NYC Psychic on Trial on Charges of Conning Clients
Associated Press/October 3, 2013
By Jennifer Peltz
When a heartbroken ballroom-dancing instructor who had just lost a job and a businesswoman with an unrequited workplace crush wandered into a fortune-teller's Greenwich Village shop, the soothsayer foresaw lucrative opportunities — for herself, prosecutors said.
Conjuring past lives, divining "negative energy" and promising to banish problems through techniques such as stuffing thousands of customers' dollars in a jar, Sylvia Mitchell bilked the Singaporean businesswoman out of $128,000 and the Florida-based dance instructor out of more than $10,000, prosecutors said as Mitchell's grand larceny trial opened Thursday.
"It's one of the most humiliating things that's ever happened to me," dance instructor Debra Saalfield said in recounting how she tapped a credit line on her Naples, Fla., home to hand over $27,000 to a psychic who said Saalfield had been an Egyptian princess in a previous existence.
The case, one of several prosecutions of fortune-tellers in recent years, probes at the line between selling a service, however unusual, and preying on hopes.
"This case is not about whether you believe in psychics," Mitchell's lawyer, William Aronwald, told jurors in an opening statement. The two women hired Mitchell to help them try to change their lives, and there's no evidence "that she did not provide the services that she was contracted to provide," he said.
But prosecutors say Mitchell, 39, seized on despair to peddle false promises of personal transformation. She could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted of the top charge against her.
"The defendant is not in the business of cleansing spirits. She's in the business of cleaning out bank accounts," Manhattan Assistant District Attorney James Bergamo said.
Saalfield, who runs a marketing business and competes in ballroom dancing, said she had never been to a psychic before she went into Mitchell's chandelier-lit parlor, where she was billed as Zena the Clairvoyant.
After both a breakup and a layoff within a day in July 2008, "I needed some direction and guidance, and she said that she was pretty confident that she could help me," Saalfield told jurors. "I don't know that I thoroughly trusted her, but I wanted to listen to words of comfort."
After a $75 initial psychic reading, she returned the next week for a $1,000 version — and was told her problems stemmed from being too attached to money in her royal life in ancient Egypt, Saalfield said. She knows of no Egyptian heritage in her family.
Mitchell's solution: Give her $27,000, just to hold, as an exercise in parting with money, Saalfield recalled.
She gave Mitchell the sum, quickly regretted it and asked for a refund. Mitchell said the money wasn't available, Saalfield said.
After trying unsuccessfully to stop payment on the check, she called police, had a lawyer write letters and hired a private investigator to try to retrieve her money. Mitchell ultimately gave back about $9,500, Saalfield testified.
Lee Choong, a Singapore native who earned a master's degree in business in New York, turned to Mitchell in 2007. Choong was grappling with professional demands and a personal problem: She was romantically interested in a co-worker, who didn't reciprocate, according to prosecutors and Mitchell's lawyer. Choong hasn't yet testified.
Mitchell said Choong was surrounded by "negative energy" and could exorcise it by putting $18,000 in a jar that Mitchell would hold, Bergamo said. Choong ultimately gave Mitchell about $128,000 over two years, prosecutors and the defense said.
Mitchell repeatedly offered to repay Choong if she was dissatisfied, Aronwald said.
Psychic scams often go unreported, prosecutors said. Still, a number of fortune-tellers have faced criminal charges.
Janet Miller, a Manhattanite accused of swindling $600,000 from a woman by promising to rout evil spirits, pleaded guilty in May to grand larceny. She was sentenced to a year in jail.
Manhattan fortune-teller Tammy Mitchell served prison time after pleading guilty to grand larceny in 2010. The allegations included conning a woman out of $40,000 by pledging to rid her of a curse. Tammy Mitchell is no apparent relation to Sylvia Mitchell.
A Palmdale, Calif., soothsayer was arrested for investigation of extortion in 2011 after allegedly persuading a 12-year-old girl to steal more than $10,000 in jewelry from her family and throw it into a cauldron to lift a curse.
To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.
