The Inimitable Miss Cleo: The World Famous Fake Phone Psychic

The late '90s were such a different time... kinda. But the last real decade still had plenty of fakers, grifters, and scam artists, all offering up questionable spirituality and easy answers... just like now! Enter Miss Cleo, the legendarily scammy fakin' Jamaican phony phone-based psychic and the face of a highly profitable long con, the Psychic Readers Network. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Did you a? Elizabeth is Saront How you doing, girl?

Speaker 3 (00:07):
I'm good. How are you?

Speaker 2 (00:08):
I've been looking forward to seeing you.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
I've been looking forward to see you.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, I got this crazy that I wanted to ask you.
Do you know what's ridiculous?

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (00:16):
Do I Bradley Books on Instagram.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (00:21):
You know, he's a bibliophile in his profile and I'm
kind of hoping he's also a biblio dick excellent, because
that's cool.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Anyway, Bradley tipped me off to something.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Always a rude dude.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
He's a rude dude. The interns, which, by the way,
we have a new intern of you matter.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yes, I actually I had to contact hr like day
two because she bit me.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
What yeah, control, Yeah, she like pea in the office.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Oh yeah yeah. Some of the other interns have complained,
They're like, are we paying indoors now? Is that what
that's happening?

Speaker 5 (00:52):
Right?

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Right? And so she's just she goes to town on
chew toys and I don't know.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
She loves peanut butter though.

Speaker 4 (00:58):
Loves the peanut butter Brosy Rosie. The intern she's problematic.
I'm worried she's going to break into the studio and
interrupt things. But you know, if it happens, it happens.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
We just keep going accept life as it is.

Speaker 4 (01:09):
So anyway, Bradley, Right, So the other good intern forward
to this to me that there's this Brazilian Gelattteria. They
make a Dorito's ice cream gelatto.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Yeah, I know, I know, I know.

Speaker 4 (01:28):
Anyway, focus deep breath, and so they have like they
put the scoop of gelato.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
I'm mad for the Italian and then they put some
I'm not Italian.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Because they're so protective of their food.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
I've had it in Italy. Gelatto. It's amazing.

Speaker 4 (01:43):
If you go to Italy, you have to have it,
like twice a day every day.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
I'd have it. It is a treat. Like in the
middle after lunch, to be walking around it said, will gelato.
Step in a park, watch the birds, the old people
talk forever. Is amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Wear a linen suit, watch some construction.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
It was incredible.

Speaker 4 (01:58):
So anyway, so I see that, I'm like, oh man.
But then I started looking that when I was looking
for Dorito's Gelato to see like is this a thing?
There's a restaurant inside the Crypto dot Com arena called
Dorito's after Dark. Okay, they have thirteen menu options, uh

(02:19):
you know, like loaded Nacho's that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
But in downtown La for anyone who does know, right, right.

Speaker 4 (02:25):
So that is home of the Lakers, the Hockey's Kings,
the w NBA Sparks, and Dorito's after Dark like peach
Pit after Dark, but Dorito's after Dark. So they do
like you know, they have they have like Dorito's ice
cream stuff. I almost said a bad word, but they
also they have like a Dorito's California role and what

(02:49):
they do imitation crab avocado cucumber, but then like the
outside is crushed up flame and hot cool ranch Dorito's.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
And then they have this.

Speaker 4 (02:59):
Drink, right, they have a cocktail and I was reading
it really quickly. It's the Dorrito's Chamoyata, and I really
thought it so chlamydia when I was reading so as
it strikes a bounce between spicy and sweet, featuring a
frozen mango mixture and a flaming, hotly moon infused chimoy
around the rim beverages served with the tangy tammer and

(03:20):
candy straw. Uh so you know you were saying bread
and circuses day.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
There you go. So, Bradley, you sent us down this
rabbit hole.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Thanks brad Thank.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
You, Bradley. Uh, there's Dorito's Gelato.

Speaker 4 (03:36):
There's a whole Dorito's restaurant, and uh whatever, I'm gonna
go hide in a hole filled filled with authentic.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
ITALI after you.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Now, I kind of do want some Doritos?

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah, well you know on their own excellent. Yeah, right,
when you start shoving them into things like melon balls,
you lose me. I got something for you back down.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
Yeah, oh this is ridiculously going to go get.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Us some Yeah, I know you. I saw it in
your eyes.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
And the problematic intern to go get it?

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Oh maybe yeah Rosie. Oh I don't even think she
listens to us. So if you got a second, I
got one for you. It's it's basically a concept. It's
using an outrageous accent to gain fame and well not
exactly fortune, but there was the fame.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
Is this the Zeron Burnette story?

Speaker 2 (04:25):
No, this is Ridiculous Crime, A podcast about absurd and

(04:50):
outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent
murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. Ye, Isabeth, I
so wanted to tell you this one because I think
it's a fun story. Yeah, but also it has like
some like not an emotional we has an emotional arc.

(05:10):
I don't know. Yeah, there's a surprise in it, right,
It's like, oh, you go one direction, it comes back
to the other anyway, Elizabeth, Yes, I want to talk
to you about making big, big money with a big,
big time fick accent, a fi accent.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
Hey are you doing a jah make a mob?

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Possibly?

Speaker 3 (05:27):
You know I love that.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
As we've mentioned from time to time, you spent some
time in Scotland.

Speaker 5 (05:33):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
I thought you're gonna say Jamaica. I was like, I've
never been.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
I've never been to Kingston, right, yeah, no, but you
went to grad school in Scotland. I came away with
a masters and a pretty good Scottish accent. Do you
mind favoring me just for a little bit now? Also,
I know when you lived in South Carolina as an
expat from California, you also managed to walk away from
there with a pretty good South Carolina accent as a
Georgia board I.

Speaker 4 (05:54):
Approved, And there are many different South Carolina accents, so
there's like the Charleston, which I really can't do, but
I can.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
I can do backwards so so easy, honey, it's just.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah, just look at that. I mean, it takes me
right back all of a sudden. I'm on a road trip,
my lord.

Speaker 4 (06:08):
I just I don't know how we're going to get
to the store this afternoon.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
The roads are so assy.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
It's sing song perfect. Now, would you ever feel comfortable
doing those types of accents, say, like over the phone
where someone can't see you, but you got to do
it for the duration of the phone call.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
Yeah, if I warm up, like right now, the sword's
so great.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
But like I did call you to the carpet cold,
but I mean like thank you.

Speaker 6 (06:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
But if you do trust yourself to pull off.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
This, I can pull it off.

Speaker 4 (06:33):
I don't know about the Scott's accent because I can
do like two things, well, I can do three things, right,
I can do the great. And then there's the one
that's in my head. An anytime someone thinks they're going
to like post something political of like a cartoon of
someone and you know, it's really biting in my head,
I always hear you got him dead.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
Like, oh yeah, big deal. Oh no, it's not anyway.

Speaker 4 (06:58):
And then the other one is this the Sean Connery
you're playing.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
Boh, and that's it. That's all I've got for that,
so classic.

Speaker 4 (07:06):
If if I were on the phone, I can only
say those three things.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
But a southern accent, like a southern country.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
You can stay in that for a time.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
Let me practice warm up a bit. I could do
it for hours.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Okay, excellent? No do you like? You know me? I
love a lot of accents, and you're kidding, yeah, I know,
but like also to me that like I don't take
them seriously. I'm not trying to usually like do it
accent of another country. I'm trying to do like the
like the paper, like my paper look French accent? Right, So,
but I do actually love the sound of real, authentic
like foreign accents and even regional American accents. You have

(07:39):
a favorite.

