top of lies on top of lies.

And that commercial was crazy. Do you think that was an actor to be the person calling? Uh, I would hope so. Wait. No, exactly. This is what's right. I think I actually think it was not an actor. Miss Cleo, you are very right.

Of course the guy that is not sticking around for my baby is unpleasant. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. It's just Miss Cleo, I just don't know what to do. I have another man. He's maybe the father. He's got a chin. Your baby got a chin like the daddy.

Oh my God. How did you know? Oh, and your mom also had a chin. Oh, she's got a chin. She does have a chin. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And her mother had a chin. Now see, this is where the psychic power tells me about the chin.

Everyone has a chin and that chin is the negative energy. I was just talking about his chin. Oh, yes, yes, yes, right. You must purge this negative energy from your house. The chin is the chi, but you must think about it this way. Have you ever seen a man without a chin? That's who you should marry. Oh my God.

Seek this man out, but stay on the line. Okay, I'm going to put you on speakerphone. Okay, great. Miss Cleo, your Ray Del Harris is actually her real name. And she was born in 66 in Inglewood, California, raised in a Catholic Caribbean family, and went to an all girls boarding school. Let's take this step by step. How did Miss Cleo, the psychic readers network, access resource services, how did they go

about conducting this fraud? It all starts with that initial commercial that you saw, and it starts with the 1-800 number where they say, call now for your free three minutes of a reading. You ever get a reading in three minutes, Justin? I've never had my psychic reading be only three minutes long. The only thing I've done in three minutes is make love to my sweet wife. Oh, that's very nice. That's very nice.

There's nothing you could do, especially if you are conducting or connecting with the dead, or the spiritual world. Really? Three minutes? Well, she has a high speed connection to the spirit realm. She has fiber connection. She has fiber connection to the spirit world. That's great.

Thank you, Miss Cleo, for just being so efficient with your time. And now, in later interviews and stuff, she said she didn't think there was a fraud here. They took advantage of her, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if you're an actual psychic, you need more than three minutes. I don't really care. Well, because sometimes the spirits are also busy when you call. They got other people to haunt and stuff. Elvis is like, hey, I'm talking to Jimi Hendrix.

I'll get back to you in 25 minutes. Exactly. And they're like, who knows if 25 minutes in the spirit world, how many minutes is that in the real world? How do you know? I don't know how you convert spirit time to earth time. Yeah. That's a completely different thing.

And what time zone are they on up there, too? Who knows? It's like Mount Olympus. Yeah, they call them like, hey, man. Trying to sleep. Do you know what time it is in the spirit realm? Some of us got clouds to play harp. I got to sleep for the next 150 years.

Come on now. Yeah, come on. So the 1-800 number, you would call this number and you'd be like, all right, I'm ready to talk to Ms. Cleo. They're like, no, you can't talk to Ms. Cleo. You got to call this number back. And it's a 1-900 number. We all know 1-900 numbers you have to pay for.

So you would call back and they would still say you get your free first three minutes. But here's what they would do is that first, the first thing they would do was keep you on the phone as long as possible. Classic phone scam. Let's keep you on the phone longer than three minutes and start charging you 495 a minute. So they keep you on the phone. They're getting your name, your address, your phone number, your credit card info, all of this stuff they're trying to get from you on the phone.

And the fine print on the commercial even says, you know, the first three minutes are free and this is for entertainment use only. But as we found out, no one was really calling for entertainment purposes. They were calling because they had financial problems. They had romantic problems. They had career problems. Some people are just lonely. Lonely people.

I guess that's the closest thing to entertainment a lonely person could get. People need a connection. Yeah. I don't even know if it's bored though. Like loneliness is like a level of vulnerability that's different than like bored, right? Exactly. And wanting to be entertained. Yeah.

And the internet kind of like in its nascent stages in that point as far as like how we are connected to each other. It was only chat rooms back then. AOL and sit messenger baby. That's it. You know, you didn't even have the idea of an in-cell yet because you could still call a 1900 number and connect with someone. Yeah.

So when you call this line, you would, if you got an actual psychic, which they would, and I use that with big quotes, they would just have a script that they would follow and they would try to keep you on for at least 20 minutes. In fact, the psychics themselves, and again, big air quotes on the psychic thing, they actually were instructed, stay, keep these people on the line for as long as possible. Yeah. No different than like a Wolf of Wall Street, right? Telling people, keeping people on the line.

Yeah. Yeah. Getting their confidence, getting their information. Yeah. Exactly. And so if you keep someone on the line, in fact, the psychics, if they fell below and average a 15 minutes per call, they could have their pay docked, fewer calls would be inbound to them.

All of these things would start happening. So they were actually in a place where they were being subject to some tough stuff as well. They were actually really worried that they could be losing their job. So imagine that you're just trying to make some extra cash, you're like, oh, I can be a fake psychic. This is not a big deal for me. I can handle this.

But then all of a sudden, all this other stuff starts happening, right? They're like, you know what any shady organization needs on top of being run as a complete fraud is also sweatshop like pressure on the employees. Exactly. So it's not just the people that are recipients of the calls that are being defrauded. It's like the actual workers themselves. And so get this, not only were they taking your mail information and all that stuff, but they're starting to send you direct mailers after that.

And it's stuff that says, urgent, Ms. Cleo has urgent news for you. You must call in right now. So when you call, you start thinking, oh my God, I got a call right now and you call up this 1,900 number and they're just like, all right, let's ask, how are you feeling today? And they just slowly kind of draw you out in the call. And sometimes they would even refuse to stop the reading if you're like, hey, man, let's speed it up.

They'd be like, no, no, no, you have to wait for the spirits to come in. I feel it's going to take another 15 minutes for the spirits to really get going here. Yeah, so it's just really, really unbelievable. And so the psychics themselves are trying to keep you on for at least 12 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes. But if they held you on the phone for 60 minutes, they dropped the call immediately. At 499 a minute, that's nearly $300 for an hour call. And so between the years 1997 and 2002, Ms. Cleo and the Psychic Readers Network made

over a billion dollars. One billion dollars. Reading someone's address back to them slowly. So when they were on the call, so you can imagine like you're on the call, you're like, oh man, what am I going to do if they put me on hold? They're putting you, you're getting charged, you're getting worried, you get back on the phone. The psycho could be like, okay, don't worry, we're going to credit you back the time.

