Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 2: The Psychic Readers Network Part II - Great Fraud, Bad Psychics, Rich Dudes

Episode Date: September 10, 2020

Check out the newest show on the Last Podcast Network: FRAUDSTERS. This is episode two. And you can find Fraudsters right here on Spotify. We'll be back with more Last Podcast on the Left tomorrow. Hail yourselves!---In part II of our mini-series on the Psychic Readers Network, Seena and Justin commune with a retired phone psychic and a former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection to fill in the blanks on Miss Cleo and the PRN.

I'm known for it more over than anything, anything else the following phrase. Carl Minow. Find out what I see for you. Carl Minow for a free terrarium. The money part was like a big bonus, but it was more that it seemed fun. I mean, Miss Cleo ads were so good. Welcome to Frotsters. Time's in a gas to be Justin Williams is here as always.

And in this show, we deep dive into scams and the fraudsters behind them. All in the hopes of saving ourselves from the pain of ever getting taken for a ride. Justin, what's up, my man? That is right. We are here. Listen, if you are a fraudster, we are coming after you, baby. Coming for you. This is part two of the Miss Cleo Psychic Readers Network mini series,

where we're still trying to parse out how much of a fraud Cleo was versus the loudly fraudulent business of the Psychic Readers Network or PRN. You know, in F1, we covered how the scam worked. Miss Cleo proclaimed psychic from Jamaica or the Caribbean broadly. Turns out, born in LA, went to a private all-girls school and was actually an actor and a playwright before the spirit world drafted her. I am a trained priestess. I have many ways and abilities to divine information,

if you want to give it a very clear definition. I do many things, but I absolutely commune and chat with those on the other side. Some call them the dead, some call them spirits, you know, names. Now, she was a spokesperson for the PRN, and that's not illegal. Neither is Reed and the Cods. And I was able to work from my home and you give it an extension and I'm told what the rules are, et cetera, et cetera. During the interview, they ask you for a reading,

whoever the person is on the other end of the phone, and you give them a reading and that's what I did. And it wasn't much more than that. And you know what's amazing is that when she got in, you know, the Psychic Readers Network has been around for a while, but it were commercials. And apparently, she believed in these commercials. I was believing the commercial. I thought you needed to get on there and get somebody.

They're reading in three minutes, you know? And so I'm taking calls and I'm pushing stuff out in five minutes and seven minutes. And then I realized that's not good. They don't want you to do that. In order to stay in a high priority on the phone line, your phone calls needed to average 18 minutes or more. Now, I made 24 cents a minute. That was on the high end.

A lot of people were making anywhere from 12 to 15, 16 cents a minute. And that's what I heard on the grapevine. So again, we go back to you're a fucking high priestess that could communicate with the spirit world and you're settling for on the high end 24 cents a minute. Yes, the spirits did not tell her about collective bargaining. It's a non-union spirit club. Exactly. It's a right to work job in the spirit realm.

But, you know, she did think that she was helping people, which still boggled my mind knowing that what her job was to actually keep people on the phone for $4 a minute and not do it quickly. She still thought she was actually helping people, which is like this weird conflict that I don't know about. I don't know how she reconciles in her own mind, but I guess this is the wonder of being a fraudster,

is that you could fucking lie to yourself at nauseam. Do I feel that I helped people on the hotline? Did I enjoy laughing with people? Did I feel grateful for them to trust me enough to cry with them? Absolutely. So much of it was an amazing experience. I remember the evenings and I can see them now working and doing what I did and being that other person

on the other end of that line. I don't know who I helped. I don't. But people can say the right hello to you in the course of a day and they can change your day. So I'm certain that I helped some people. You know what's the best? It's like when I was that other person on the other end of the line. It's like she counters.

Yeah, she catches herself. And then she's also like, I love it there. She's like, I helped a lot of people, you know? I have no idea who I actually helped. But if you say hello to someone, that can be good. Yeah, if someone's suicidal and you're able to say hello and you keep them from doing it, that's huge. That's huge. That's huge.

Great job, Ms. Cleo. You probably took that man's last $4. Yeah, I always remember the man that I helped that was going to kill himself. Yeah. And he ended up having to do it because he had an $80 phone charge at the end of my consultation and that pushed him over the edge. But he knew his wife was not cheating on him by the end of that, though. Yeah.

It was good. I would love it too. All the people that she told that were cheating that weren't cheating. Oh my God, how many times do you think she was wrong? Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying. I didn't even think about that. We just assumed that everything was just so clearly

like some seated kind of information that she pulled and put together. But she was almost certainly wrong so many times. Yeah. At my day job, I serve on the Academic Integrity Committee and I've actually seen examples where it really looks like the student is cheating on multiple levels, but then they're actually not. So if I was doing that, so if I was doing those deliberations over the phone rather than actually looking at the evidence, I would have ruined some students' life.

Oh God, that's terrible. So if she was helping people, she also thinks she also thought about her karma because she does mention that she knew about the business model of Psychic Readers Network. And by the way, because she knew about the business model, it wasn't enough to drive her away to go practice her like sacred high priestess art in a different place. No, no, nay, nay, I shan't go another place. The Psychic Readers Network is my home.

That pays me 24 cents a minute. This is definitely the place I want to keep working at because I want to have good karma. But when you advertise an 800 number and then make them call a 900 number back to keep people on the phone for as long as possible at $4 a minute, that will raise some flags with the Federal Trade Commission. It's like when you go into the champagne room for just one dance and you think it's only going to be like $12, but then there's all these more dollars for the champagne

and then you have to get more things and then you have to tip and then other people come in there. It's just a complete markup scam. And don't forget the ATM fees at those ATMs. This is not nothing to slouch about. My wife was very angry at the ATM fees. I ran up at the Pink Pony in Atlanta, Georgia. $85 is just an ATM fees.