Speaker 4 (07:41):
I love hearing little kids like argue with each other
in Italian and they get all.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
Hands yes have you seen or like little French kids,
you know, like lecturing someone. I love that. I love that.
I Oh yeah, Zaren, what do you like? What do
you like to hear?

Speaker 2 (08:00):
I'm asking you the question? Sit back down, now the
only way I found you do would know that I
like the sound of accent to English, right, Like I'm
a big fan of Jamaican accents, Irish, the Indian subcontinent. Yeah, Like,
so there's all these accents are like fun to the
ear right. Some accents sound more musical, some sound more lyrical.
Some accents will have like a hank or a whine

(08:21):
to them, or like a funny intonation that hits your ear.
Now to keep it more like, we're not making fun
of other people, just make fun of Americans. Do you
have a regional American accent that always like, you know,
you like to listen to regardless, Like it's not like
how attractive it sounds, but like how funny or fun
it sounds.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Um, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
I mean I think like the Southern accents. I'm fascinated
by the variations of them. You can hear and figure
out where someone just like an English accent, you can
hear where someone's from. One thing I think is interesting
is the California accent that I've had People in Europe
tell me when I talk to them, you sound like
the television, You sound like movies. And then but then

(08:59):
there's also a California thing where we drop teas so
Sacramentou is Sacramento, Sacramento.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
And we just kind of like ellied over those.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Also, a lot of the hard consonants like we're just
lazy mouths because it's so chill here.

Speaker 3 (09:12):
It's like, why bother.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Why do we have to hit that stuff so hard?
Why do you want to come on so strong?

Speaker 3 (09:16):
I do?

Speaker 4 (09:17):
I kind of like, what's really grating is that question
at the end of everything?

Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yeah, some people do.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
It's all more generational, I think.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
Then, yeah, definitely, definitely like you didn't ask.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
But my favorite American origional accent is probably the Texas
Panhandle accent. That's like Whale and Jenny. Think that, Willie Nelson.
You just want to hear those people tell a story.

Speaker 7 (09:36):
I just love it.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
Now enough about regional and foreign accents.

Speaker 4 (09:41):
Right, although I will say one more thing you can
tell if someone's an old head, like long time Barry residence,
if you call San Jose Santa.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Is like one word.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
One word.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
I've noticed you do that. I've heard you. You've pointed
out to me a long time ago, and I've noticed
people do say that, And I'm like, oh, you.

Speaker 4 (09:59):
Lily, especially if they're on the peninsula sama Is. Anyway,
that's fun fact.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
Well as those indicators. We often you know, can tell
a lot from a person by their accent when it's real.
Right today, I want to tell you a story about
a woman who got famous for an accent that was
not real, an outrageous accent, a totally exaggerated accent. What
accent you guessed it earlier, Jim, make an accent. But
the accent is not the only reason this woman got famous.

(10:26):
You see, this woman, Elizabeth, was a psychic. She was
from a long line of spooky pipe as she put it. Now,
who is this woman? I think we all know and
love miss Cleo. Miss Cleo, a telephone and television psychic
was all the rage to the start of this century.
So you have this Jamaican woman, she's all over cable TV.
She's promising to tell you her future. And you remember

(10:49):
her right that, you remember, like she's kind of hard
to forget. Yeah, she's this warm faced, middle aged black woman.
She wore these crazy colorful West Indian outfits and head rabs.
You saw my hands going up to my hands didn't
even get to the words, And like the head rap
it all. Yeah, she had that very famous catchphrase she'd
always say to implore people to call her ca I

(11:09):
mean now, so Elizabeth, this woman became the face of
a billion dollar company billion with a B, a B. Yes,
And it was all built on the backs of the
hundreds of self professed psychics, all working on dil a
minute phone calls. Huh, and then it all came crashing down. Yeah,
you're ready to hear the cautionary tale of Miss Cleo,
the psychic who didn't see it coming. She made herself

(11:33):
famous as the face of the Psychic Reader's Network, and
that's not to be confused with the Psychic Friends Network,
which came first.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Do you remember the nineties and early aughts era one
nine hundred psychics?

Speaker 4 (11:46):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (11:47):
Do you remember the thirty minute infomercials that were on
late nineteen Yeah, it would be like an ad starring
Dion Warwick. Yes, sitting on a couch, she'd be telling
you to call her psychic Friends and how she or
they could be your friend. In that way, you could
find out if it really is love, or you'll get
that new job, or should you make that movie?

Speaker 3 (12:04):
We forgot that. Miss Dion was in there.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yes, not only her, there was other she brought her
friends or celebrity friends. Friends like Gary Coleman, oh honey, yes,
or Isaac the bartender from The Love Boat aka ted Lyone.

Speaker 3 (12:17):
Did she bring Patti Leveell?

Speaker 2 (12:19):
I do not remember she brought Patty Levelle. I didn't
actually look up.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
But she sells its.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Oh, she will sell anything. Did you sell a pie? Yeah?
She got that pile on lock. Now, all these aging
celebrities that they were, they were parlaying their fame to
cash a check essentially, right, So it kind of had
like a real love boat energy. But looking back, the
whole Psychic Friends Network thing that was so popular in
the nineties, and of course, like it got so popular,
that's Saturday Night Live did a skit mocking the Psychic

(12:47):
Friends Network and the skit was in season nineteen if
you're curious, that would have been the nineteen ninety three
ninety four season. The skit had it was called Christopher
Walkin's Celebrity Psychic Friends Network. Oh, I remember that the
host was not Christopher walking It was Jay Moore, the
comedian playing Christopher Walking doing his impression, and he was
like doing things like I can tell you things about yourself,

(13:09):
things that you don't know right now. It's one of
those good SNL skits that makes you wonder why it's
on TV right and how soon it will end? Like
it just drowns off. I went and watched it. Yeah,
it makes they have Todd Bridges come on. It's like
Tim Meadows playing Todd Bridges. He's like threatening to come
to your house. Right, and it's like, well that's a
whole joke because he's a mess on there. Yeah, right,
So anyway, and also you know those like bad at

(13:31):
ending skits that.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
Has always been the thing they don't know how to strikes.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
And they don't they never think about it. I'm like,
when you guys write your skits, write the ending first.
Just just write that, Go how are we going to
end this thing? And then right to that, right and
anyway whatever, anyway, Happy fiftieth anniversary SNL.

Speaker 6 (13:46):
I do.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
I bring up that skit as a good measure of
how popular the Psychic Friends Network was in the nineties.
The infomercials were everywhere, always on. If you watch late
night cable TV like I did and like you did now.
Between nineteen ninety three and nineteen ninety four or the
Psychic Friends ran twelve thousand and thirty minute long infomercials.
The company behind the network was paying about half a

(14:07):
million dollars per week for their late night TV cable
time ass yes, yeah, so what was that ad investment
worth to them?

Speaker 3 (14:14):
That's what I say. If you're putting out that kind
of money.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
One hundred and twenty five million dollars a year off
of phone calls to a psychic yeah, now, because I
know you liked the conversion rates, that would be two
hundred and seventy five million dollars a year in twenty
twenty five dollars. They were printing money, Elizabeth. As you know,
when there's heat, where there's success like that, you will
often find sleazier imitators.

Speaker 3 (14:37):
Completely.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
But if you're sleazier than the Psychic Friends network, watch
out now. So Intermiss Cleo and the knockoff Psychic Reader's Network, right,
it's a network, Yes, totally. They had to get the
exact same language. So people get confused. I heard about
this the Psychic Readers. I guess that's it.