But if you hang up, you'll be charged for the time. So just outright lies. Yeah. And it's just crazy. They told these callers like, oh, the free minutes won't expire. Oh, we'll give you, we'll give you some more free minutes. You just got to hang on. And obviously none of that was true.

They weren't even trying to be sneaky. So if you also, after all this, you get your bill and it's through the phone company, AT&T's the carrier for this. So you get your bill and you see it's like ridiculous. How do you dispute the charge? You got to call the 1,900 number back with a fucking brilliant scam. It's just, okay, you call the 1,900 number back, they're like, okay, well, you got to hold on a second.

So now you're getting billed to dispute your billing. New boss, old boss. So now people are sitting there and they're just wondering, okay, what am I going to do? And they call AT&T now. And AT&T would be like, all right, I will give you a credit for your account. But then once the psychic readers network figured that out, they would actually go back and send you collection notices. They would go after you directly.

And this is where it gets super insidious. All these people with financial problems, with romantic problems, with career problems, with just vulnerability issues in general, start getting notices that their bill is being sent to collections after they had already been credited by their own telephone company. So this is where it's so, so disgusting. And they threatened your credit. And like, man, you threatened someone's credit in America, you might as, you're threatening their life.

That's the key, man. If you don't have access to debt in this economy, you're going to die. What kind of, that's the weird thing about capitalism. It's like, they want you to make all this money. They want you to efficiently use resources and they want you to just be in debt. There's nothing more American than being in debt. Keep your wired into the system, baby. That's why I only pay for cash in all transactions.

Bought my house with a briefcase full of cash. So every time someone would call in, they were just shelling out cash all the time. And apparently Ms. Cleo says she was just supporting these other psychics that were training. She was training new psychics. She was just doing what she thought was right. She was like the Yoda of psychics. She ran a Jedi Academy.

You know, she distributed her powers evenly. What's also great is that as a psychic, you don't need any particular sort of, you could be trained. Like it's like you go to HR, that you get a packet, they show you some videos and stuff like that. It's not, you know, it's not a power even in that admission, right? Yeah. Well, is this like a weird muscle?

You got an exercise? No. Yeah. You could just, you know, go to the, you know, psychic training session. I kind of believe in psychics. I believe that there are people in the world that are able to communicate with different energy that is out there. I know it may sound weird, but I actually can't deny that it happens.

I think the number of people that claim to be able to do it is probably like.0000001% of the actual people that can actually do it. You know? Yeah. I don't know. What do you think? Do you think it actually exists? The psychics exist?

No. No? No. Why not? You don't think we can touch into, tap into a different plane? Because if somebody had that power and had that power for real, they would be a god. They would be a god. They would be a god among me.

But what's a king to a god? No. But what's a psychic to a god? But I mean, I think it's one of those things, kind of like believing in god in a way, where it's like, I don't know if he's up there, but I know that I don't know that he's not up there. You know what I mean? It's like, there's a higher power of some kind.

You know, when I've done ayahuasca, I found that there was a good energy, there was an energy in the room, and it was the closest thing to a religious experience I've ever had. And I could feel that energy. And that just got me thinking at the very least, there's got to be someone out there that is just tapped into that. Don't you have like an aunt or a grandmother that just like feels things differently? No, but I do have an aunt who's a fraudster.

What kind of fraudster is she? Oh, always like, let me pick this up, let me do this for you. And it's always a way to facilitate theft. Oh, of what? Of like money? Anything. Yeah, still anything. Still silverware?

Yeah, yeah. Loss and evasives? Let me go drop this thing off, help you out real quick. Yeah, help you out. Do you guys bring it up at Thanksgiving ever? Uh, we had to stop letting her around stuff. Oh. So that's-

Don't we always come up missing? Wait, but that's like a really good point that there is this impulsive or continuous nature to a lot of fraudsters. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That once they do it, it's like you can- Pringles, you can't stop. Pathological. One of the great things about the show when we do the profiles of these people is getting a sense of, okay, how do they get involved in this?

How do they get in too deep? And then how can they, a lot of times, not stop even once they've been caught? That to me is like my favorite part, where it's like even after the exposure, they can't stop hustling. Exactly. That idea that no matter what, it's the classic Republican technique, never say sorry, which is just like dedicate your life to being right. And in this sense, when you're a fraudster, it's you're absolutely right.

You're going to see that in the fire festival. You're going to see that in Theranos. You're going to see that Bernie Madoff eve. So what's crazy to me too is that when the Federal Trade Commission finally came in and made a ruling against it, they filed a criminal complaint, they fined them $5 million. And of that $1 billion that they had coming in, they said 500 million of that you're not allowed to collect. And a lot of those, that money that they said was theirs, was just notices for collection

that they had sent out to everybody. So the FTC just came in and said, okay, you can't take half of that. That's like going to a bank, robbing them of all this money, and then the bank coming back and saying, hey, you just have to give back half of it, all right? You could take the other half. You've already defrauded people the other half, but okay, give us $10 more back. It's a pretty sweet deal. And I think that that's probably going to be an emerging theme that we see as doing

this podcast with every episode, right, is like this degree of almost like sort of sort of government complicity and allowing these schemes to be profitable enough to where they're worth the risk. Because if you prosecute them too hard, then you almost are like diving into this part of capitalism that is understood to be fraudulent, or have agreed that this is like the buyer-beware type of thing. It's like it's your freedom to be defrauded. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's what it means to be American. It's like, yeah, we can't do that because then we'll have to take down all the other commercials that are selling stuff, Bowflex. Yeah. Reverse mortgages. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on. Give me a...

Shamwows. Give me... Whoa, whoa, whoa. Shamwows. That's... You've crossed the line. But that's the crazy thing. People lost thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, and yeah, maybe it's on them,

you know? But the freedom speech means we have the freedom to be manipulated, and all of these people got manipulated. And there's also something to be said for intentionally deceptive and confusing business practices. That should be illegal just in general. And that's exactly what the Federal Trade Commission came at them with. One part was this billing practice of like harassing people through direct mailers.