I was tipping. But they didn't stop there besides trying to keep people on the phone longer afterwards, armed with their mailing addresses. They would send threatening bills to collars and say they were going to destroy their credit. Unless, of course, they call back to hear an important reading that Ms. Cleo has for you. Listen, everyone didn't get to talk to Ms. Cleo. I'm sure it was totally random. That's like Make-A-Wish telling every kid they get to be Batman.

No, one of you gets to be Batman. The rest still have terminal cancer. Oh, it's like when you get one of those emails or it's like, email back the error prints immediately about an urgent matter. You are not going to email with an error prints. It's never going to happen. Once the FTC stepped in, though, they fined the PRN $5 million, because that's how much they apparently had in their bank account,

and then 500 million in fake bills were erased and the PRN were not allowed to collect. Yeah, it reminds me of my experience at the Pink Pony in Atlanta, Georgia. I knew that this was a cash operation. That was a complete scam, but I just couldn't stop tipping. They don't take Venmo, Justin, and I'll tell you who else doesn't take Venmo. The Federal Trade Commission. They'll just take your money. You know, I want to know more about this FTC complaint

and how these frauds are litigated. So I emailed Professor Howard Beals of the George Washington University, who is the former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection. And we jumped on a call. Listen, it's a pandemic, people. You got to access. People have the time. And he just laid it all out for me.

The FTC is a general purpose consumer protection agency that covers most of the economy unless they're regulated by somebody else directly, like food and drugs or something like that. Its main authority is the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices. The big problem that we had was what we saw as unauthorized charges. You were promised a free psychic reading. It was done through a 900 number service where you're billed by the minute for the time you spend on the phone.

A part of the 900 number rule requires that there be a tone to tell people when they're going to start being charged, because there's actually a requirement that a 900 number give you a free sample of what it is you're about to buy. And in the case of Ms. Cleo, what we found was that you would hear the tone that said you were about to be charged. Nothing had happened on your psychic reading yet because they were stalling for time. Consumers would say, wait a minute, I'm being charged now.

And they would say, no, you're not. You're still going to get your free reading. But they were billing them. And that was the core problem is billing for services. When they specifically told consumers, you aren't going to have to pay for this. But why bring just a civil case? Why not refer it to the criminal side of the federal government? Well, a civil case is much easier to bring.

The standard of proof is much lower. You only have to prove that there's a violation by a preponderance of the evidence. And under the FTC Act, you don't have to prove that anybody meant to do anything wrong. There's no intent requirement for criminal fraud. Sorry, let me just kind of interrupt you really quickly here. I just want to get something clear. When you say preponderance of the evidence, you mean 51, 49 guilty, not guilty, right? That's right.

And 51% wins. Okay. Also, you mentioned intent. So does that mean you don't look at whether they intended to deceive? They could have just tripped and fell into creating a billion-dollar scam? That's correct. That's not an element of the violation. If the practice is deceptive, that's enough.

Even if you did it entirely by accident, conceptually, that's enough. Now, usually, and certainly in a case like this, you know, this was no accident. And obviously, a case is more attractive when it is something that's deliberate and not an accident. So that gets considered as part of the decision about what cases are worth pursuing, because I always like to say it was a target-rich environment. I mean, there were a lot of opportunities to go after fraudsters of one sort or another. A criminal case, the standard of proof is higher. You have to prove that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,

which is a much higher burden of proof on the government. And criminal fraud usually requires intent. You had the mean to rip people off. And you don't have to address that question in a civil action at the FTC. So this case was about a phone hotline that was deceptively advertising, but there's all kinds of different fraud cases out there. In your experience with the internet and technology advancing the way it has, are there an increase in the number of fraud cases out there?

The problem is always that there are more frauds out there than you can prosecute. It's not infinite, but there's certainly a very large supply of potential fraudsters who are willing to try. And what you have to do, I think the key to effective enforcement, is to try to stop frauds as quickly as possible in order to reduce the returns from engaging in them and make it less attractive to the fraudsters. But you can't stop it all. This is not something that is going to go away or that we can make go away.

There's just, there's not, there's not an imaginable way to solve the problem completely. Ah, my favorite. Bad for society, good for our show. So there was a first part of the complaint was false advertising, but there was a second part of the complaint as well. Can you break that down for us? The second thing about the case was the abusive marketing to people who had already, who had actually purchased the service, what they would do is they would call customers back and that by itself is fine

and say, Miss Cleo had a dream about you, you need to call for a new reading. But there were people who got as many as 10 of those calls in a day, getting progressively more insistent. Okay, so one call is okay, but more than one call is not okay. Yeah, it's marketing to your customers. And most businesses market to their customers. You could also call this lying to their customers. Well, the lie is a problem.

You know, that doesn't help. But you know, that second call, if you make that second call, they didn't tell you that was going to be free. You know, you're calling back to get a second reading that you're going to have to pay for. There's no fraud there. It's the abuse in harassing people to call Miss Cleo. But they also send bills to people and threaten their credit as well. Well, it's mostly done through, and it's the essence of 900 numbers.

It's mostly done through your phone bill. These are charges that would show up on your phone bill, where a lot of consumers don't pay attention to the details of who they called or what exactly the charge is for. And, you know, that's where these charges were buried. So, you know, not everybody noticed them in many cases. Oh, yeah, that makes total sense. A few bucks here, a few bucks there times one million.

What's the big deal? But let's talk about the penalties. How do the states collect? Because these people live in states. Shortly, they want to collect. And how does the FTC kind of work with those states to get money? States would usually seek their own relief. The FTC, in a case like this, actually doesn't have penalty authority. Really?

It can get money back for injured consumers. And that's the theory of the five million dollars and the five hundred for that matter. So, that money isn't actually a penalty or fine. It's just to get the victims the money to kind of make them whole again. That's actually what the FTC tries to do with it, is to give whatever money they actually get back to injured consumers. States usually have authority to get their expenses as well. And they may have other authorities as well, depending on state law. So, they may have other options available that aren't there for the FTC.