Speaker 4 (14:53):
Whatever, Well, it's like publisher's clearing house. That's not what
Ed McMahon apparently he was worth like American in America.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
There you go, something like that.

Speaker 4 (15:03):
But I was we all associated with Publishers Clearinghouse because
they were like competing. They were like you know when
you have like a competing asteroid movies.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yes, totally, or competing Robinhood movies, competing like Friends with
Benefits movies, yes, or movies.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
Or good lord, come on now.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
So uh, that's what we have here, is competing, Like
just how don't you want to call them like entertainment? Yes,
it is entertainment, but it's so much more than that
competing cons Well, this is how Miss Cleo comes to
the world, thanks to the attempt to peel off some
of that value that they can get from this call

(15:47):
a one nine hundred psychics or like, we can get
some of that let's squeeze this in. But we need
a hook better than Dion Warwick. What can be better
than Dion Warwick? Cleo, just take a little break and
have these messages. I will introduce you to.

Speaker 8 (16:01):
The lady himself, Elizabeth zaren you ready to meet Miss Cleo.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
That's not her real name. Her government name is actually
Eurray del Harris. Originally Miss Cleo wasn't even a psychic. Instead,
she was a different kind of storyteller. She was originally
intending to be a playwright. In the early nineties, she
was living in the Seattle area working in local theater.
She was known by her stage name Ray Perry, and

(16:46):
she was also known by many other names, Euray Khleiomilli,
Urray Del Harris, Urray Paris, Ray Del Harris, Cleo, Milly Paris,
Euray Cleo, Millie Harris. You can hear the Cleo starting
to creep in. She wasn't there yet, so she did
find though, the seeds of her future is Miss Cleo.
While she was in the theater scene in Seattle. So

(17:06):
she was performing at the Langston Hughes Performing Center. It
was this hub for the black arts community scene in Seattle.
While she's there, she puts on two plays that she wrote.
In one of the plays called for women only, she
creates this character named Miss Cleo. Okay, the woman was
a Jamaican shawman, so trouble was. According to the Seattle
Post Intelligencer, the future in Miss Cleo Quote was hired

(17:28):
by the Langston Hughes Nonprofit Advisory Council and provided with
a budget with which to pay the cast and crew
of her plays, but only some were even partially paid,
according to two cast members and two Langston Hughes Center employees.
So even as a playwright, she's already doing little low
key scams. Now she basically she kept the money she
was given from this small nonprofit theater and then she
cut down. But now she didn't get into any trouble

(17:51):
even though she walked away with all this cash because
the amount that she stole was so small it wasn't
deemed worth the cost it would take to go find
and prosecutor. Oh okay, so after that, that's how she
left town. But also there was the issue of how
she left town. Like first she told everyone in the
theater that she had bone cancer. Oh, Elizabeth, she did
not have bone.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Cancer, no, you know.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
But she did tell the cast and crew that she
needed to go get treatment for her imaginary bone cancer.
That's why she was leaving town. And she needed the
money from the theater stipend for the treatment. And she
wrote the actors and the crew all letters explaining how
she planned to pay them back individually. Then she blew town.
No one got paid, and no one ever heard from
her again. Yes, now, after she fled Seattle, she left

(18:31):
this memorable impression on the folks that she had built.
One woman told the Seattle Post Intelligencer that the future
Miss Cleo was quote brilliant. Unfortunately she was using all
that talent and energy not in the best interests of
people around her.

Speaker 6 (18:45):
No.

Speaker 3 (18:45):
Yeah, and this is like pre GoFundMe.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Oh, she's just yeah exactly.

Speaker 4 (18:49):
She's like everybody, I have hair cancer. It's very serious.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
To get away. So you guys, you please have have
support in your hearts for me. Now you want to
know where she went next, Well, folks in Seattle, they
also did, but they didn't hear from ever again, So
they didn't know till years later when suddenly she's all
over late night TV.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
Oh my god, could you imagine?

Speaker 2 (19:11):
But by then she's this new person. She'd become the
Jamaican shaman character, Miss Cleo.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
Yeah, but you're watching TV. You see the lady that
you gave like too? Oh man?

Speaker 2 (19:22):
So now are you ready for things to get extra sensory?

Speaker 3 (19:25):
Of course.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
So after she rips off this local nonprofit theater scene
and flee Seattle, the future Miss Cleo she goes next
to where Elizabeth want to guess there's fifty states. Obviously
not one of them is going to be Washington. So
what state?

Speaker 3 (19:39):
Florida?

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yeah, she did. The answer was Florida. I knew you
would get it. I've heard it said numerous times. If
you could somehow pick up the country, a pick up
with America and shake it all the loose nuts would
end up in either Florida or Los Angeles.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
Oh yeah, that totally makes sense.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
In her case, she wound up in Florida and so
and specifically in Pompino Beach. It's a beach town just
at the Fort Lauderdale, about thirty five miles north of
Miami on the Atlantic coast. Okay, so she finds work
there as a tarot card reader, a psychic medium. She
sets up at a table wherever there are people milling about,
you know, like oh, this farmer's market, let get a
table out right. She goes to like, you know, open

(20:15):
air shopping malls. Let me set my table out right,
and then there she would go and fleece the gullible.
So she's working in a mall in Pompino Beach, Florida,
doing her tarot card readings as her Jamaican shaman character. Yeah,
and that's when these two cousins spot her, and when
they see her run on her patois inflected Tarot card
game boom dollar signed. They're like money, money, money.

Speaker 6 (20:36):
Now.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
The two cousins, they were from Fort Lauderdale. Their names
are Peter Stultz and Steven Fader. They had a company
called Access Resource Services, which is the kind of name
that doesn't tell you at all what they do, so
they can say they do anything. So in nineteen ninety three,
based on the huge success of the Psychic Friends Network,
these Florida cousins start their own network of psychics and
they call it the Psychic Advisors Network, but also it

(20:58):
was called the Psychic Reader Network, so they got different names,
all right, So put this in nineteen eighties terms. They
were basically the gobots to the Psychic Friends Networks transformed.

Speaker 4 (21:07):
That's another one of the okay yes from the cousins.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Peter Stultan Stephen Fader are standing there in that mall
in Pompino Beach. They see Miss Cleo work in the
small crowd using her Jamaican shaman persona, and the cousins
they see a star and they know this star is
gonna make them big, big money so they go over
and they approach her. Now, Elizabeth, I know, like you know,
I go for some woo woo stuff, right, sure, So
miss Cleo, is she really like a psychicic call? Does

(21:32):
she have some real powers?

Speaker 5 (21:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (21:34):
Right?

Speaker 2 (21:34):
The question is like, was she actually gifted in the
psychic cards or was it all a scam and a grift? Well,
luckily we have her to answer that question.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
She gave an interview device and she explained how she
got into this business. And she said, and I quote,
I come from a family of spooky people. I don't
know how to see it. I come from a family
of obeah, which is a neta word for vouru. My
teacher was hey sh and boy at and I studied
under half of thirty and then become a mambo myself.

(22:02):
All right, a mambo.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
She comes from spooky people.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Spooky people I love. Yeah, And she's a mambo. A
mambo myself. Well, she's not actually a dance she had.
Mambo in this case means like a spirit worker.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
Right.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
Anyway, back to miss Cleo, she's got breed to say.
So they refer to me as psychic because the word
voodo scares people just about everybody. So they told me, no, no,
we can't use that word. We're going to call you
a psychic. I said, but I'm not a psychic. Then
you would take me somewhere to do an interview. And
as soon as I'd say, but I'm not the psychic.
I don't own the company, the handles. No, no, no,

(22:34):
tell her to shut up.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
So wait, did she have an accent when she was
in Washington State?