One part was this 1-800 number, 1-900 number, bait and switch. And that was the other huge thing. You can't do the small print thing, say something's free, and then immediately charge them for it. That's the way the government's like, I don't think you can do that. That's not going to be right. She eventually became an actor. That was how she kind of got into her whole character work, and she was a playwright.

I use quotation marks around playwright, but she tried to be this person that she wasn't. I mean, I know actors are constantly trying to embody a different person. And then there's method acting. There's the Stanislavski method or the Meisner techniques, if you will. And then there's, you'd be a fake psychic. She was born, she grew up in California, and then she moved to Seattle, where she ended up becoming a playwright and writing some plays about women's empowerment, which is how she got a grant from a nonprofit advisory council, the Langston Hughes Nonprofit Advisory

Council. And I think what's amazing about that is that Langston Hughes is one of the greatest poets, an amazing African-American poet that spoke to like the crimes and atrocities and like the love and the hate and all of these different subject matters that really brought this entire country up. And yet they gave money to someone and then they were defrauded by her. Yeah. It's always like that because it shows you there's no shame, right?

It's like, yeah, Langston uses the legacy. I'll steal from that. He's shaking his head in his grave right now. Yeah. But you know what's amazing, she wrote these plays and then she started making agreements with the performers and they made separate agreements with all of them. And so she took this money and there are quotes. It's amazing that she basically told everyone that she was going to pay them.

They did this play, they produced the play. And so what's amazing is that actors will still work for no money, right? I guess. Yeah. People with dreams. People with... Exactly. This is the bringer show mentality.

Well, yeah. Well said. This is the bringer show mentality and she said after the production was over, she individually told people, hey, I'm going to get you this money, but I'm battling bone cancer right now. Ouch. That's terrible. Using bone cancer.

It's like, I love how bad it is. It's moving into a positive African-American space in Seattle, a place where there's not a lot of that. Oh, come on. Black people in Seattle, millions, a hotbed of African-American culture there. Yeah. It sort of makes a lot. The most famous black guy from Seattle.

But yeah, you get into a community that's trying to do a positive thing in a safe space. You defraud that under the name of Langston Hughes and then you use bone cancer. It's like the tripling down on being a bad person, right? I mean, where's Sean Kemp when you need him to dunk on her? Where are you Sean Kemp? Well, dunking point at her. Exactly. Yeah.

And so she only stole, it was only like a few thousand bucks or like $4,000 that she defrauded people out of that she didn't pay people from. And what's amazing is that the, you know, the nonprofit was like, should we go after them? But it's a nonprofit. They would have to get a private investigator. They have to get a lawyer. They have to go to court cases.

They would have to make sure she would show up to court. All that already, even before you even go to court, that's already more than the money she stole. Yeah. Absolutely. And that's the first taste that a fraudster gets. Yeah. And once they don't pursue it, right?

It's like, okay, I had a con and I got away with it. Right? Yeah. If there was $20 on the street, you pick it up? Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I do too.

Right? But there can't be a homeless person around when I pick it up. What if the homeless person is looking the other way? Maybe then. If the homeless person sees me pick up money off the ground, I've got to give it to them. Yeah. If we make eye contact and acknowledge it, that's just it. Slow eye contact.

I'm like, all right. All right. I'll get you a sandwich. This is happening. Yeah. But I guess the idea that I'm trying to make here, or the point here, is people get money all the time and then they have to distribute it to other people to build something. And that's what the entertainment business is run off.

If I make videos or small digital shorts or anything like that, people give you a bunch of money and you're responsible for that. That first moment where you get all that money, it's got to be like, I could just run away. I could just do whatever the fuck I want. What do you think it is about us, you and me, specifically right now in this moment, that we would say, no, we're going to be honest people. We're going to actually pay these people. Well, I think it's like caring about humanity as part of it, like basic humanity.

And then it's also like having some idea of sustainability. If I do this, I'm finished in this. But for somebody like this, they're like, oh, I'll do this and then move on to the next hustle. And I think for me too, it's also the psychic pressure of feeling shame, having done the wrong thing. Yeah. Right?

That the cross you would have to bear, like when I think about the Bernie Madoffs of the world or any of these fraudsters that do these long form Ponzi schemes, or even Miss Cleo, who went through and did this character for decades, decades, you stay in character. Honestly, Donald Trump, the fact that he's been in this character of a complete fraud for so long is amazing to me. I cannot pause. I can barely keep something to myself for a day, let alone if I do it for a decade. That to me is so unbelievable.

Like I understand terrorism. I understand terrorism. You got indoctrinated when you're a kid. Some screw went loose. You got brainwashed, blah, blah, blah. You're an insane person. You want to go kill yourself and everyone around you. I get it.

You bought into some sort of weird narrative about that. But if you're a fraudster, you know exactly what you're doing is wrong. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, do you think she's a sociopath or just a psychopath? Sociopath. I don't know. Don't click that button. That level of shame, none of that clicks.

Yeah. No emotion. No emotion. Stone cold. Look you right in your face and we'll say, I'm dying of bone cancer. As you defrauded African-American charity and African-American theater group. It's cold-blooded as an African-American. Exactly.

Thank you. Yeah. Exactly. As an African-American. It's so frustrating to see that happen with a fake Jamaican accent nonetheless. Yeah. I got anxious. This steals from her own mom, man.

You know what I mean? It's just never a sociopath, man. Yeah. It sucks that it hits close to home for you. Yeah. Steal from your own mom. Seen it. That's crazy.

Take the dentures out. Take the dentures. It's got a little piece of gold on it. They'll sell it to me. Yeah. Cash for gold. Yeah. Yeah.

Just like, you know, it's like people can't stop. And even your conversations, they're working to you. You know, it's like, hey, what's up? Hey, how are you doing? You like, wait, let me get you some shoes or something like that. It's like, I'm your nephew. Exactly. Stop trying to work me.

So wrong. Yeah. It's messed up, but it's real. It's so real. And I think what, what she did was just a classic thing that happens to so many people where they have the opportunity, right? It's an environmental thing. We don't know necessarily maybe she was broke at the time.