But as I say, in a case like this, we would try to get all the money that we thought was available. We wouldn't necessarily leave anything behind for the states. Although states might be part of a global settlement where states get some additional money. And what we worry about was the total judgment. What's important to remember there, folks, is that the money they got was from the corporate bank accounts. Because when you have a corporation, that protects you from having to pay fines or penalties or whatever it is individually. It's the sexy corporate veil of protection. So, that's how the FTC viewed this scam, right?

Deceptive advertising, abusive marketing. But what was it like inside, on the front lines? What was it like to be a quote, psychic for the PRN? Bennett Madison was one of those psychics. He wrote an article for the New York Times on his experience. And we got to catch up with him so he could share his story. I think of your article, you said, I worked for the psychic readers network when you can still have your shoes on walking through security at the airport. Which I found such a simpler time.

So, Tabia, what was going on in your life around that time that made you want to join the psychic readers network? I was in college. I had a couple of friends and a boyfriend at the time who we thought it would be a great idea to live in New York City for the summer. We got an apartment. We got sort of fake jobs, most of which fell through. And so, we were stuck in this apartment. I think there was a two bedroom apartment for people living in it. And we had to each come up with 600 bucks rent.

And that ended up being harder than it seemed when we had signed the lease. So, we needed to get jobs. And because we were 20 years old, it seemed like the most sensible kind of job to get would be to become phone psychics. One of my roommates found a listing for it in the Village Voice, which also dates this to- So, the Village Voice was complicit in this? I think that the Village Voice personal ads were complicit in a lot of things, probably. I had a lot of good times in those personal ads. And actually, the first job they found was for phone sex operators, which we all thought sounded like a great job.

Wait, so you guys were phone sex operators first? No, they wouldn't give us the phone sex job because they said, oh, you're too young. I think the idea was they had had bad experiences hiring people who were not going to be traumatized by phone sex and quit after a couple days. So, they had like, I think you had to be like 30 to get a phone sex. So, do you think they didn't want you for some moral reasons? They didn't want to keep you, but it was just bad business to have traumatized? It sounded like being a phone sex operator, like they just had had bad experiences with people who were like too young and just quit right away. You know, a woman that's had like four kids is like, yeah, you want to do what?

Exactly. Yeah, okay. And then one of my roommates saw a different ad for, I think it just said phone actors. So, she didn't know what kind it was, but she called. And basically, I think she called, left a message. The guy called her back right away. My other roommate was also a woman called, left a message. The guy called her back right away and they both got the job on the spot.

And I was like super jealous, both because I needed money and, you know, it paid $10 an hour, which at the time seemed really good. In 2001 dollars, that's like $10. And when you're 20 and the job, you get to do it from home. You don't have to leave the house. Right. All that sounded like... And what was that interview process like? Well, I can't speak to, I mean, all I remember, Laura was the first one who got the job.

And I just remember that the guy, his name was Scott. I don't know why I remember his name was Scott. Scott called her and said, oh, you know, I see, I think she must have sent a resume. I see you, you're studying dance at Hampshire. Is that like exotic dance? And she said no. And he was like, that's fine. You can have the job.

Also, who studies exotic dance? He thought... Is that a major? I don't know if he was making a joke. He was like enthusiastic about the idea that she might be a stripper, but... Got it. But... Essential casting over here.

Then I called and he wouldn't call me back. Like I just... And I really wanted it. It seemed fun basically. So I kept leaving these messages for Scott and he wouldn't call me back. And I started to feel like, you know, I was being discriminated against basically because like both of my lady roommates had gotten the job. I felt like maybe they don't want men.

So I called and did a woman's voice. And he called me back right away and said, like, listen, I don't know who you are, like what gender you are, but we got a bunch of drag queens down in Miami. Maybe it was some other place in Florida. You know, they're our top earners. So, you know, you can be whoever you want to be, like you're on board. But there was never any like question about like qualification or like, are you psychic or like...

Or even really a conversation. Like he didn't even really make sure we were smart enough to have a conversation, you know... Be able to communicate with another person. No, it was like five minute conversation. And all... I don't know if it was just like happenstance that he happened to call me back after I pretended to be a woman or if there was something about that that was appealing to him. I don't know.

Yeah. I like how it shifts from being discrimination against him being a man to being like, look, I... Yeah. Okay. I hire all the drag queens. We prefer drag queens. Exactly.

Yeah. It's kind of crazy to think that they wouldn't even bother trying to ask you if you were a psychic. Did you... did it say we want psychics or did it say like actors and dance... exotic dancers, please apply? We saw that it said phone actors and we could tell that meant either phone sex or phone psychic. And I was... Again, because I was the third one he called.

Like I already knew it was phone psychic because like Heidi and Laura had talked to him about it. But I think he must have... I think he probably danced around. Like what we would be doing like, oh, you're going to be talking to people. Maybe it's for entertainment. You're going to give them advice about their life and sort of help them understand like the things that might happen to them.

But he never asked like, you know, he didn't really ask... He asked you anything. No, he just sort of told us and I don't think he even really quite told us what we'd be doing, but we figured out pretty fast. And for you, you didn't really think twice about whether or not the people that you would be talking to would think that this is actually a real psychic readers network thing or a psychic hotline. It was just, this is a job.

I need to get it. Well, yeah, kind of, but it wasn't just that it was a job and I wanted money. I mean, I really was... I mean, the money part was like a big bonus, but it was more that it seemed fun. I mean, like this Miss Cleo ads were so good. So good. And you would like sit there watching them in high school or like in college or whatever, you know, in the middle of the night, just thinking like, this woman's amazing, even

though you kind of obviously, I mean, you know, it's a TV ad, it's fake, but at the same time, like there was still, just because the ads were so like well written and well produced, I guess there was something about them that even as like a savvy person, you're sitting there thinking like, well, I would like to call Miss Cleo and see what happens. And so the idea of like going behind the scenes of that like infrastructure seemed really fucking fun and appealing. And like, I wanted to know what was on the other end of the line and like being on the other end of the line was a much cheaper way of doing it than like calling the 1900 number.