Speaker 2 (22:41):
No? Did she have an accent when she gave the
interview device? Yes, so I'm reading according to the transcript
for authenticity. So what do we got so far? According
to her, she have a woman who came from spooky people,
and she was trained in voodoo by a Haitian woman
to be a mambo. But the word voodoo scares white folks.
So this Florida cousins call her a psychic instead, but

(23:02):
she says she's not a psychic, even though she will
play one on TV. Now all clear?

Speaker 3 (23:06):
Yeah, yeah, I got it.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
So anyway, when the cousins offer her the job, obviously
she takes it. Psychic or not, she takes it. Starting
in nineteen ninety seven, Miss Cleo becomes the face of
the new psychic Reader's Network. Each short's Dion Warwick. Now
the Psychic Friends Network was running half hour long commercials
that sometimes look like Oprah Winfrey shows. Yeah, the new
Psychic Reader's Network they ran thirty second and minute long

(23:30):
late night TV at so like, why thirty minutes when
you only need thirty seconds to make an impression them.
Almost instantly, Miss Cleio becomes a budget late night TV celebrity.
She had obviously her Jamaican shaman x, but she went
one step further. She started telling folks that she and
her people were from Trey Lane, Jamaica. She went full
on fake and Jamaican. At this point, she starts saying
she's Jamaican.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
Right Ros Trent.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
So she and the totally she and the Florida cousins.
They knew that her Jamaican persona coded her as like
this West Indian witch, so she plays all that up.
She starts wearing bright color the regal head wraps. She
sits at a table with tarot cards spread before and
in the ads she'd respond to like a series of
disembodied voices of callers. Right, you don't see these other
people usually women, and the callers are almost always young

(24:13):
to middle aged female voices right, so she's talking to them,
and this explains why in the ads miss Cleo acted
like their Jamaican girlfriend who is going to keep it
real with you, right right. So I watched a few
of these ads for you as well as you would
say for shiggles.

Speaker 6 (24:26):
Right.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
In one I watched, she said to a caller his
eyes are almost spooky, they're so pretty. In the caller response,
that'd be my ex boyfriend, and Miss Cleo pulls a
tarot card says, if I have a sword just next
to him, that me and he is away, and the
coller says yep, and to which Miss Cleo then says,
digit think Cleo wasn't going to see that, And the
caller can see I knew you were, and that makes

(24:48):
Miss Cleo laugh from recognition, and she replies, you go girl.

Speaker 5 (24:52):
Now.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
There's another thirty second ad that focuses on just one
call it all totally. You go girl. Now, Miss Cleo
asked this young woman who asked you to go out
of town? The stupid young one or the married one?
Oh right, and the collar says the married one. Miss
Cleo jumps on this. That's what me taught, don't go.
You hear me, and you know what, you not listening

(25:14):
to me because I see you gone. I see you gone,
and the collar laughs knowing she's caught right. I'm just
telling you. I'm trying to help you to avoid the
heartache man. Then comes the appeal to the viewer, don't
go blindly through life. Let me use the power of
the terror to show it away.

Speaker 3 (25:30):
Come in now.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
Right so as you can hear. It's mostly women calling
in about their love lives, their exes, their next loves,
their futures when it comes to jobs, new homes, new businesses,
but like they weren't afraid to go for it in
these ads and bring that full Moury Povich daytime TV energy,
but the dense down to thirty seconds. I found this
one ad from nineteen ninety eight. Miss Cleo was seated
in like a carved wooden like high backed chair like

(25:54):
an elf would have in its dining room. Right, and
she's got the background as a shot of clouds and
it looks like it super red for some reason. It
looks like like you probably don't know this, but the
star Wars volcano, Moon of Moustafar. I couldn't think of
another red sky compared to anyway.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
No, no, I haven't. I've been outside.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
I was touching grass earlier today.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
Red skies at night sailors.

Speaker 4 (26:21):
Delight think of that because I was, you know, in
the service in the forties.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
Raised by merchant marines. So Miss Cleo, she's wearing a
sensible black head wrap and a top that's like a
polo style three button shirt and it looks like she's
borrowed it from like some West Indian uncle. Right now,
she's also shuffling a tarot deck as the caller asked, okay,
I was wondering who the father of my child was. No,
without missing meat, Miss Cleo starts shuffling the Tarot cards

(26:46):
with way more purpose, right, like we're about to go
find out girl. And she folds the tarot cards like
playing cards, and she does that bridge trick where you
shuffle the cards like she's playing these cards, right, And
she said, all right, let's take a look, and as
she laughs to herself, she starts shaking. She's like the
Miss Cleo DNA test. Now she does a quick tarot
card layout. We're slowly searching for the father of your baby.

(27:08):
Now on screen it says Tarot cards never lie.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
Wait on this, this is for entertainment.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
No, no, it's like in big letters, not that small
legal brand is in big letters that those letters fade
away and the replacement the phrase learned the truth. Oh now,
Miss Cleo delivers a harsh truth to the young woman.
She says, it's the one that's very unpleasant okay, And
the caller says okay. But Miss Cleo, it's not done though,
delivering the bad news. She says, and he's also the
one that had another girlfriend while he was sleeping with you.

(27:37):
She's like, the caller astrimate, Yes he did.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
There are great guesses.

Speaker 4 (27:42):
I mean, if you're in that situation, it's like, I
don't know which one is it that Like, I think
we can figure out some demographic information.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Take a wild shot in the dark year. So she
miss clear she takes her victory lap for being right.
She's like, yep, that's him, that's the daddy. And the
woman's like, oh okay. She says it like her Obgyn
gave her test results, Like okay, there it is. Now,
Miss Cleo. She stares right at the camera, so right
at you, the viewer, and she's smuggly now smiling as
the caller, we can't see that's the knowledge of who

(28:08):
her baby daddy is sink in. She's like, oh, you
got get the unpleasant one, right, miss Cleo, she's called
him now sinks the like the kill shot. Basically, she's like,
but you knew that, And the colls like, I wasn't sure,
but miss Cleo, not done yet. I don't know how
the baby looks just like him? So how is she
seeing this in the tarot cards? I don't know. But

(28:29):
the caller doesn't ask, doesn't question it. She goes, yes,
he does look just like And now at this point,
this dollar store therapist, Miss Cleo, goes, yeah, you were
so un denied because and this is where she puts
like her hand to her face to indicate the size
of the chin. So she's like pinching her chin, and
he has this funny little chin, doesn't tea. And the
woman's like, oh, yes.

Speaker 3 (28:49):
He does, do you nail, You're right?

Speaker 2 (28:53):
And like yeah, and the baby has that same little chin,
and she's like tapping her own chin like it's just
a comical thing, like this is how you identify the kid.
Elizabeth the collar is impressed. She says, like, in this
breathless way, Oh my god, Like she's.

Speaker 4 (29:07):
Just she's gonna use a cassette in the custody case.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
In People's court and appearing before Judge Wapnet. So another
satisfied customer. This little mini drama.