Maybe she really needed that money to do something else that she wanted to do. So what are, there are like environmental factors that could feed into that. But again, most people would just say, yeah, man, there's environmental factor. I could use this money for myself because I'm broke or whatever, but at the same time, I can't do that. Yeah, yeah. I'm not going to be a piece of shit. So after Seattle, she goes to Florida, a hotbed of fraudsters, and she joins this psychic

readers network as a psychic under the name Ms. Cleo. And Cleo was actually a name from the play that she did in Seattle. So there's like this great character backstory. She's already written the character description. Yeah. And this is one of her greatest works right now. It's from her production of Waiting to Exhale that was in Seattle. Yeah, the character Cleo.

And it's amazing to me that she was able to do all of this. And we go to an office job, right? We both have jobs where we go to and we have bosses. Everyone's got a boss of some kind. Wouldn't you love your boss to come up to you and say, hey, you're doing such a great job, Justin. I mean, we're going to promote you to like exposition, right? She went to the psychic readers and they looked at this fucking character, this fake

Jamaican accent, and we're like, yes, you're it. You are the answer. This is the one. And that Jamaican accent is so authentic. And do you think she let down the veil to them? Oh, no, I think she came in totally method. Totally method. That's what I'm thinking.

That's why I think she might be a psychopath. Yes. And that if your brain circuitry is that fucked, that you're just that's where you're going to be from now on. She came in Robert Downey Jr. from Tropic Thunder. Oh, God. Just in character. Did you like that?

I loved it. I loved it as well. This is funny. This is one of the funniest things that's ever been done in a movie. That's great. He was amazing in that. Yeah. I mean, you know, and I think this is like if Robert Downey Jr. never stopped being

that character. Yeah. Yeah. If he never stopped, that's what this would be. So she joins the Psychic Readers Network and here's where this whole Miss Cleo persona gets created. And what I love about this as a lawyer is that this character is a character just like a character in a movie or like a comic book character, like Iron Man or something is owned

by Marvel. Miss Cleo was a character built within the Psychic Readers Network with the help of these guys, their cousins, Peter Stoltz and Steve Federer. And these two guys, very tough to find any information on them, but Peter Stoltz has a LinkedIn page and he said that he was president of the Psychic Readers Network back in the early aughts and now he does website design. I like it because it's like, I imagine this guy had a job interview. It's like, what are your qualifications for the position?

Well, I actually ran a billion dollar a year telephone scam. You remember Miss Cleo? Yeah, it was great. Yeah. We only had to pay 500 million in fines. Exactly. That was it. Yeah.

It was just money. It was just like a balance sheet change. Yeah. We'll get to that in a second. But I mean, she was at this place, she develops this character. They basically own it and they promote her to now being the face of the Psychic Readers Network and the parent company Access Resource Services has done a lot of these different psychic lines before.

They had other shell companies that were also psychic driven. They had other ethnic psychic that didn't work as well as the Jamaica Miss Cleo. Welcome everybody to Rajni Psychic Network. The African-American Psychic Network didn't work well. Hey man, you got, what's your dad's name? What year was he born? Oh man, I don't know man. She cheating on you dog.

Oh really? Yeah, she cheating on you. Yeah, I think she is. Yeah man. I'm from Inglewood. Me too. Yeah, yeah. This is the hood psychic network.

Oh my god, you've really helped me out here. Motherfucker, stay on the line. Okay. Yeah, so that one didn't work as well. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So they had all of these terrible psychic networks but this one, Welcome to Russian Psychic Network.

Excuse me, please. Stay on the line. I like the idea. In Russia, psychic, in Russia, you'll see psychic, psychic see you, but the country. You'll see outside your window. You'll see me with gun pointed at your face. Do not move. I am telling you your future, you'll be dead.

Stay online. Yeah. So yeah, a lot of failed characters, but they found the one with Ms. Cleo. They found her. And this is what I find interesting about Ms. Cleo, right, as someone who still did the character to her death, right? And so the way that she's treated even after the lawsuit, after everything's revealed, the way she stayed in character and the way people responded positively to that character

is. So positive. If you go online and things like that, she's almost seen as like this pop culture icon. You know what I mean? I want to talk about this interview she did with this woman, Gabby Bendle. Love Gabby Bendle. Gabby, Gabby's just some fan of psychics in general. She did a YouTube show, somehow she was got connected with Ms. Cleo, but at this point,

she is now not Ms. Cleo. She is the seer, S-E-E-R, the seer. By the way, good to actually know the number of aliases that Ms. Cleo had to use in her life. She went by Del Harris, she went by Ms. Cleo, then she was the seer, formerly known as Ms. Cleo, Ray Paris, you Ray Cleo-Milly Harris, you Ray Cleo-Leal, Del Harris, you Ray Paris, Cleo-Milly Harris, Cleo Harris. And Kamala Harris.

So many. If you have more aliases than the Wu-Tang Clan, that's a good sign you might be a fraud. It's a good sign. Yeah, so she was doing this interview with Gabby Bendill, and this is actually early in 2016 she did this interview. She ended up passing away in July of that year of cancer. Ironically enough, this is what she used as an excuse to defraud the people from the Langston Hughes Project.

She ended up dying of the very same thing. I don't know if that's karmic, but if you're a psychic, maybe, I don't know, you see that coming? Oh! Oh! Oh! Yeah, it's like, come on now, come on now. So she did this kind of like, very, like, it's like a 45 minute interview.

Varium death. What I like about it is if you notice if you watch the entire interview, we're just gonna do clips, but it's 45 minutes, it is actually still a commercial. This is after the, you know, after the court ruling, after all these things have dissolved, after you had to change your name, after all these things, she's still hustling all this stuff. And it's important to note that she can't go by Ms. Cleo because the psychic reader's network owns the intellectual property of that name.

And that is really something to think about. She sold everything. She got money for everything that she did. This Cleo character was from one of her plays, a character in it was named Cleo. And she took that and made it into a character. And just like Iron Man is owned by Marvel, the psychic reader's network owns the character Ms. Cleo. So now she has to, she had to go by the seer, which was very strange.

And yes, she still was just hawking items. And again, if you're a real psychic, do you need to sell that much merch? You don't need to sell, yeah, a lot of merch and a lot of it's not even psychic related merch. Again, it's like finding other, I mean, I think the listeners will get a sense of this, right? It's things marketed towards vulnerable populations. Yeah. It's just anyone that needs help that feels vulnerable, that feels lonely, that feels

isolated, that needs help. That doesn't understand the way expertise works. Yeah. Or just, you know, work. Yes. I don't know. So, Justin, she wrote this book, she wrote many books. We have one of the books here in the studio.

