Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Fake Psychic Scammed Millions - The Rachel Lee story

Episode Date: February 2, 2025

This is the story of fake psychic Rachel Lee, Mary Marks, and millionaire Ralph Raines

Predator Badlands, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus. Here, you're not the predator. You're the prey, prey, prey, prey, prey, prey, prey, prey. Critics are saying it's epic, stunning, and breathtaking. Many have come here. None have survived. Predator Badlands, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus, rated PG-13. So this woman is psychic, or at least she claims she is,

and she's about to defraud this guy out of millions of dollars. Now, her name is Rachel Lee, and she lives in Oregon, and one day, this guy walks into her psychic shop. His name's Ralph, and Ralph is 57, and the poor guy is just super lonely, and he wants advice from a psychic. But Rachel Lee, she sees him as an easy mark. I mean, he's a lonely old man, he's never been married, he's never even been in a relationship, and most importantly, he's worth millions of dollars because his family owns a successful tree farm. And so Rachel Lee gives him a psychic reading,

and they start talking and they hit it off, and she tells him all the things he wants to hear. And so later, he starts going back to her again and again and revealing more and more about his life, and their relationship starts to get personal. And they start hanging out, and Ralph is like buying her little gifts and writing her checks, and whatever she needs.

And eventually, Ralph ends up hiring her as his personal housekeeper. And later, he hires her to take care of his elderly father's finances, like helping pay his bills on time and stuff like that. And then she becomes Ralph's elderly father's full-time caretaker, and she's helping manage the finances of the family business, aka the successful tree farm. So over the next two years, Rachel slowly grooms Ralph to trust her, and she pretends to be his best friend,

and she uses his finances to pay herself $9,000 a month to work for him. Damn. But then one day, Rachel Lee comes to Ralph with a prediction. Because remember, she's psychic. She tells him that he's in luck and that soon he's going to meet someone special, a romantic interest, someone with blonde hair and an English accent. And this is great news for Ralph. I mean, he's super lonely and he loves blonde women with English accent.

accents. So shortly after that, one day Ralph is at the Portland airport and he just so happens to get approached by a woman. This woman, Mary Marks, and Mary Marks strikes up a conversation with him and she just so happens to have blonde hair and an English accent. And Mary Marks tells him that she's an exchange student and that she's in her 20s. Now, none of that is true, but we'll get to that. So Ralph and Mary Marks strike up a conversation and they hit it off and they start flirting. And pretty soon, they're talking on the phone all the time. But she lives in California, and he lives all the way up in Oregon. So their relationship is long distance, but they're really into each other. Two years later, they get married. And it's a quick marriage to help her get her visa, but whatever, Ralph is super happy. I mean, he's never had a wife before, even if it is

long distance. In fact, bro is so in love, like he ends up getting one of those personalized license plate frames that says Ralph Hart Mary on it. But soon enough, Mary Marks is telling Ralph that she's also a bookkeeper. So Ralph hands over some of the business bookkeeping responsibilities to her. So now Rachel Lee and Mary Marks are completely in charge of Ralph's finances. And then Rachel Lee sells off all his investments and she's paying herself, she's paying Mary Marks, Rachel Lee's paying her own boyfriend, and they're all living a pretty baller lifestyle off of Ralph's money. And Rachel Lee, in particular, loves using Ralph's corporate credit cards to travel the world with her boyfriend. I mean, here she is in Paris.

We're here in Paris on our anniversary at the Eiffel Tower, about to have dinner, five-star restaurant. Oh, but it gets much worse. Because one day, Mary Marks and Ralph, they agree to start a family. I mean, Ralph has always wanted to have a kid. I mean, someone to pass the tree farm on two. Now, here's where it gets really weird. They've been together for several years at this point, but they've never been intimate. Like they've never smashed.

Never, nothing. No idea why. Regardless, they agree to get Mary Marks pregnant through IVF. So she tells him to, you know, put his special sauce in a cup and she'll take it back to California to a doctor and she'll use it to get fertilized. So they do that, and Mary Marks goes back to California with his special sauce, and she ends up pregnant. And around nine months later, she comes back to Oregon with a baby. Allegedly Ralph's son, who she names, and I'm not making this up, she names him Giorgio Armani, like the T-shirt. Regardless, Ralph is super happy.