And what a personality she had, but it was amplified by the organization that PRN made. You know, one of the things I've learned when we've been going through this is that it almost is like Miss Cleo was the mark and she was brought in with her own greed. They knew she was a fraud, they knew she wasn't going to complain about this whole system being a fraud, but what they were able to do was control her and use her own greed against her. Yeah, it's like the Megazord. Power Rangers, right?

You just try seratops by yourself, but we put the whole thing together. And I'll form the head. Ben, it was only there for a short time, but listen to just how amazing it was, what he did. Did you know about tarot cards when you went into when you started getting the job? When you started the job? I mean, kind of. I went to Sarah Lawrence.

Oh, yeah. Like, you know, I am like not unfamiliar with like the mystic arts to some extent. You went to school with Mary Ann Williamson. Basically. I mean, yeah, you know, I know about tarot cards. I know, I strive very good with astrology. I mean, I don't know how to read tarot cards exactly, but I do keep a deck on my desk at work.

I was really hoping you were going to say, I keep a deck on me at all times. I'm trying to think. I don't think I have one on me, but yeah, I know about tarot cards. That's okay. So, sort of. I have to use a book to. So tell me, do you remember your first call and what that was like and what happened and how it happened?

I don't remember the first call. I do remember is it took a really long time before we got any calls at all. So like what happened is the way it works is you're in your apartment, you have your landline telephone. There's one phone for the whole apartment, yeah, like it used to be in those days. And so you we could only do it like when nobody was going to really want to call us on the landline, which generally meant like either the middle of the night or when nobody was home.

And so you would dial into the system, you would hear like a little message from some guy who was supposedly the president of the. Maybe his name was Scott. You probably know. Anyway, and you hear a little message and then you would like enter the system, you would hang up the phone and then you would wait for it to ring and it would have a special ring somehow, I think. Oh, so it was like beep beep beep.

I think it was like a double ring kind of. I could be wrong. But that is so high tech for 2001 to like change the ring or maybe it was supposed to do that and it didn't really work actually like that might have been it, but either way, you would wait for the phone to ring. And although in theory, we were getting paid $10 an hour. If you read the fine print, we were getting paid the equivalent of $10 an hour based on of the duration of your duration of each call.

So like whatever that breaks down to per minute. So if you weren't actually talking on the phone, you weren't getting this rate. And then so we would just sit there for hours waiting for the phone to ring so that we could like answer and like start like racking up our like 10 cents a minute. And how did you, how did you know who should answer the phone if all three of your roommates No, we did it. We like, we like did it separately. Okay.

We like each decided like, okay, tonight's my night. I mean, it became clear like, I mean, this is why it wasn't, we weren't in it for the money. It became clear like basically within like two seconds, like, oh, we're not going to make shit off of this, but we still wanted to do it. I mean, it seemed, it just seemed like how could we like, it just seemed such a bizarre story and even knowing what I do now about this and how much of a fraud the whole system was, I find, I find your story so compelling that I, I would have been in your position.

I would have wanted to do it just to see what it was like. It was fun for a while. So you get a call. Tell me about the people that you spoke to. Yeah. So I can't remember the first call. I remember, I'm trying to think of like the most, you know, I think they broke down into like two or three categories.

Like the first category was people who had seen the ad and wanted to know if it was bullshit or not. And the second category was people with actual serious problems who mostly I felt like at the time didn't really care if I was psychic or not, they just wanted someone to talk to. And then maybe there was like a third category of like true believers who like actually wanted psychic advice and, you know, their problems were less serious and were more like about their love life or something like that. But that was like pretty small category, I feel like.

I mean, maybe, you know, so those and but a lot of it was like, you know, serious money problems, which were really depressing, especially because I was like also having serious money problems. And I just felt like we were in this like weird feedback loop with each other of like all of us needing to figure out a better idea than like either being or calling a phone psychic. Those were neither of those were like good ways to solve our problems. And you know, there were a couple other people who like toward the end, I got a couple calls

that just like made me feel so shitty that I was like, I can't do this anymore. And then there were like, I remember there was one guy who like, you know, people like occasionally people would like try to quiz us right off the bat, like, well, if you're so psychic, tell me what's my favorite color and you always say red and it usually was red and then they would believe you. Oh, shit, he said red. Yeah, totally. And then there were people who would, you know, because they gave us a whole long like

kind of spiel to do at the beginning and you would try to kind of like keep talking as much as you could at the beginning just to like keep, you know, keep racking up time. But then yeah, some, yeah, people would sometimes just, you know, hang up after that or because I think you were supposed to get something like two or three free minutes from this Clio. And like by the time you even got to us, your two or three free minutes were like already up. So one of the things we learned was that they would keep you on the line initially, give us your name, address very slowly and they keep you on the line.

Did you have to get names and addresses like that as well? So we were supposed to collect addresses and I don't really remember how I came to understand the purpose of the addresses, but like my somehow it entered my knowledge that once we got the addresses, what they did with the addresses or addresses, I guess, was send these people like weird, scary, like foreboding tarot cards in the mail that then would say like, like this is so and so from the Miss Clio network, like I have received a terrible message from the spirits about you, like please call this number immediately. I just didn't bother with getting the addresses, it just seemed like a I just the line I didn't

feel like crossing and be I felt like if I started asking people for addresses, they were going to like start yelling at me or like a hang up or just like think it was like, what the fuck? Like, why do you need my address? So I never did that part and I didn't get last names or anything either. So basically, and also like, I never filed an invoice or like really had much further communication with that because it's just always seemed like too way too much. I think we were supposed to log everything very carefully and they made it like they

kept reminding us at the beginning, like, if you don't log your calls, like you can't get paid. And of course, like we did a wonderful work environment, you I remember you told me that they also had a computer program that you had to use. Yeah, I mean, we didn't have to use it. They sent us like a tarot card program that like, you know, the idea was rather than like having to lay out like a whole tarot card spread, you just press a little button and it gives you like a bunch of cards pop up and then you just, I think you could hover

your mouse over it and it would tell you what that card meant. So you could say like, oh, like, you know, I see the magician, that means you're going to, you know, whatever, then just read it off the screen and just riff on these cards. But you said you don't really use it how much I mean, it's just like, it was just easier to have a conversation with someone that tried to be looking at a screen and logging things and, you know, and, and yeah, I mean, and you can just, you don't have, they don't know what tarot card is, you can just make sure, you know, I make shit up. I remember, you know, sometimes I would tell people to do, oh, like, I need you to go into

your bedroom right now and find a penny in your penny jar and then you're going to take a lock of your hair and wrap it around the penny, then you're going to find a willow tree and bury the penny under the willow tree and that's going to bring it, you know, whatever. So it's like, why use a tarot card program when you can just sort of pretend to be magical? And plus, like, you had to fire up that 2000 era Volkswagen Beetle iMac, which probably took an hour and a half. Right. I mean, with the HP, but yeah, exactly.