Where is it? Do you have it over there? Do you have it over there? Yes. I have Keeping It Real, a practical guide for spiritual living by Ms. Cleo. Let's read. I think we have a little segment from it. I just want to, we just want to like hear one little bit of this.

Maybe you could go to the one that I marked. I don't know if that's even actually a good one. There's such gold all over the place with this that I think it's good to just remember it. Now, she sold this book on Amazon and I think it's like a lot of advice. And to your point earlier, you've said this, this is like how they get you is they just make it generic so that your brain fills in the rest. Yeah, absolutely.

It's like, hey, I need marital advice and it's like, well, the thing to remember about a relationship is that it's about compromise. Ooh, that's a real good point. But in that compromise, you should also make sure you assert your own identity. That's a good counterpoint. So to your, to your point, exactly right. Thank you for setting this up. So here's a quick example.

This is again, from keeping it real, a practical guide for spiritual living by Ms. Cleo. This is obviously put out by radar communications. It looks like it's another offshoot of access resource services. She says, here's an example. A young lady looks at her boyfriend and says, I want to get out of the house. The boyfriend doesn't respond. She continues, let's go get something to eat. It matter where I just want to get out of the house.

So the boyfriend takes her to the park for a couple of corn dogs and a view of the sunset. The girlfriend gets mad and calls him cheap. Why? Because she wanted to go out to dinner at a specific restaurant and the evening is ruined. Option. Honey, I would really like to go out to dinner. I love the crab cakes at the pier, crab cakes at the pier. Let's go there.

The young lady has clearly communicated what she wants. It's just like. This is really good advice. It turns out when you want to eat a specific restaurant, you should indicate that when asking. Yeah. Or else you'll be taken to the park for corn dogs. Is this really what's happened?

Is this really how far we've fallen as a society, as a species? I'm glad that someone wrote a book that let me know that if I want a specific item from a specific restaurant, I should indicate that. But then Gabby being the hard hitting journalist that she is for psychics asked her about politics and she actually revealed. This was again early in 2016. This was, we didn't really have Trump coming up yet. She really was actually commenting on the previous election that had happened where Obama was

still in office and she was asking about the primaries and who she basically wanted to win in that. Are you for Hillary? Oh! That's awful. That's awful. That's awful. No.

I'm sorry. I didn't vote race. I didn't vote for our current president and no, I did not because I didn't vote race. I didn't think that it was all in the right place. I was actually a John Edwards girl and then of course, you know, he turned out to be a real disappointment. Wait, so I'm going to stop it right there. Oh my God.

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Did he end up being a fraud or something like that?

Was he lying? Was he lying to America? Was he giving a feeling of security and safety to everyone while actually doing the complete opposite and being a complete monster the whole time? Did his wife have cancer and he was cheating on her? And he was also stealing campaign funds. Stealing campaign funds. He hired this documentarian to do all of these videos for it.

He was banging her the whole time. I think he had a kid with her maybe. I don't even remember all the stories. And what I also like about it too is that the psychic didn't see any of that coming. She saw those candidates, like the three of them. She's like, I went with the worst one because that's how strong my psychic powers are. It is like the quintessent, like Republicans, they have Nazis. Democrats, we have the liangest liars like John Edwards.

That is the sin of the Democratic Party, that they will just glad hand you and the lizard tongue comes out and they will whine and dine you and then all of a sudden it's like where are the bodies buried? Yeah, the kind of limousine liberal guy, like he's like, you know, John Edwards remember his anti-poverty was his, which is like this really great worthy issue that didn't get, that basically fell by the wayside until basically Bernie Sanders came along. But yeah, he was doing that, but he was also like kind of like stealing and violating the public trust in all these ways, you know?

Again, I think, you know, I just realized we're gonna have to do John Edwards. Yeah. We're gonna have to do John Edwards, that's gonna be a companion episode, John Edwards and Ms. Cleo. One of the best heads of hair in the business. Yeah, he did have great hair though. What a great head of hair on that. Man, he was like, if you were to like invent a politician in a movie, it would have been

John Edwards. Yep, yep. I'm surprised Netflix hasn't done like a serial killer spinoff of like John Edwards murdering a bunch of people, but also running for office. But then she ended up talking about her past, you know, she did come out as a lesbian, she did participate in Pride as well. And I think that must have been tough because she does claim to have Caribbean roots. She, you know, we did find out that she was raised Catholic in a Caribbean family, tough

to say which Caribbean country it was. I'm guessing it's not Jamaica though. Her bio would indicate Jamaica if it was part of her gimmick, but just to claim Caribbean country, it's like, I got this accent from Aruba. It's just like, it's just another, yeah, it's just. Yeah, I remember speaking from Barbados, I remember I took a trip to Jamaica with my wife and I remember being there and we were at this resort and we were at the bartender there is a Jamaican dude, obviously, singing all these American songs.

He was doing like Leonard Skinner and Bob Dylan and John Denver and all of these things. And he's like requests. And I went Jimmy Cliff and he just put his hand up and he goes, no. So it's like even a Jamaican has that much respect for their own culture in their own country where they're just like, no, man, I'm not going to just like perform our country's greatest artists for you fucking tourists. I don't care who you are. And then here is Miss Cleo just destroying the idea of Jamaican culture and identity

through their accent, which is so specific and just commodifying it, commoditizing it. And going in and out of it. Yes. That's what I also like about it. Yeah. You can tell she's from Inglewood doing separate. If you listen closely, you can see she just loses her accent for like sometimes significant portions of the interview.

But she just adds, I am I to it or like it's like, it's like if you had like four Shaba ranks records and you were trying to then go be a Jamaican, that's what she's doing. So this is a clip of her actually talking about those roots. This is a good one. Because when I made that decision, it ultimately meant that many of my family that were more conservative Jamaicans were more than likely going to cut me off and they did. And so there was probably only a surprise with one or two that did not cut me off with the balance at nieces and nephews that I haven't seen since then.