Speaker 4 (29:19):
By the way, my baby was born with a goateee.
He has a goate it has to be it's.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Got to be him, your honor. This all goes down
in thirty seconds, right, amazing. So imagine like you're watching
TV late at night. You're drunk, you're high, you're an insomniac,
whatever you are, you're waiting for your late night shift.
You're watching this late night TV and this drops this
little gem of drama. It's incredible, right. Is this a
spectacle of unhinged humanity? Yeah, as you can also no

(29:44):
doubt here these scammer cousins from Florida who are running
this whole knockoff network of phone psychics. Yeah, they aimed
at their money vacuums, at the vulnerable, the gullible, the desperate,
mostly lonely young women in middle aged women who wanted
to hear pretty little lies right right now, it's this,
as I said earlier, dollar store therapy. So miss cleil would.
She's delivering hard trucity women telling them they deserve better.

(30:06):
Some of it's positive, some of it's like this is
your baby, daddy, you know. So not all of it's good,
but like I did like when she'd be like, well
look girl, dismound's a bumb him always gonna be a bomb,
and you don't want to have no bum in your laugh.
You deserve better, girl, Good advice right now. So this
has real appeal. Obviously, entertainment appeal as well is something
Americans love. A like pre slavery era stereotype of a

(30:27):
wholesome fantasy rolled up into one. You get this like
middle aged, mammified black woman who looks after their emotional
well being with all of her like earthy old Negro
wisdom and the power of like the bones and.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
Hoodoo and voodoo, magical Negro.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
Totally so, which is why plenty of Jamaicans hated her.
Oh I can imagine West Indians found her whole deal offensive.

Speaker 6 (30:48):
Right.

Speaker 4 (30:49):
First of all, I am doubting that she nailed the accent.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
No wait, what you're talking about, gown.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
Now, that's gotta be so insulting.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
So believing aside her wandering come and go Jamaican accent.
Miss Cleo would also catch hell for like just her
whole vibe whenever she went out in public and folks
recognized her and they would tell her about her fake
and Jamaican routine. And as she told Vice, they are
places rere I go and people are like yo, Miss Cleo,
and I try to run. I've had people come to
me and there it's like a big controversy about miss

(31:19):
cleis not Jamaican, right, And I'm like, well, yeah, you're
you're not.

Speaker 3 (31:23):
You're not.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Though she attempts to set the record straight, Miss Cleo says,
and I quote, so one day I'm in line to
pay my phone bell and then there was a Jamaican
woman dad, and we are chatting and she goes, you
know who you favor? And I say who She said,
Miss Cleo, And I say, yeah, I'm on, but miha,
she's not Jamaican. And she say, yeah, me here that too,
And I went about my business. She had no idea.

(31:45):
So obviously Miss Cleo is pleased with the story for
at least two reasons. Right one, the real Jamaican hears
her speak and believes her to be one of her
country women. And then two, she's not recognized as the
character she plays on late night TV, which proves she
can be real and the character is something you see
on TV and that's not real. So she's able to
divide herself. She's working on mini levels of little.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Yeah, there's a lot going on.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
It's like you say, with you know your man, Walt Whitman.
She Miss Cleo contains multitude.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
She does.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
But also, according to her, there was another reason she
couldn't be real with people in the street. As Miss
Cleo told Vice and I quote, so, I had some
Jamaican people who are anger at me, saying that I
was a bad representative of theirs. I've always said, it's
not my company. Then they would do this stuff to
punish me. Now she goes all over there right with
the pronouns. So what she's saying is I find interesting,

(32:33):
is she put herself in some distance between her and
the Jamaicans. She was like, I was a bad representative
of theirs, not ours. So she kind of tells on
herself right there, right, and then at the end she says,
then they would do stuff to punish me, not the Jamaicans.
The Jamaicans didn't punish her. It was the Florida cousins
who she's talking about. She's a little hard to follow out. Yeah,
so anyway back to miss clear.

Speaker 4 (32:53):
That detective work is so like on a on a
TV show when someone is missing and their spouse refers
to them the past, and the detectives are like, oh.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
That's interesting. Yes, that's total basically what you just did,
saren So.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
As mister tells it, they spent a lot of time
trying to make me into something I was completely not.
I speak perfect English. When you grew up in America
and your Caribbean, your parts beat it into you that
the only way to succeed is by dropping the patois.
My mother was very deliberate about that, and so was
my father. Wait, yeah, it doesn't make any sense. She's
speaking in a fake pat saying that she was told

(33:28):
to drop it to be successful, which is why she's
being interviewed just because of the patois. Anyway, none of
that is why her gravy train came to an abrupt end.
I'll take a little break, Elizabeth, and when we get back,
I'll tell you how this thing goes off the rail.

Speaker 7 (33:42):
I can't wait, Elizabeth, you're back.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
Enjoy Miss Cleo.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
I am loving this so much. This is such a great, comfortable,
fun ride.

Speaker 7 (34:11):
Joy.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
I probably want to give you some giggles.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
Now, Miss Cleo. She gets, you know, all shook up
at the end of this tale, obviously, but it's not
really her fault. It's more about how the Florida Cousins
are running the company, that she's the face person of
this very predatory business.

Speaker 3 (34:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
Now, the amount that the Florida Cousins were making each
year is not exactly known, but there are healthy estimates
by forensic government accountants that put the company's annual income
at around four hundred million dollars a year.

Speaker 3 (34:38):
Four hundred million a year.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
As Miss c told Vice, I'm going to quote you
a number from the FBI. They're putting down using my
face my talent, twenty four million a month for two
years straight.

Speaker 3 (34:50):
God, that's a lot of phone calls.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
It's insane. And also that's a lot of lonely women.
That's a lot of people calling in looking for help.
Instead they talk to some phony psychic who's probably on
like a wordless phone as they make dinner for their
two kids.

Speaker 4 (35:02):
Because it's not all miss Cleo. It's not like Miss
Cleo's twenty two hours.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
And they're all independent contractors, mostly working from home.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
You keep getting a busy signal because like you can't
get through.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
Everyone trying to get her. Elizabeth. Back in the early
days of the internet, if I remember correctly, you ran
an account for a psychic housecat.

Speaker 3 (35:20):
Yes, I did, toty three thousand.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
Now do you think it would be that you would
make a good phony phone psychic as I.

Speaker 4 (35:28):
Was so good as toty three thousand, because when you know,
if someone would ask is my boyfriend cheating?

Speaker 3 (35:34):
My answer was always.

Speaker 4 (35:35):
Yes, because if you have to ask a stranger that
question question, there's a problem. And like if if he's
not cheating, there's still on his way to it, there's something.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
That your spidy sense, so get out of there.

Speaker 4 (35:48):
I was always just like cut bait, you like, get
out of there, and you know.

Speaker 3 (35:52):
Or like people, Am I ever going to find a love?

Speaker 5 (35:54):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (35:55):
Sure, you know, of course tell me about them, you know.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
Whatever, love for salmon fishing.

Speaker 4 (36:00):
But therapy basically, yeah, it's like I approached it like
I would be talking to friends who wanted advice and
just kind of also messing with people, you know, because
I'm an agent of camp.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
There you go. Now you were you a little bit
of worried that people might actually take your advice.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Well, I never told him anything.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
You like, anything like you should do this or do that, you.

Speaker 4 (36:20):
Should quit your job and like slash your boss's tires
and then.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Start that jam band and maybe the country it's in
the stars.

Speaker 4 (36:28):
No, what I would do is I'd be like, what,
I need some information. I need your birthday and your
favorite color, and I forget what the other one was.
And then I would always have because it was you know,
we'd have the newspaper. I'd open up the San Francisco
Chronicle and then type out whatever their horoscope was, so.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
You were just chat GBT.