So you have this, this computer, but that you didn't really use your riffing kind of these things. Did you use personas like Miss Cleo did because, you know, she was a persona? Yeah, I had a couple. I mean, the reason I started doing fake voices was like partially because I couldn't really take myself seriously and partially because it was a way of entertaining myself. So yeah, it was, I was, sometimes I'd be Cassandra who was like, it's sort of like a southern. Can we talk to Cassandra?

I don't think I can do it anymore. And if I, I mean, my, I mean, like my voice is probably too, you know, I've smoked too many cigarettes since then to just like, and it's going to be so offensive to, you know, from the American South, but it's like, Hey darling, thanks for calling the network. This is Cassandra. You know, every day we're faced with so many life choices. I cannot tell you the future, but I can, you know, and I can't remember what I could do. I can like, you know, I can reach into the spirit realm and, and bring back all the information

I gather so that, you know, you can be prepared for what is coming your way on this road of life stuff. It was sort of like that. I can't believe the sex hotline rejected you. No idea what they were missing. It's just great. I felt a little hot and bothered all of a sudden. And then I had a, another one was called Gabriel.

He was like a less well-developed character. He was based kind of on my boyfriend's boss at the restaurant he was working at because Frank would come home from the restaurant and do like his, like his boss's voice. And it was just kind of like this. I don't know what it was like. It was like, Oh, my child, like, thank you for calling today. You know, that kind of thing. He wasn't as, people didn't like him as much.

People liked Cassandra, but then, you know, you can't do it for that long. Like you 20 minutes and you were like ready to, you know, you're. That's a lot of character work. Well, you're just, well, you're ripping up your vocal cords mostly, especially if you're also smoking while you're doing it, which I was. Yeah, we got to add like applause break and everything and like from inside the actor studio. Oh, and then you did Cassandra.

And then how did you get paid? We didn't. Oh, you didn't. Did you try to invoice? Did you try to get paid? No, because we were like, it was too, we never tried. I didn't. I can't.

I don't, maybe Heidi and Laura did. They're a little bit like less flaky than I am, but sort of a little shade on Heidi and Laura. I mean, actually, I don't know. They may not be less flaky than I am, but it, it seemed like, Oh, like this is just going to be too complicated because I think it was not like we were never going to invoice. It was just like we kept pushing it off like, Oh, this is going to be so much trouble. We'll do it later.

We'll do it later. We'll do it later. This is something I do have done many times in my life as a freelance writer also, by the way. And then it gets to be, you know, sort of toward the end of the summer or around the time we like stopped doing it and we just like looked at each other and realized like, Oh, we didn't affect me making money doing this probably. We didn't log any of our calls like they told us to.

We didn't collect any of the addresses that they told us to and they're probably just like never going to pay us anyway. If we do invoice, basically, we're just too lazy. I mean, you were 20, so 20 and also it had become clear by them that a, the $10 an hour we had been promised was like totally phony and was going to end up being more like $50 total probably for, you know, a couple months of work, a couple months of like very light work, but still we were staying home sometimes to do it. And second of all, that even if we did invoice for our like $75 that we were owed, they would

never pay us probably. You just already kind of knew and there's a couple quotes from your article that I'd love to talk about if you don't mind. So the first one was, it wasn't worth it. I was a fraud, sure, but I fancied myself the hapless kind, not the evil kind. What does that mean to you? It means that we went into this with a sort of, you know, foot lose attitude of like, oh, this sounds really fun.

And sure, it's like, you know, God doesn't want you to be a fake phone psychic, but like, what's the harm? And then by the end, I think we all started to see that there was some harm involved. And do you remember a moment where you felt kind of like, this is this is not right? Yeah, I mean, it was like, there was a woman who was talking about like, you know, she was, it was, I mean, she had some really elaborate situation, but she was basically worried that like her sister's boyfriend was like molesting her kids. And I was just like, I don't think that you should be calling me right now.

I do declare my... Call the police. I just didn't know what to do. And it just seemed like it was not, A, it was like, not, you know, morally right. And also it was too sad. And so that was what we basically stopped doing. I keep saying we, I mean, I don't, this is all me. And I think, but I think there was sort of a general consensus around that time.

Like it was everybody was like, this is too fucked up. And it's not as fun. You know, we saw what we came to see. We know how it all works. We have a good story to tell. There is this like youthful exuberance that kind of like gets you into something. And then once you're in it, you're like, oh, oh God. Yeah.

What, where did we do? Yeah. I mean, I don't, in retrospect, you know, because I thought about how do I feel about this now? Like, do I think I was, I mean, yes, I do think it was wrong to do it. Would I do it again? I'm kind of glad I did it for the like couple months I did just to, because the experience was very interesting.

And you know, it's, I tell it, I talk about it parties all the time. And I don't, and I don't, I don't think that we probably seriously harmed anyone's life. But you know, it's possible that we did. Who knows? Yeah. Well, no, and it's also good to just be exposed because you gotta remember you were young. So you were in an economically vulnerable position. So like, like you said, you, you are sort of mutually trapped, but you realize they're

trapped with the collars and like this underbelly of like, like predatory capitalism, right? Yeah. I mean, it did feel just like we were all part of a fucked up system. However, there's a big difference right between like the Sarah Lawrence kid on summer vacation living in New York City and being someone who is like calling a phone psychic, you know, over serious, like financial and other life problems. But yeah, I mean, it was just like, we're all in this fucked up thing together. And what, you know, what do we do about it?