Really? Oh, what are you going to do? I knew that and we understood that. Even in this day and age, it just it shocks me, honestly. Well, in Jamaica is still a very, the Caribbean for the most part is still a very, very conservative religious vibration. And so religion struggles in many parts of the world with just acceptance of anybody. So that being said, but, you know, you have to live your own truth, you know, otherwise

you die, somebody else's lie. Wow. That's not what I'm feeling. How ironic is that you have to live your truth or you die, someone else's lie. Yeah. And also like, yeah, maybe your family would stop going to talk to you after you conducted one of the nation's largest frauds against America. Yeah, it's not even that it's a good, yeah, it's like, I bet you it's not even, I bet

you it's that she probably owes them $500. It starts at the family level, someone who does these scams and does it to the lengths to use. And, you know, it's also interesting, right? Like when you compare the coming out and things like that, it's also sort of interesting too because then it roots her in a community that's looking for acceptance again. It's in the way that she starts off in the black community. Then she sort of becomes a West Indian when it's sort of convenient, then she becomes

like a lesbian. I mean, I don't know whether true sexuality was, but I'm just saying there's a little bit of a pattern there for people. People are not going to turn away other positive black people, which made her, I bet you, I bet you she was Afrocentric pro African American black power at that theater in Seattle. It was also that Seattle is also interesting because it's a small black community. Exactly. When you defrauded the Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center in Seattle, the sad part about

this is that when you lie this much, even the stuff that may be your own vulnerability, when your own truth comes out, it's tough for anyone to believe, it's tough for anyone to take you seriously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so here we are judging this person right now because she's just lied about nine, what if this is the one thing she was actually being honest and truthful about, but yet it doesn't fucking matter because she lied that much. It's like the Sopranos when Tony asked Big Pussy on the boat, did she even fucking exist?

So and then it's just so frustrating when you use these kind of systematic vulnerabilities of people and then pray on them and then try to sell them your merch. And then this is one of the things that she goes back to again and again in this interview. She just goes back to selling these things. She's got an app now, she's got all of these things that she wants to sell people. Let's just go to that real quick. She talks about that here. And the other thing we haven't touched on, which is very high tech, you have an app,

your own app. Oh my goodness. Yes. Oh God, this is so high tech. It's almost so high tech right over my head. Um, yes. No, I downloaded it. It's super easy to get.

I went to the app store. Right. You know, I have my iPhone and I put the Seer and then it's FKA, so it's known as Miss Leo. Right. And it comes up and through that, people can connect with you. Absolutely. All right, hold on, hold on, hold on.

People can connect with you through the app. Yeah. Is that, is that just the exact same scam she did for the hotline is that she told everyone, here she is, probably with a cancer diagnosis already, right? She knows that she has cancer, I'm guessing because she died not too long after this, but she is sitting here doing the exact same thing in just a different medium. Yeah, absolutely. It's the same thing.

Like you go into this app and then somebody's randomly writing to you, some random person in the same way when you were calling to talk to Miss Cleo, you're talking to Steve, you know what I mean? Yeah, you're talking to someone and like what ever, at this point with how the internet works and how an app could work, you could be just typing with someone with anybody. No way to verify it. It's just hilarious. It's like, oh, I like it too because Miss Cleo is just like forgotten that she has an

app almost when she's like, oh yeah, that, yeah, so high tech, it's even over my head. Yeah. It's like, oh, but by the way, I totally respond to every message. Exactly. Every message. Yeah. Every message. I have no idea what an app is, but I also respond to every message on it.

Hold on. Okay. So here we go. For up until probably just about seven months ago, I was not available or accessible for people to actually reach out and say like a reading. Everything was very private. Would you still do? Which I still do.

I have an amazing international base, which I absolutely love them, but I thought it would be nice to make myself available to more people. What's funny is I think again, people aren't really sure where I'm at and there are so many people online that claim to be me, you know, or versions of me and whatever. So it's very, I think people just think, oh, that's not Miss Cleo. She wasn't a real person. She just, phew. Which I wish I could.

That would be fabulous. No. No. I mean, just come back and go. You know what I'm saying? Right, right. Like going invisible kind of thing. Right.

But it's all good. We're making them aware. So through that, people can get readings. They can get readings. They can get readings. Technology. Absolutely. Say no show.

It's a direct link to the Sears channel. You keep up with everything. You can get the Sears swag. We have t-shirts. We have a few coffee mugs. We have a 2016 tour hot. You can reach. And the calendar.

And the calendar. You can get the calendar. The calendar here in a minute will be kind of obsolete unless people just want the photography. Is that your photography? It is. Every photo in the calendar was hand selected by me, was taken by me. And so that was really a labor of love. You have got to be kidding me.

T-shirts, mugs. Merch. A calendar that she picked the photo. They were curated by me and taken by me. It's just, just go fuck yourself. They all look like screen savers. Again. It's just flying toast, flying Jamaican toasters.

It's just disgusting what she did here. This Gabby Bendle person, what the hell is wrong with you? You're just being into it. I love it. I love it. Just like, it's great. I downloaded it and like, she's, yeah, she's just like the perfect mark though, right? And how about the YouTube comments on this video?

Phenomenal. Yeah, yeah. It was just all people saying this is amazing. We're so sad she passed away though. She was such a, she was a truth teller. And all of these other comments get voted up, voted up, voted up, thumbs up, thumbs up. And one person's like, this Jamaican accent is a fraud. Downvote.

All right. Didn't this woman defraud hundreds of callers out of thousands of dollars and stuff like that, right? No one cares. Yeah. No, no upvotes for that. No one cares. And then she did all of these kind of like strange commercials and all these different

things. We talked about the French toast commercial that she did, but she also did this thing with Comedy Central, which I found to be phenomenal. It was like a commercial for a company that had writers from Comedy Central. Well, let's just, let's listen to that real quick here. What was it called? Benefits Cosmetics? Yeah.

That was awesome with Jolly Lawrence and Shannon Daughtery. Oh, they're. Hilarious. You know what? The writers for that were just a hoot and a couple of them came from Comedy Central, so they just gave it lots of fun. Yeah. So she threw the joys of working with Comedy Central.

Sorry. What were you going to say? Nothing. I, there's nothing. I mean, I have friends that work at Comedy Central, no one says it's a joy. But it's like, what the fuck? So you can imagine there's two like probably new writers, maybe they're probably in the marketing team at Comedy Central.