Speaker 4 (36:48):
Act patient zero, chat GPT and then you know, and
they think, well, a favorite color, and then maybe.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
I'd riff on that.

Speaker 4 (36:55):
You know, it's just like some you know, my favorite
color is blue, and I'd be like, you know, you
have these aspirations of the sky. Everything is ahead of
you and open, and you need to tap into that. Interesting,
that's how you feel that connection, and.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
They are you just hoping that they then interpret it
the way that would be meaningful.

Speaker 4 (37:11):
To them.

Speaker 3 (37:11):
Of course, you know you're just pushing.

Speaker 4 (37:13):
It's some little pep talks, you know, and then getting
women to break up with their boyfriend a lot of favors.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
The better place. Yeah, yes, you're like Josh Gondleman out
there giving pep talks and making the world a better way.

Speaker 4 (37:27):
Boy, your friends will tell you, like, dude, that guy
is horrible. You have to stop, like block his number.
And you're like, yeah, but but if a stranger is
like for real and they don't even know you just
sometimes sometimes I would amput up, But that's really dangerous.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
You have to get away from I don't.

Speaker 4 (37:44):
Know anything as some nerd doe boyfriend, Like he's very dangerous. Bay,
So I apologize to all the customers.

Speaker 3 (37:55):
Of it was in America?

Speaker 5 (37:57):
What is it?

Speaker 3 (37:58):
Al?

Speaker 4 (37:59):
Yes, America online AOL room wow, like in the early days.
And so I would just like toty three thousand psychic readings.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
Love this, like in the evening when you're born, just like.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
Who's in the mood for a reading? Psychic cat is?

Speaker 4 (38:14):
I have my mom and my brother there with me,
a couple. Yeah, we would just like sit around.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
You run out of like the San Francisco chronicles at the.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
You know, at the in those days you had a
computer table.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
Or oh yeah the house, yeah, the house, like the
shared family computer.

Speaker 3 (38:29):
Yeah, so we would all gather around the fan.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
And lightest strangers has a psychic house.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
Guy, I'll tell you, I'll tell you the truth. My
mom's the one who started the toy.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
You're busting her out.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
We're all just hanging around. She's like, watch this.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
Well, as a former fake psychic, I thought you might
appreciate how the psychic readers network operation works. Yes, I'm
fast because they had far more people. You know, it
was a much bigger operation than your family run operation.
So from miss Cleo, she really was a telephone operator.
You really could call and talk to her.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
She really did time on the phone.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
Oh yeah, she worked the phones. And then as her
fane began to grow, obviously, then she started doing ads
and traveling. But she's still even then was still ad
inswering phones apparently, and she was paid for it. And
while she was like on the TV doing ad, she's
still being paid as a phone operator.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
Yeah, and can you guess how much she was making.
I'll give you some parameters just to help and narrow
it down. Most of the psychics on the network made
fourteen to twenty four cents a minute.

Speaker 3 (39:25):
Fourteen to twenty How long is the.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Average call I'll get I'll tell you that in a second.

Speaker 4 (39:29):
Fourteen and so she that's what the average. So she's
making what would you say, fourteen to twenty four, So
she's probably making like twenty seven cents.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Twenty four she's making she's the.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
Top top burner. Yep, the bottom that calls.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
Out to be about fifteen dollars an hour if you're talking.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
The whole time, fifteen dollars.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
So the hours are.

Speaker 4 (39:49):
Also and they're pulling in what was it, like four
hundred million a year or something, a.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
Lot of independent contractors. So yeah, the hours of these
people are long. The customers often would tell them these
heartbreaking stories, so they got to listen to a lot
of sad things. Yeah, they're parts of the conversation. The
customers are real, you know, their emotions are true. So
the whole goal is to keep them on the phone
a long time.

Speaker 4 (40:12):
Yeah, because it's a nine hundred numbers, nine hundred number when.

Speaker 3 (40:16):
You call, because that was like dial a minute.

Speaker 4 (40:18):
Yeah, eight hundred obviously was free, toll free nine hundred
by the minute.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
Yeah, so they get you in the first three minutes
on the one eight hundred number.

Speaker 6 (40:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Once you call that in, then they go, okay, well
let's talk a second. They ask you, they put you
on hold, and they use up your three free minutes,
and then they go call the one nine hundred number
and you can talk to psychic Betty or whatever. Right,
and then that's how they would get you then talking
for and the average calls were about twelve to fifteen minutes.
That's what they tried to get him to go to.
The longest ones are usually about an hour at that rate,

(40:46):
that's about sixty dollars per average call at twelve minutes
an average call. So if you have twelve minutes is
your average call, you are making sixty dollars per average
call or charging six charges.

Speaker 4 (40:55):
Yeah, so I call, I'm on the phone five dollars
per minute. I'm going to get my at that time
I Pacific Bell telephone bill.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
Yeah, and you just see. Yeah, also in the charge
with three hundred dollars or whatever. Now, once again, as
they said, we don't have exact numbers, but it's estimated
by federal investigators from the Federal Trade Commission that over
a three year period the company pulled in a billion
dollars in telephone charges.

Speaker 8 (41:16):
A billion.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
Yeah, and we've gone over how much that is. Yes,
that's a lot, that's a lot, a lot.

Speaker 7 (41:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
So if they're pulling that down right, obviously things were
boom and they got a whole battalion of fake phone psychics,
not just miss Cleo. So, but they all have to
maintain the same vibe as her. She has set an
imprint of what people are expecting. So the company does
not train their fake psychics. They don't do They don't
even do like a day long seminar.

Speaker 3 (41:41):
Nope, like a two page PDS.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
No, they do give them that. They give them a
script to follow, okay, and then they also give them
like this tarot card like a program, computer program, so
they can just run. Oh that's just yeah, they'll like
randomize the tarot.

Speaker 3 (41:54):
Card thought they were going to get.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
They were instructed to focus on money, new jobs, potential moves,
and love always love and push push love. And then
also if you get asked, you do know who the
baby daddy is? Oh no, We obviously do have some
accounts of what it was like to be a fake psychic
for the Psychic Reader's Network, But there were some stories
from major newspapers and outlets, Especially in twenty sixteen. We
have like author Bennett Madison penned and I account for

(42:16):
The New York Times entitled I was a hotline psychic
for Miss Cleo.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Now, as Madison recounts her time as a fake phone
psychic in two thousand and one, quote that summer, whenever
I could, I stayed up all nights, smoking out the
window and guzzling cheap wine while doling out fortunes over
a landline. For some reason, the customers expecting Miss Cleo
didn't seem to mind when they got a clueless, depressive
twenty year old from the suburbs instead. Since I was
not actually psychic, the Psychic Reader's Network provided me with

(42:41):
the minimal script to read and a computer program that
stimulated a Tarot card spread. I used neither. It worked
better to make it up as I went along. That's
really the best approach for anything is just keep it lose,
keep it flexible.

Speaker 3 (42:52):
Middle of the night, wine wine.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
Bus, Yeah, exactly, talking to strangers.

Speaker 3 (42:56):
Man all fuzzy.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
Now, how did she do in her own Miss Cleo
like way well Madison's self reports quote. I often slipped
into one of a few personas I had invented to
make myself feel more authentically magical. Sometimes I was Cassandra,
a husky voice Southern bell who called everyone on a child.
Other times I became Gabrielle, a fay mystic with an

(43:20):
accent that I imagined to be Frenchish. People seem to
like Cassandra best, but I can never keep rep for
more than a call or two. She made my throat horse.