I would think it's a good experience because now you can probably see a hustle coming a mile away now. All right. I hope so. I mean, I like, I'm not into like, I think it's more like, I've always been sort of a misanthrope. So like, I'm not, no, I wouldn't ever join like a cult or anything because I would just ever, they would all annoy me too much probably.

I know better than anyone else that Ms. Cleo was a fake, but I always kind of believed in her anyway. Do you believe in the magical like powers of taros and psychics? No, I don't, but I have also spent like actual money on them myself, like since all this happened. Why? It just seemed fun. Yeah.

I mean, and also, you know, and it's kind of cheaper than a therapist and sometimes serves the same function, plus I do think that like some people are like really good at the witchcraft sort of game in a way that's helpful. Reading your energy type thing. Yeah. Just like sort of like giving you guidance based on like a conversation that we pretend is magical and some people are good at that and Justin's a true believer. Really?

No. No, but I know what he's talking about. Like there's an ancient story from an African village where a man was impotent and they buried him up to his neck and they performed a fake surgery where they removed his testicles and they buried them in the next village and then they told them that they put them back on and then like nine months later, he had a baby. They never performed any surgery at all, but it was the idea of the conversation. They knew that mind over matter was something that existed.

Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, we all like to hear, we all like to talk about ourselves or I like to talk about myself, which is probably why I'm here right now and have people listen and be thoughtful about it. It's the same reason we, you know, you know, why do I believe in astrology? You know, but do I like really like reading lots of information about like the very special

qualities of an Aries person and like thinking about how that relates to my life? Yes. It's like, it's, it's, it just, you know, feeds my vanity, I guess. And so why do you think, why do you think people called in? I mean, mostly, I mean, curiosity and loneliness, I think are the two main things. Some people were curious and probably thought they could get away with calling for just to see what it was without burning through too much money, which some of them probably were able to do.

And some of them probably accidentally spent a ton of money without meaning to. But also like a lot of people just don't, it was clear quickly that a lot of people did not have anyone to talk to and that I was a decent like standing for that. Those were the people who talked for a long time, not the people who, you know, wanted psychic advice. So if you're lonely and or curious, it really is that character that you see, the Miss Cleo character that brings you in, that makes you want to call because you think you're gonna connect with this person.

Yeah, I mean, that the thing about Miss Cleo, if you watch the ads, it's like only a little bit about her like amazing spiritual powers of like telling the future. It's more that she seems like fun, like, you know, he be tipping, you be tipping or whatever, like all her little catchphrases and he's like, the boy's father, he has a nose, no? Exactly. He has a nose, just like your baby, your baby also have a nose. That's right, I told you, girl, that's the father, the one with the nose. Totally.

Like, she seems really like a fun friend who tells it like it is and, you know, I was surprised that people weren't more pissed to like not get to talk to Miss Cleo. I thought that people would want to would be like, where the hell is Miss Cleo? And I think we were supposed to say she was in the bathroom, then we were supposed to like put the phone down and get up and like go be like Miss Cleo, Miss Cleo, where are you and like burn through some time waiting for, but nobody ever asked like where I think I guess people just knew it was too good to be true that you could actually like just call a number and talk to this amazing woman.

I don't know why they that was too good to be true, but like the idea that like you were talking to some, well, it's not Miss Cleo, but it's some psychic. I don't know what where that the psychological whatever of that is, but that was how it was. Do you think do you think Miss Cleo is a fraud now? I kind of don't. I mean, I don't know. Well, obviously she was like involved in the whole situation, but I mean, so was I. I mean, I guess I was also a fraud.

I just hopefully was like a pretty inobtrusive fraud. I don't know. Miss Cleo was an actress. She could be in it in a fictional TV commercial, but she told everyone she was a real psychic. Well, I mean, you know, Jennifer Aniston tells everyone her name is Rachel or whatever. Like I think and I think your degree of culpability is different, right? Yeah. You're like a 20 year old kid who is you're actually being economically exploited by the

yeah. I mean, you're right. You may you're not at the end of the collar, but you're actually like a victim in this when somebody if you do hours worth of work and then somebody sends you a check for 50 dollars. We have a word for that historically. Right. We call that slavery.

What? I've never heard of that. The first time. I wouldn't have been my word, but I mean, look, is Miss Cleo a fraud sure? Was she the real fraud in that whole operation? I don't think so. I mean, I don't know the like what she was getting paid or what her, you know, take, you know, whether she had any kind of equity or whatever in the whole operation.

But my suspicion is she was just collecting a paycheck, whereas there were other like people who were actively like like the Scott guy that hired you. No, I'm sure he was just an idiot too. But like whoever would like whoever the guy on the phone was who would, you know, you know, what was the thing I remember one day we called and he was like, I know that you've been hearing many things about Miss Cleo and how she is not real and how, you know, but I just want to tell you this is a job you're doing for entertainment purposes. And, you know, he gave us this whole sort of like, like speech kind of, and it was clearly

because something was up, like things were in the air. Like this was starting to fall apart. And, you know, that guy is like the real fraud. He probably is like, rich as hell now, Miss Cleo is dead, like none of the rest of us, I'm sure whoever like hired us out of the village voice was not rich or even probably, you know, it was everybody was caught up in some giant scheme. Why do you think as a society we don't kind of think that what this was was wrong? It's almost like part of the entertainment was tricking yourself into believing that

it was real. And there's always a rush of when you know, like psychologically, when you know something to scam. So I downloaded Star Wars Commander onto my phone and the entire point of this thing is to keep you on, like it's like your forces are ready. Hey, you want to build this building faster? Give me eight bucks. I know what this is.