They got hired to do some branded content or something. Yeah. And you know, this cosmetic company comes in and says, we want to do a funny video for the internet with Jolly Lawrence and Shannon Daughtery and Ms. Cleo. Oh my God. That's what, you know what that was? I was going, hey, we need to get some celebrity driven content, but we have a $100 budget. That's what that is.

So let's listen to just a little bit. I cut up a little bit of it. I just wanted to hear, have you guys hear some of the highlights? Because it's like a two and a half minute commercial. I didn't want to play the entire thing for you. Here's some highlights from it. Hi, babies. It's me, Ms. Cleo.

Welcome to the Fit Cosmetics Flawless Friends Network. And I haven't come here today to tell you that you're going to win the lottery. What I did come here to tell you is, mama, you are looking good. What the fuck? Get a license, honey, because you're going to drive your man wild. Maybe you don't believe Cleo, but I bet you'll believe television's white chocolate prince, Joey Lawrence. Is she allowed to say that?

I've always referred to Joey Lawrence's television's white chocolate prince. I can't say that. Am I allowed to say that? I don't know if any, none of this should be allowed to be said. No one should be saying these things. No one should be saying any of this. Let's hear it. I was in a really bad place.

I had just run out of bronzer and nobody was retweeting me. And then I called 1844 so flawless. Come on now. I know. All of you would hit that, didn't you? A professional actress requires 42 compliments an hour just to keep from crying. Hmm. This is about to get real open here.

Ms. Cleo knows what you've been through, Shannon Daugherty, all of those nosy people in a Hollywood. This town will chew you up and spit you out. Me personally, I prefer a tone that's flawless. I like that because it has nothing to do with the sketch. It's just completely gratuitous. And it also doesn't necessarily make sense as a woman saying it. This whole commercial didn't make any sense. None of it makes any sense.

It's just like a mess. I love this. I want to know whoever wrote this. I just want to know. I want to know if I ever see them, I swear to God, I will make fun of them to their face. I'm going to kiss them on the lips. The sketch doesn't even make any sense. It doesn't work.

The jokes are weird. Super weird. If I were going to get... If I were to add these three celebrities, that has to be the joke. The fact that they're not making a joke about this is the end of the road. How they can't be self-aware in this sketch. That's how you make it funny. Nobody wants to see Joey Lawrence try to be real funny.

Benefits Cosmetics, they launched this flawless friends network. Again, a psychic readers network, a spin-off there. It opens a new one. It's an actual hotline you can call to get perfect, as they say in the article, perfect girl power pick-me-ups in time of need. Which is hilarious because this is supposed to be a parody, but that's actually what Ms. Cleo was already doing. It's already telling people that they're queens and that they're sages and things like that.

It's funny. It's not even a... Ms. Cleo's scam is so blatant that the parody can't even parody it. Exactly. And people buy into it. They don't even... They're like, oh, it's so funny. You're making fun of how you're a fake psychic,

even though we all believe that you are a real psychic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How does that happen? Dude, it's like Donald Trump doing the apprentice or something like that. Yeah. Good thing he never did that. He's a real CEO, but he's kind of like making fun of CEOs. Yeah.

But, you know, Dennis Rodman, and it's like, no, he could actually hire Dennis Rodman. This is not a parody. Exactly. Like, he actually ended up hiring Dennis Rodman to speak to North Korea. This is not parody. This is real. Yeah, that is... And that's a really good point.

This idea of reality and the alternate reality that some people are able to create around them that other people buy into. And I think that's such a powerful force that we don't realize. Steve Jobs did this. He did this extremely well. A lot of other big leaders, Elizabeth Holmes, we'll talk about her probably later in this season or next. She was able to do that.

People just buy into your bullshit. And then, as you've said, they just go for the ride. Once you got them, it's hard to not get them. And then I want to talk about this tarot thing. And this will wrap up this segment here on this interview, but I want to talk about this tarot reading she did at the end of the interview, which you and I are not tarot experts. I've never really... I don't think I've only gotten a tarot reading once or twice, but I was at like some warehouse

party in Bushwick, and I don't really remember it. But I would love to talk to someone, maybe Henry or one of the boys can help us out here to see if there's any kind of veracity and just her approach to doing it, because when we were looking at it, it just seemed like she was flipping cards over and saying generic things. That's what it seemed like to me. Yeah. And again, we're not experts.

We're not psychics. We're not any of these things, but Lord knows she is a dealer. So... What I can tell you, though, is that I want you to stop worrying about money. I want you to stop worrying about calls. I want you to stop worrying about all of those things, because there's no reason to. All right? We have some really positive things coming up in this year.

Probably some seeds that you actually planted from 2014 for you specifically, but we're starting to come forward. All right? So I could say that you planted seeds two years ago, and they're going to come to fruition now. Yeah. And I want you to stop thinking about money. 100% of human beings could receive that tarot reading.

Yes. And please stop worrying about money, but for another 20 minutes, I can read your fortune. Tell you the rest. In the next five weeks, and that puts us up with this into May, so the next five weeks or sometime in May. You're going to call me on the phone, you're going to text me and say, okay, in that reading, Cleo, this is what happened. Wow.

And I'm going to say, yes, Tar, I thought you stopped worrying. Your health is good, but I would like for you to be a little bit more communicative with your body. You need to talk to your feet more. Talk to? Make love to those feet. Yeah. Connect with your body.

It's like all this stuff, like do take better care of yourself. I mean, everyone does that. Everyone could take better care of themselves. Everyone needs to take better care of themselves. It's like, how do we fall for this shit? This is ridiculous. How do people just accept this as like, oh yeah, she's speaking the truth? You know what?

I need to be in better communication with my body. I was just thinking about that the other day. You know what? You know what Miss Cleo told me? She told me to talk to my body. I'm going to take that advice. Thank you, Miss Cleo. Fuck you.

Let me get a T-shirt and a mug. Yeah, she is as part of the zeitgeist, and we think of her very fondly as this person that was just part, was like a flash in the pan. No one really got hurt that badly. She didn't kill anybody. And they're not alone, Psychic Readers Network. The New York Times reports that One Mark Analysis says that there are nearly 95,000 psychic businesses in America generating $2 billion in revenue as recently as 2018.