Speaker 3 (43:28):
Oh god, So.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
Can you imagine putting on all these different personas for
callers like a kid playing make believe in their parents'
old clothes. Right, that's your job. Well, you don't have
to do that, because I imagined you're doing exactly that.
But rather than me tell you about Elizabeth, I'd like
you to close your eyes and I'd like you to
picture it. You are a telephone psychic, recently hired by
the Psychic Reader's Network after you lost your old job

(43:51):
as a makeup artist for photo shoots for people's pets.
There was that incident with the guinea pig and the
eyebrow pencil. Anyway, you found new work. At the moment.
You're seated on the floor of your apartment, cross legged
on a lush Persian rug, talking on a headset as
you fill out a crossword puzzle. Your cat, Mickey blue Eyes,
lies against your leg, gently purring, warmed by a shaft
of afternoon sunlight. You listen to a caller as she

(44:14):
asks if she should stay at her well paying job
even though she's in a long distance relationship. Her partner
is pressuring her to relocate so they can be together,
but she's worried she can't get the same type of
job she has now. She doesn't know what to do
for this call. You decided to speak in an outrageously bad,
vaguely Eastern European accent. You sound like Lady Dracula. You

(44:34):
flip a tarot card on the rug and you say
it to the color. Oh no, that's an interesting spread.
What does it say? The caller asked, eager. You take
your time answering, since your main goal is to keep
this collar on the line as long as you can.
You pet your purring cat and wait for a moment
before you say.

Speaker 5 (44:51):
The cards are there's the lovers, there's a harmit and death.
They are very powerful cards.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
But what does it mean?

Speaker 2 (44:59):
The car eagerly wonders, as your cat swats at the
terror cards.

Speaker 5 (45:03):
You say, the cards show me you're very sensitive and
carrict person.

Speaker 2 (45:08):
You attend to your loved ones very well.

Speaker 5 (45:10):
I am.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (45:11):
The caller agrees, you reply, but this makes you very
critical of yourself.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
Yes, that's so true. The caller again is quick to
agree as you refill your glass of crystal light.

Speaker 5 (45:22):
This draw cards tells me you very recently missed out
on opportunities in life because of uncertainty.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
You have one personal level. Yes, I definitely have. The
caller says, you're telling her what she wants to hear.
Is that so wrong? You think to yourself, and then
you hear yourself say what.

Speaker 5 (45:40):
I see in the cards? As you need to learn
to trust yourself again, this is very important. This draw
tells me if you adopt trust, you'll get closer to
your dreams.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
One of the cards is the Lovers. That seems good,
but the last card is death. Is that bad? The
caller asks, you have to fight back a laugh. It's
a good question, though you mentally scrambled to think of
a reasonable answer. Then it comes to you.

Speaker 5 (46:03):
The lover's card is very good, and the mental cards,
the hermit cards, speaks to where.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
You are now. You are the lovers and the hermit.
But what does the death card mean? Is my relationship
not gonna work out? You quickly say no, no, death
is what that just means. Change, So I should move
across country to be with them. Your cat purrs as
you think, you don't know quite what to say. You're
trying to avoid the answer, so you say what the

(46:30):
card is shown doesn't make it clear. I see if
you upset allder of things, what you get is what's
important to you. That's not an answer, You suck. I
want to talk to miss Cleo. Your no, Miss Cleo.
The caller hangs on. You go back to petting your
purring cat as you wait for your next call. But
you did just make three dollars.

Speaker 4 (46:50):
This is how it sound like I should be like
part of Angelica Houston's family.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
In John I was kind of also imagining the Rocky
and Bullwinkle Natasha exactly. Now. This is what probably at
first seemed like a fun, random job for most of
these people. Young people were like, Oh, I get to
just talk on the phone to strangers and then all
of a sudden, it's like, I gotta do this every day,
and the job will start to eat at you. Right,
And if you do a job like this, it eventually

(47:15):
erodes at your sense of self. Or, as Bennett Madison
put it, our customers were desperate and sad. They were
being evicted, they were about to lose custody of their children.
They were lonely enough to pay by the minute to
chat with a stranger. The fact that the stranger was
me began to seem cruel. Yeah, no kidding. So by
two thousand and two, folks across the country start to
complain to authorities that they were feeling cheated, taking advantage

(47:37):
of defrauded of their heart and income. There is one
caller that I found in a newspaper story, Tracy Simms.
She received a bill for three hundred dollars right for
psychic services. She calls the company to contest what she
considers a fraudulent bill. She didn't ever remember calling the
psychic hotline. When she's calls, she's told to ignore the
bill and she's like, okay, fine. Then she receives another
bill because when she called them, she called the one

(48:00):
nine hundred.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
Numbers they charged her.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
She called back to complain again. That time the service
rep argues with her and hung up on her. Yes,
So after that she looks up the psychic reader's network online.
She finds that she's not alone and feeling cheated by them,
and there's a lot of people are complaining about these
fake phone psychics. In fact, there are so many people
complaining about how they feel cheated, defraud and mistreated that
they're filing complaints with the Federal Trade Commission. The Federal

(48:26):
Trade Commission is getting hundreds of these complaints. Wow, So
finally they're like, Okay, once we cross two hundred, I
guess we got to act or whatever it was two
thousand and two, the Federal Trade Commission, it springs into action.
Not only did they not care that Miss Cleo was
a real psychic or not. That wasn't their concern at all.
All they cared about was the deceptive advertising. Because when
Miss Cleo told the viewers call me now, she told

(48:49):
her callers to use a free one eight hundred number, right,
and then they switch it to the one nine hundred
and they start charging them five dollars a minute and
they get kept on the line sometimes, as they said,
as long as an hour and then right and they
hit an hour, they just disconnect, even if they were
in the middle of talking. Yeah, because they would get
three hundred dollars or the gut's good to go.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
They didn't want to just keep racking.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
No, I don't know why I found that interesting. Yeah,
So after their investigation in two thousand and two, the
Federal Trade Commission charges the Florida cousins, Steve Fader and
Peter Stoltz with deceptive advertising billing collection practices. By this point,
the company is charged, as they said, a billion dollars,
but they have a five hundred million of outstanding unpaid
charges that they're just waiting to collect on at this

(49:27):
point when they get caught by the Federal Trade Commission.
So the FTC's like, you ain't getting that money. Yeah, yeah,
you're gonna give us some money. So they had then
you're gonna give those nice people back their money. So
they had to pay back the five hundred million, They
had to cancel the five hundred million that they'd already gotten,
and they had to pay five million dollars on top
of all that as a whole I'm sorry kind of
like fine, yeah, now if you're keeping a score at home,

(49:48):
Miss Cleo not indicted, good, yes, but she was. But
she was finally revealed to be a fake in Jamaican.
So in March of two thousand and two, the website
The Smoking Gun, Oh yeah, yeah, I remember them right,
they posted documents obtained by the Attorney General Florida because
meanwhile a bunch of states had been suing this company.
So they have all these there's like lawsuits in like
all over the country. So Florida, Sunshine State, you get.

(50:10):
You can now find out what they are able to
generate in their lawsuit. So the Psychic Reader's Network and
the Florida cousins, this all comes out and then Miss
Cleo it comes out as a California native born in
Los Angeles on August twelfth, nineteen sixty two. Her parents
also not from Jamaica. They were from California and Texas. Yes,
so after this everything goes could put for the Psychic

(50:30):
Readers in two thousand and two, but this Cleo not
done because in two thousand and five she went back
on TV doing ads as Miss Cleo, doing ads for
a local used car dealership in Florida, a little bit
of a fall, But after that she decides I'll lay low.
She tries to let the world kind of move on,
forget all about her and her fake and jim A
can act right. Two thousand and seven, she releases a
spoken word album, not a Elizabeth, not a Grammy Award winner.

