The Hidden World of Psychic Scams, Part 1

The Perfect Scam

AARP

True Crime, Society & Culture

4.5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 September 2019

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Debra is a divorced mother and ballroom dancer who travels between her home in Florida and New York to train with her dance partner. When Debra loses her part-time job in New York and boyfriend in the same day, she's distraught. Without the extra income from her job and a place to stay from her boyfriend, Debra knows she'll have to quit ballroom dancing — even though she and her partner have been climbing the ranks on the Pro-Am circuit. Walking in Greenwich Village, Debra sees a psychic shop she often passes. Today it catches her eye. She is searching for answers and decides to stop in. The shop is well- appointed with lavish decor and plaques that show additional locations in glamorous cities around the world. Sylvia, the psychic who comes to give Debra a reading, is dressed to the nines — like many professionals you would see in New York. After the initial reading, Sylvia says she can help Debra but that she'll need to come back for a deep reading. When Debra returns for the two-hour deep reading, Sylvia determines that Debra has trust issues, particularly when it involves money. Seeking closure and desperate for a solution to her problems, Debra starts to believe and trust Sylvia. The psychic tells Debra to write her a check for $28,000 and promises she will hold on to it for one day. When she returns the check, Sylvia tells Debra that her money and trust issues will be solved. Debra follows Sylvia's instructions and gets the money for the check from a home equity loan. However, as soon as she hands the check over, Debra realizes she has made a terrible mistake.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Coming up on AARP the Perfect Scan.
0:03.2	And people don't realize how these self-proclaimed psychics really destroy people's lives.
0:18.0	Hello and welcome back to AARP the perfect scam. I'm your host Will Johnson and we're joined by AARP's Fraud Watch Network Ambassador Frank Abagnale. Frank it's good to have you back with us once again here.
0:23.0	Thanks, Will, great to be back.
0:24.6	This week, we are exploring a topic that might be a real surprise to some of our
0:28.4	listeners, and I know it might be hard to surprise our listeners at this point.
0:31.6	We've covered a lot of scams and a lot of
0:33.1	stories and a lot of them seem really pretty far out there. This is one that is more
0:39.7	common than you think. If you live in a city like New York, let's say, and you walk down the block, you might see
0:47.2	Psychics or Fortune Tellers. You may see more than one. You may see several as you walk down several city blocks. This has to do with
0:54.7	that. It has to do with a woman who became a victim of a psychic. And I think what's
0:59.4	so difficult about this one is that scams are tough to talk about for a lot of people if you have
1:04.6	been the victim of something. It might be a romance scam and you don't want to talk about it.
1:07.9	Psychics are going to see a psychic might be a whole another level of something that you just don't want to talk about and so then it just becomes a secret that you hold on to.
1:17.0	Yeah, absolutely and as we've said many times before some people don't want to share with their family members
1:24.2	because then they think well you can't handle your money I need to take over your
1:28.2	personal affairs and they lose their independence sometimes they're even
1:32.3	ashamed to go to the police, but you have to tell
1:35.1	somebody, that's the only way otherwise that person will keep on ripping other people off
1:39.4	unless you tell somebody a loved one, the authorities, what had happened.
1:43.2	And as we always said, there's nothing to be ashamed about.
1:46.5	What's more important is to do something about it,
	...

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