$2 billion. $2 billion in revenue. Even today with all we know, even watching people like, my favorite is the TV Psychics, like Sylvia Brown. Oh yeah. Like we've watched her mess up on television. Yeah. And now there are people that are doing these kind of like cold readings now where psychics

will go and they'll actually come in and they'll research everyone in the audience's Facebook profile and they'll bring them up and they'll be like, I've seen, I'm seeing something. I'm seeing your dog. I'm seeing your dog, Teddy. Oh my God. And there's great. There's actually, and I think we'll probably do this, tackle this in another episode, but

there's a group of people that are going and trying to blow up these readings and kind of like do these hot readings where they're feeding in fake information to their Facebook profile, buying tickets to the event and trying to blow up the psychic spot. Classic Mori. Classic Mori. She eventually parted ways with the Psychic Readers Network. But the character Ms. Cleo, as we talked about in the beginning, is still owned by the Psychic Readers Network.

And so she still was able to profit from it at the behest of the Psychic Readers Network. And one of the things that we ended up seeing was this. I go on babies, Ms. Cleo is back. Now, do you have silverware, Sweet Pea? Oh my gosh, I do. I sent you off something other than a knife and a fork. I have a spoon. How did you know?

Now I have a vision that you are going to take that spoon and scoop up a bite of French Toast Crunch. Oh, cinnamon-y and maple syrupy. I can't believe you see all that. French Toast Crunch is back and I predict you'll love it. Eat it now. French Toast Crunch. Tell me, Sweet Pea, do you have silverware in your house?

Yes. In your silverware, does it include forks and spoons and knives? Oh my god. Oh my gosh. Hey, Harry, open the drawer. What? Forks, knives, spoons? Yes, Ms. Cleo, yes.

Do you use the forks, knives and spoons to eat the food? Do we? Do we eat the food? Yeah, I can answer that. Yes, yes we do. Do you eat breakfast? Yes, sometimes, but yeah, yeah. Do you use the knife, fork, a spoon to eat the breakfast?

Yeah, generally, yeah, I would say yeah. Like cereal is part of your breakfast? Yeah, sometimes. You are actually going to have, there's a sugar in the cereal? Well, you know, I don't really read that, but I think so. I mean, it's, uh, it's, uh. You are getting ready to use the spoon? Oh my god, yeah, I've got the spoon in my hand right now.

To dip it into the cereal with the milk and things and then put it, it's just Cosby now. Exactly, how did you? What do you do with the Jajaloon? You're going to take the spoon and you put it in the bowl. It is the Bill Cosby Sackin' Gowl. Probably doing that from J.O. It's probably. I tell you, I'm going to contribute to the community.

Uh, and so, so Ms. Cleo and the Psychic readers that are profited from this character, just like Marvel Comics profits from all of these other characters. It's the worst Thor movie ever, by the way, it's just Thor and Ms. Cleo. So, I mean, the thing I think that this speaks to like what elements of this stuff that we still see today is this stuff still happens. The loneliness, the looking for the financial advice, that that's going to be more desperate is like portions of the middle class become more marginalized. Everybody's going to be looking for this come up, right?

And there's always going to be somebody to take advantage of that. There's always going to be someone that is going to see an opportunity. Maybe they, you know, went through some traumatic thing when they were a kid or maybe they were, you know, grew up in hard times and this was the only way to do it or maybe they lived a life of crime from the very time they were growing up as a child. And this is all they know. But there is no system to even prioritize on a societal level that these crimes are bad. We have drug offenses where people are in life, in prison for all kinds of different things

that have nothing to do with crimes against another person. Just possession of drugs or selling drugs of some kind. And now we've got people like that, big corporations that are defrauding people or people like Ms. Cleo that can actually hold together a fraud for multiple decades and be complicit with another company and keep doing this. And still it's just okay. You hear that, guys? Put down the crack.

Get in a cubicle. It's just... This is my new plan to lower crime. We're going to make everyone a white collar criminal. So I think that's...let's wrap it up with Ms. Cleo for today. I think this is great. She was not a good person, if I'm... Yeah.

They say they never speak ill of the dead, but when someone never shows any remorse. Not one time. I mean, in the...she even defended the psychics in that Hotline movie she was in. She went by Milly Cleo in that, and she still had the Jamaican accent. And she said, those people are not the bad guys, even if they weren't great psychics. Even referring to the Psychic Readers Network as a group of psychics is inherently in bad faith and fraudulent. Absolutely.

Yeah, that was the problem with the whole scam operation. It was the fact that they didn't have the powers that I have. Exactly. They weren't as good as... They weren't as authentic and totally real as Ms. Cleo. I like how their fraudulent psychic game was not on her level. Yeah. And I feel bad for them.

She was upset about it. She feels bad. She feels remorse for those people. The problem is they were just not as authentically Jamaican as I. If only they knew they had the light. You got to have the light if you want to read the cards. So we're going to talk a lot more about these different kinds of fraudsters. Ms. Cleo, Yurei Del Harris, Rest in Peace.

What's crazy is that Heaven is just Jamaican and they're like, what's the problem with the accent? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I hope everyone in the afterlife is very upset with your Jamaican accent. Yeah. She didn't even go into any sort of pot wash. It's not even like cool running's level of Jamaican accent. It's the worst.

Like my impression of her is horrible, but that's like, that's how bad it is. It's like a bad impression of her is still as good as her accent. I think you've said this. She's like a shitty Jamaican fortune cookie. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that wraps it up for our pilot episode and part one of three of Ms. Cleo and the psychic readers network, man, we could have went for 10 episodes.

There's so much here, but there's too many fraudsters that we got to cover. And this season, I'm so excited because you're going to start to see connections between these fraudsters over decades of time. And so I'd like to thank the last podcast network guys, Henry, Ben, Marcus, Ken, Mary, all the team over there. It's great to be in the fam. I want to thank Marie Anderson, a creative collaborator and editor that I could not do this show without her, Emily Fusca, our amazing researcher, Hazel Bryan, our all-star

producer. And of course, my wife, Cosmo, who has put up with me for far too long to make this show happen. Fraudsters is a co-production of The Last Podcast Network and Zero Cool Media. We'll see you next time.