I mean, he loves his son. It's what he's always wanted. And she brings him up from California to visit all the time. Dad-da. He misses you and he wants you to know it. Okay, so here's the truth about Mary Marks. Are you ready for this? Mary Marks is not some random English exchange student in her 20s

who just happened to meet Ralph one day at the airport. Mary Marks is actually Rachel Lee's biological daughter. And together, they're scamming poor Ralph. And by the way, Mary Marks is not in her 20s. She was 17 when she met Ralph back at the airport, and she was 19 when they got married. Ralph, of course, has no idea what her real age is. And her English accent? Totally fake. Her blonde hair?

A wig. Their marriage? Also fake, like she didn't file any paperwork. It was all part of the scam. Even her name, Mary Marks, is a fake name. But here's the thing. Mary Marks really did get pregnant. Just not by Ralph.

She got pregnant by her. her actual boyfriend back in California. But little Georgio Armani is not her baby. Allegedly her boyfriend wouldn't allow her to use her real baby, so she had to borrow a baby from a family member. She then took that family member's baby up to Oregon periodically to Ralph and told him that it's his son. So this baby in the video calling him dad is not his.

And poor Ralph, he's unaware of all of this. And if you're like, Ray, how could he fall for such an obvious scam. Well, I don't know, I'm not him. But I sincerely, respectfully think he might be on the spectrum. Plus, remember, he was desperately lonely, and he just really wanted to connect with someone, and someone finally came along.

Anyway, but then things get much worse for Ralph, because one day his elderly father passes away. So now the whole tree farm is his. So then Rachel Lee, who's still at this point managing his finance, as she lies to him and she tells him he's actually broke and that he needs to pay his inheritance tax and that he'll need to sell his entire farm to pay off this debt. And so sadly, Ralph believes her and he does. He sells his family farm that he loves for $12 million.

And of course, Rachel Lee is controlling his money and with this sudden influx of cash, she uses it to buy herself a lot of stuff. She buys herself another psychic shop. She invests in real estate in California. She buys her boyfriend and exotic car, Rolexes. I mean, these fake psychics are out of control. Until. Here's the thing to remember about this whole story.

All of this takes place in a couple of different small towns in Oregon. And the thing about small towns is people in small towns tend to notice things. For example, that psychic shop where Rachel Lee does her readings, it suddenly has a white Ferrari parked outside. all the time. And people in town are like, how the fuck does anyone in this town afford a Ferrari, much less a local woman who does psychic readings? Like everyone around here drives pickup trucks. So then people start talking and neighbors start believing Ralph is getting scammed. And eventually local police get involved and they subpoena Ralph's financial records. And looking at his bank records,

it looks like Ralph had bought a bunch of houses, an apartment complex, trips to Europe, a Bentley, a Ferrari. So police go to Ralph and they're like, hey Ralph, did you buy a Ferrari and all this other shit? And of course, Ralph was like, uh, no. So after 10 years, Rachel Lee and her daughter's scam finally starts to crumble. After these women had swindled almost $15 million from him. And poor Ralph, once police tell him that they scammed him, he just wants his money back that he was scammed out of. But he's such a nice guy that he really doesn't want Rachel Lee and Mary Mark. to get in trouble because he still cares about them.

Regardless, they eventually do get in trouble. And bam, Rachel Lee gets arrested. Here's her mugshot. And also, bam, Mary Marks gets arrested. Here's her mugshot. And they both end up taking plea deals. But here's the thing though. Even after the arrest, Ralph still refuses to believe any of this.

He still thinks Mary Marks is really this blonde woman from England who he just happened to meet at the airport who loves him. So as part of her plea deal, police make Mary Marks sit in a room with Ralph and confess to him that she's a fraud, and they make her take her blonde wig off in front of him. Once she takes her wig off in front of him, he finally sees the truth, and he believes this woman scammed him. Anyway, Rachel Lee is sentenced to nine years in prison, and Mary Marks gets about two and a half years in prison, and Rachel Lee's boyfriend, who was also involved, he gets two years in prison. And allegedly, even after all that, for years after, Ralph still wore his wedding ring as he really loved having a family, even if it was fake.