Posted on 03/06/2014 5:10:58 PM PST by nickcarraway
New York police arrested a fortune teller accused of scamming a woman out of more than $200,000 with claims of a curse that needed to be lifted.
Investigators said Amanda Ufie, 26, a fortune teller operating out of a Manhattan storefront, convinced Jiawei Li, 22, that she was suffering from a curse in January 2012, and Li paid Ufie $217,040 in the ensuing 10 months to lift the curse, the New York Post reported Thursday.
Police said their investigation, which began when Li filed a complaint against Ufie in January, discovered a "second individual" had been bilked of $1,400 when Ufie claimed "to have the power to remove negative energy from the second individual's body," the criminal complaint states.
Ufie, aka Amanda Petro, was arrested Tuesday and charged with grand larceny and scheme to defraud. She was held in lieu of $25,000 bail.
Life is hard. It’s harder if you’re stupid.
Notice how psychics never win the lottery?
I thought the headline was referring to “the curse” if you know what I mean.
The “victim” has over $200,000 to give away in 10 months and she thinks she’s cursed? Where do I go to get this curse put on me?
Anyone who is so brain-dead as to not know that ALL psychics are scam artists doesn't deserve to keep their 200K.
This would be like someone falling for the Nigerian Prince scam, and then whining that they got rooked.
Waaah! He PROMISED me millions of dollars if I'd only send him 50 grand.
I kept my end of the bargain, why didn't he?
Put that bad man in jail!
I’ll give ya 5 points if you can name the original artist... without googling.
One of the scams work like this.
A psychic finds out a woman client, whose husband has died, left her lots of money. The psychic claims the money is cursed and that is the cause of the “bad luck” the widow is suffering.
Widow is told to bring in a bag of the “cursed “ money to be burned. Psychic pulls the “bait and switch” and burns a bag of newspaper clippings. Psychic says the woman is partially clear of the “curse” but she needs to bring in more of the “cursed” money to remove more of the curse.
If it were legal to defraud people gullible enough to be defrauded, then there wouldn’t be much point in making fraud a crime.
I mean, let’s carry that logic to its absurd conclusion. If a child molester lures a child into his car, does that child deserve to be molested because they were gullible? If a murderer tricks a co-ed into taking a ride with him, did she deserve to die? How about when a girl takes an open drink from a date rapist that has been spiked with roofies? Does she deserve to get raped?
This was the type of scam I was referencing in the other thread. A person who is in a very bad place in their life could be convinced of something like this is the hands of a skilled con artist with very good timing. Not everybody, if course. But in this scenario, for example, don’t underestimate survivors guilt.
Yes, don’t forget that this is the excuse that criminals themselves often use—the gullible deserve to be taken. Of course when they get taken( eventually it will probably happen) they don’t feel that way.
I honestly have no idea. The first version that came to mind was the one that the Rolling Stones did and that was just a cover of it.
Nah, it was Benny Spellman, one of Ernie K-Doe’s back-up singers (the guy sang “Mother-In-Law”). About a gazillion groups have covered it since then, especially British Invasion groups.
The only way someone this stupid can get that much money is by theft.
They just steal the lottery money from the stupid lottery winners.
Yes, always blame the victim for the crime. /s
Title should be: “22 Year Old New Yorker Admits That She’s The Biggest Idiot on the Planet”.
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