10 quotes found
"When the veil drops, victims face financial wreckage... A lot of people call me, and they just want to talk, tell me what happened. But they don't want to go forward. They're too embarrassed. They don't want to see their name in the papers."
"People are very embarrassed by this. They say, "How could I have fallen for this?" ... [But] it doesn’t matter if you’re a college professor. It doesn’t matter if you’re a lawyer. It doesn’t matter if you’re a doctor. You’re on their territory. And they know how to take advantage of that."
"It's not a crime to be gullible. But it is a crime to steal from a gullible person."
"This is organized crime and there is a network all over the country. It's been going on for centuries and is passed down from generation to generation. The mothers teach their daughters... The psychics you see in the storefront who are dressed kind of shabby and don't have that much money actually are the same people who when they drive away go live in a million dollar house on the Intracoastal and they're driving around in a Maserati... It leaves the victims penniless and emotionally broken."
"No other victims are more maligned than victims of psychic fraud. The embarrassment of being swindled plays right into the hands of phony psychics."
"They [the psychics] find someone that's at a vulnerable point in their life. They create a sense of dependency. They create a pseudo-world. They will tell people, "I'm doing God's work. I'm taking the money to the altar". The amount of money that these people are defrauded of by these so-called psychics is astronomical. We're talking in the billions of dollars."
"These cases are all psychological manipulation under the guise of assistance. They sell false hope. That's a very powerful product when you’re a person that's desperate."
"No one has ever proved that they have psychic abilities since the beginning of time. And James Randi, from the James Randi Foundation, put up a $1 million challenge to any psychic who could prove their abilities. No one has ever collected."
"I would like to stress how ruthless these self-proclaimed psychics are. They have absolutely no regard for their fellow human beings."
"I’ve never come across a case where an atheist got taken by a psychic. I’ve never had a case like that. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but I haven’t seen it."