And it got me for $35 before I finally got it off my phone. You know what I mean? But yeah, it's a scam, the whole thing is the whole thing's a money making scam. But yeah, you he had fun with it for a while. Yeah. Fun with it for a little bit. Now, I would say the difference between this and I'd say the phone thing is like, well, the phone thing is like, okay, I paid $40 or whatever.

I didn't get an invoice for $800 because they said the game is in the bathroom for nine hours and put me on hold. Right. And that's, I mean, but also I think like that, like most people probably don't know what actually happened if you called Miss Cleo, including the people who were working for Miss Cleo. And people think of the element of scamminess as being pretending to be psychic, where in fact, while that is scammy in its own way, the element of scamminess had a lot also to

do with like things like what you're talking about in terms of like charging people insanely more than you said you were going to in a way that they couldn't get out of and then that kind of thing, which I think like, you know, unless it happened to you, you probably never heard about. Yeah. That's what they're talking about. Yeah. It's the misleading billing practices for us.

Right. Like culpability and this thing, right? It's that. And then also what we'd also talk about is like putting like collections of fake collections out on people. Yeah. I mean, that happened to me when I was a little kid, actually. Like I kept calling Mrs. There was like a Mrs. Santa hotline.

They kept calling. You called a Santa sex line. It was Mrs. Santa, but no, she was just talking about like, oh, the elves are so excited to deliver the toys. And it was like unsatisfying the first time, so I just kept going back hoping this is probably six years old. Anyway, yeah, that's what happened to you. My mom called the phone company and they wiped it out, but then the Mrs. Santa phone line

didn't go and send you a collections notice when they realized that it wiped off. Well, that would have been really unsanterly Christmasy at all. Have my dough dough dough. But right. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't. I don't know about that.

Christmas is a magic time for us all. Call me and we'll share the magic together. Call 1-900-909-8888. Each call costs $2 for the first minute and 45 cents for each extra minute. Be sure that your parents give you permission. Christmas is near and so am I. Well, Bennett was an amazing interview. I can't believe he spent an entire summer doing that.

I don't know. I would probably do the same thing. What did you just did? That would have been a fun summer to do something like that. No. I don't think I could do it, man. Why? You don't want to lie to people for a summer to make great full sense?

No. If they call up with real problems, I would either feel bad or I would just give them the worst advice possible just to entertain myself. I mean, this dude used characters. I mean, I would absolutely do it for about a week and then feel such an immense amount of guilt. I would never tell a single soul that I did it. Who knows?

Maybe I did do it and I just haven't told anyone. You know, when I was putting together the episode, I was like, okay, we need to hear more from Ms. Cleo because all we have is like this commercial. We had some clips earlier from this documentary play called Hotline and Ms. Cleo is on there doing interviews among other hotline operators like phone sex operators. It's like a pretty good doc. If you want to watch it, it's on YouTube. You should go check it out.

But I pulled some clips from it so that we could kind of react to them and it's kind of insightful. One of the things you're going to see and hear here is that she is completely delusional and completely absorbed in her own narrative that she built for herself. So I remember what you said in episode one where it's like, you don't believe in psychics because if there were actually psychics, like the world would end, like everything would explode. And I think this clip kind of speaks to that.

I wait for the spirits to tell me which deck to utilize. Now I'm looking at your numbers and I know that you are a very maternal person. Your middle number is a four. I'm known for moreover than anything. Anything else? The following phrase. Call me now. Find out what I see for you.

Call me now for a free terror event. Are you kidding me? Like this? You use your psychic powers. When you communicate with the dead, when you communicate with the spirit world, your first question is, which deck of cards should I be using? Why not just ask the question directly? The spirits have strong opinions about which deck of cards you use.

The spirits prefer bicycle brand. Exactly. No, no, no. The bicycle brand. Are you sure about that? Are you sure? Have you spoken to them? Are you actually a secret psychic and you're just doing that on the down low?

No, I've said yes. The spirits spoke to me about which deck, brand of cards they like. All the spirits. I just can't, I can't believe you, she says, you know, she's a trained high priestess. Like if you're a trained fucking high priestess, you should just pick whichever fucking deck of cards you should use. Yeah. You know, when I go out into the most rural areas of the world and find the high priestess,

they always usually talk about their training that they got on the online program. I'm an ordained minister at the Universal Life Church. I can marry people. Me too. Yeah. You too, right? Yeah. I'm an ordained minister.

Yeah. I can't remember what church it is. I can't remember what church it is. But I got to pick my title and I chose Reverend. It was really hard not to choose like guru and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Well, how dignified of you. It's on a scroll down menu. Well, you know, she works for the psychic readers network. So I wanted to actually get pulled this clip too because she talks about actually working for PRN and it's kind of interesting what she says here. If someone called me on the line and I knew that they didn't have any money, I had no intention of keeping them on the line and say, okay, baby, I got to go now. Are you spending your money?

You need to save that money. You see that bill that's sitting over there? You need to go deal with that. Okay. I love you. Goodbye. It wasn't always an opportunity for them to say, but no, wait, no, no, no. And that was more about me rather than them.

And I say that even though it was their pocketbook. It was again, more about my karma. Well, ultimately that drove my averages down and when your averages are low, then you fall way back in the rotation, you know, but that's what got me into trouble was that concept. What helped me out was the fact that people kept dialing back and asking for my extension. What? Are you kidding? She's like, I believe the most noble part about me is when I realized the customers

had no money, I was like, get the fuck off of here, save your money and then call back. Yeah. And then she slides into the accent, by the way, when she remembers, like, come on now. Are you kidding me? She's like Bennett's character was just a hair's breath away from Ms. Clio. And then she also backtracks again, she's like, she makes like the stone cold admission that she's only interested in the customer's money, right? And not their humanity or their plight or any of these things, right?