Speaker 4 (50:55):
I'm so surprised because every other spoken word album does
souch well on the charts.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
You're always recommended it to me.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
Yeah, yeah, all at one time, competing with each other.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
I don't have anything bad against the fact in my family,
I've got spoken word artists. I mean, like, I can't
really like besmirch them, but go make some money.

Speaker 3 (51:17):
Yeah no, you don't say, well.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
I guess let me do a poetry chat book and
my spoken word album. I'm buying that big house. Time
moves on right. Twenty fourteen, she does a documentary called Hotline.
It was as one of the major figures of the
late nineties and early two thousands era of Hotline bling.
She spoke candidly about her time as Miss Clea Right,
and people were loving that. Then the next year, twenty fifteen,

(51:40):
she tries to capitalize on her fame again. So she's like, oh,
I'm Miss Cleo. She gets a bunch of ads for
French Toast Crunch with General Mills like national ads. But
then the still operating Psychic Readers Network sued her and said,
we own the character, Miss Cleo. Right, series of ads
get shelved. She loses all of it.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
Right, what was it? Cinnamon toast Crunch serial.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
The French toast Crunch, It's like cinnamon toast scrunch. They
had a new flavor, French toast scrunch.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
So okay, yeah, I don't.

Speaker 2 (52:05):
Know what that has to do with it. Jim making psychic,
But there you go. The world didn't see this come.

Speaker 3 (52:11):
In, No, nobody did so Sadly.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
The next year, twenty sixteen, mis Cleo passes away age
fifty three. Yeah wow yeah, from cancer. After her passing,
there was a documentary made about her that the titles
called call Me Miss Cleo. And there's a charming thread
that runs through the documentary because the thread is this
love that all these folks felt from his Cleo. I'm
talking like the real woman. She was loved by her family,
her friends, colleagues, college roommates, not people in the Seattle theaters.

(52:38):
But these people, they all get choked up as they
remembered her like She clearly was a very real and loving,
caring person. And the one thing I loved about her
personally is how she fully committed to the bit, how
she became Miss Cleo. Years later, after she's been debunked,
she's still giving an interview in Patois Device. I love
that now, despite all the bad psychic advice she gave out,
all the lives she affected, all the frauds she committed.

(52:59):
I want to forgive her. I want to say it
was a different time or something, but it wasn't. It
was pretty much just like now. She knew what she
was doing. She knew it was a lie. So the
question I'm really left with is is can a lie
ever be a good thing?

Speaker 3 (53:10):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (53:11):
Like not like a white lie to protect someone's feelings,
which I think can be a good sometimes, But I
mean like a lie that misleads, like makes someone believe
a false reality. Can a misleading lie ever be a
good thing if it makes someone feel better?

Speaker 3 (53:22):
I think so.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
I don't know what it is hurt.

Speaker 4 (53:24):
I don't know, but I mean she wasn't. She was
She knew what she was doing, but she didn't reap
the benefits of it.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
No, she really exploited. She wasn't definitely a victim. But
I was saying, but the lie she was telling that
these people who were calling in doing their dollar store therapy,
was it a good thing that she was telling them,
like you can look out for you girls. Yeah, lie,
That part wasn't the lie, but the rest of the
part was. It's mixed in so either. I rarely think
lying is good, but in this case, I think that
we do tell ourselves all sorts of pleasing fictions all

(53:52):
the time. Right, Is it wrong if we outsource that
to someone and pay someone to tell us the same?

Speaker 6 (53:57):
Please?

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Exactly? But Ben and Madison will get back to her.
The New York Times piece, she said, and I quote,
I know better than anyone else that Miss Cleio was
a fake. But I always kind of believed in her anyway.
And it seems like many of us that we want
to believe it, and it sucks when people leverage that
desire and use it against us to defraud us and
so forth. But like, and so that's why I am
more of my anger in this story at the Florida cousins,
and I ever do it Miss Cleio, Right, because we

(54:21):
want Miss Cleio's in our life. We know she's probably fake.
We don't care. We just don't want to be cheated
to get the miss QUI do.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
You want some sort of magic in your life?

Speaker 2 (54:29):
Yeah, you know exactly, Miss Cleio innocent.

Speaker 3 (54:32):
I have zero anger for her, everything for the cousins.

Speaker 2 (54:35):
Yeah. Well, by the way, the Florida cousins, Steve Fader
and Peter Stultz are still at it. In fact, best
I can tell, Peter Stultz may be the owner of
the website sugar Daddy for me. So he's still out
there making money exploiting young desperate women looking to improve
their lives. So we questionable means, so boom. That's a
ridiculous takeaway here, Liza.

Speaker 4 (54:54):
I was going to go on a rant, but my
new ridiculous takeaway is that I was told that if
you say you can in an Australian accent, you're saying
bacon in a Jamaican accent.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
It's true, you can, exactly.

Speaker 3 (55:09):
There you go, that's my takeaway. What's your takeaway?

Speaker 2 (55:12):
My ridiculous takeaway is I didn't think I could pull
that Jamaican accent off that line, and I wasn't thinking
about it right, just boom Era was anyway, I just
I just have fun with it. Forgive forgive me, Jamaicans.

Speaker 3 (55:25):
It was nos Trent. I gotta go listen to Russ.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
That's cute being a cute producer. Do you got a
talkback for us?

Speaker 8 (55:35):
Oh my god, I love get.

Speaker 6 (55:45):
Hey guys, you mentioned the name of a politician from
the eighties on a recent episode who sounded familiar to me,
and I was hoping it sounded familiar because it was
the same guy my husband had told me a ridiculous
fact about. But it wasn't. I thought you'd enjoy the
fact anyway. Former Secretary of State George P. Schultz has
a tattoo of a tiger on his rear, and his

(56:06):
wife said that when the children were young, they used
to run up and touch it and he would growl
and they would run away.

Speaker 4 (56:12):
So that's uf I've heard that.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
I've never heard that.

Speaker 5 (56:18):
Man.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
I got a picture George Schultz's rear.

Speaker 3 (56:21):
The tiger on his rear.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Love that tiger in his tank. Well, as always, you
can find us online ridiculous crime on the social media
is that's mostly Blue Sky and Instagram these days, we
also have our website ridiculous Crime dot com. It has
most recently been nominated for Country of the Year So
from the United Nations exactly that I just made up.
So emails if you like the Ridiculous Crime at gmail

(56:44):
dot com. We always love to hear from you, and
you can get onto the iHeart app record a talkback
and maybe hear your voice here. Thanks for listening. We
will catch you next crime. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by
Elizabeth Utton and Zaron Burnette, produced and edited by the
man who put the plastic on Dion Warwick's furniture, Dave Kustin,

(57:07):
and starring Annale rutger Is Judah. Research is by a
resident fake soussayer, Mistress Marissa Brown and the psychic Warlock
Alex French. Our theme song is by Miss Cleo's Jamaican
Jerke Chicken dealers Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. The host
wardrobe provided by Bobby five hundred. Guest hair and makeup
by Sparkle Shop and Mister Andre. Executive producers are Ben

(57:29):
you know I'm a little psychic Bowlin and Noel Well,
I'm a big psychic browns QUI say it one more time.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts
My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.