But then she goes, but that was more actually for my karma, it wasn't for my thirst for money. Don't believe it. So we have one more clip and this is, this is kind of like a heart, a heartbreaker when I was watching it. She does tear up in this, in this clip and it's a, it's a little longer. So I'm going to let it play and then we'll talk about, because I think this really hits home everything that we've talked about kind of summing up the Ms. Clio portion of this

before we kind of dive into, you know, the broader business model and fraud in general and, you know, the psychic readers network and the guys behind it. The psychic hotline had been in business for almost 10 years before I became spokesperson. I signed a contract to come on and be videotaped for or taped for a infomercial while I read cards in a very short period of time. It went to product and this and that and my face and my name showing up places that I didn't know anything about. The counsel that I had at the time didn't look at the contract close enough.

I don't think neither he nor I took it that seriously. Again, it was an infomercial from as much as I know and what I was informed of. The company was sued by the federal government, the FCC for unlawful business practices. Many individual states sued the company as well. In many states, though, you have the right to sue the spokesperson as well. They dismissed all charges against me under one condition that I not sue the state of Florida. But still to this day, what I've come to find out in the last 10 years on change, since

that happened, is that people are going to believe or they want to believe. I remember saying to my attorneys one day, I said, well, surely when the truth comes out, it'll be all right. He looked, one of them, my lead counsel looked back at me and said, not really, sweetie. That's not always the way it works. The number of problems that I had with everything she said there cannot be understated. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's also kind of messing with me that it kind of sounds like Nina Simone talking between songs. What a beautiful transition. Yeah. Yeah. And this next song is called Mississippi Goddamn. Let's go to the infomercial, right? The infomercial contract.

And now we don't have the contract, I doubt we'll ever be able to read the contract. Is she really trying to get us to believe that by doing the infomercial, that there was nothing, there was zero in it for her if they sold products? Really? That's really zero dollars? You just did a buyout for you to just do the infomercial? No. And also, God, you had a team of lawyers and a psychic and you still didn't know what

was in the contract? Yeah, exactly. You said your name and your likeness is being used everywhere and you didn't realize it. Psychic Readers Network was not a mom and pop shop. This is after the Psychic Readers Network had the guy from Miami Vice had all these other people. You know, we'll get into that in the next episode about more about the Psychic Readers Network.

But, oh, sweet Jesus. Yeah. I never look into a contract from someone that's been paying me 24 cents an hour. I just take it at its work. No, they're honest people that would pay me 24 cents. And then how ironic, and this is so beautifully ironic almost, people are going to believe what they want to believe. Yes, Miss Clio, yes, people are going to believe you're a fucking psychic.

They're going to believe that you got a team of psychics as well. And they're also going to think that you're a fucking fraud. I don't even understand. Yeah. That's the key to the fraud, though. That's the only true thing that she says, right? They're going to believe what they're going to believe, and that's why there's always going to be a space for someone like her, because there's always going to be a sucker

out there, or somebody that's looking to believe or lonely or whatever, and she understands, she understood that, and so you got that money. She really got that money, and when she was older, she did have assets. She had millions of dollars in assets. Those are research facts that we were able to find. At the same time, it definitely seems like she was the mark in this big casino of Psychic Readers Network, where they brought her in with her own greed, used her for her character that she portrayed.

She bought into whatever Psychic Readers Network was selling to her, and they took advantage of it for sure. What's amazing is that she definitely is a victim in a very small sense, but she is a victim of one Psychic Readers Network, but her own greed, and her own believing of her own alternate reality. Yeah, anybody, when you construct a lie universe, and then you become trapped by it, could you imagine having to keep doing that a silly accent because your character took off? It's burned.

You could even hear it in her voice there. She was doing it 24 hours a day, fuck Marlon Brando and his method acting. She was a quintessential method actor to the nth degree. She makes any other character actor look like an amateur. She's so precise, and she was able to just subtly slide into the accent and back and then kind of make it seem like this was just the way she spoke. She went to an all girls school. You think they were just speaking patois at the all girls school in LA?

Is that what was happening? School in Inglewood. Exactly. Well, okay, Justin. So that was amazing. I'm glad we got to talk to Bennett. I'm glad we got these hotline clips in there. The next episode, we have some interviews with Dr. Frye.

We're also going to dive in to these guys that were behind the Psychic Readers Network, and I think you'll be really surprised to hear this, Justin. It was three white men. I knew it. Good job, it's three white men. Farrakhan. In case you didn't know, in case you didn't, I think people will really know you're Farrakhan by the end of the show.

We should do Farrakhan probably at some point. I'm afraid for my life, but we should maybe want to think about that one. The fruit of Islam showing up at your house. Exactly. He pissed off black guys at bow ties. I don't need that. Yeah. Oh, is this a guy's Mormons?

Yeah. Next episode, we'll cover all these things. I really want to deep dive, and again, there's going to be a lot of people that say we're being unfair to Ms. Cleo, but let me be super, super clear. I really think she is a half victim, but she is a victim of her own greed, and she is a total fraud. If you're a psychic out there that's a real psychic, please reach out to us. Find us on Twitter.

I'm at Sina Now, Justin W. Comedy. No, don't give my handle. If you're a psychic, you'll figure it out. All right, everybody, thanks for listening to part two of our mini-series on the Psychic Readers Network. If you want to listen to part three, you can go from this last podcast to the left feed straight over to the fraudsters feed and listen to episode three right now. Huge thanks to all the folks at The Last Podcast Network for their eternal love and support,

and of course, much love to Spotify Podcast. Thank you to our incredible editor, Marie Anderson, and our fantastic producer, Hazel Bryan. Of course, thank you to Emily Fusco, our amazing researcher. One last thing before we sign off. Last week, I said that Langston Hughes was the greatest living poet. I may have been off by a half century or so. I am sorry, Rest in Bees Langston, my bad, and I'll also mention that criminal charges

were never brought against them. We actually know now that criminal charges were brought in Missouri. You can find out all about that right now. Go to the fraudsters feed, listen to episode three right now, and you're going to find out all the juicy details about Peter Stoltz, Steven Federer, Lutrus Gal, and all the hijinks that these guys got into. This has been a production of Last Podcast Network and Zero Cool Media. Don't forget, go to the fraudsters feed and follow us.

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