There are over 750 Gypsy Fortune Tellers in the police database. Is your Gypsy Psychic on the list? My Story:   page 1   page 2   page 3    return to Gypsy Psychic Scams homepage Exposing the Truth: Frequently Asked Questions My Story (continued from page 2) I voiced my disbelief. But she was so convincing. She was so unbelievably sure of herself and reassuring, not yelling. Again, she said, "Seeing is believing." Over and over again, "Seeing is believing." I was starting to believe it -- more on that later. The only catch was the amount she would need -- $9900! I couldn't believe it. I begged her, "Look, with all of the work I've done in the past, all of the effort, why can't God recognize that and count that? I mean, if you don't take the money for yourself as you say (and she said, just like the others, that she only draws an income off of the basic walk-in readings, not the "spiritual work"), then why do you need the money?" She said that it was because the other work that had been done on me didn't take, and that she would need to buy special candles with this money that are very expensive. And she would need special materials such as crystals and she needed this money to get them. I told her I didn't have it, nor did I have any means to get it on loan or credit. She pushed to see if I could borrow it from anybody, but there was no one who would lend me that kind of money without wanting to know what it's for. And no one I knew who had that kind of money to just lend. I felt dejected and frustrated. She would not bend on the issue of how much was needed to be sacrificed. I had made the mistake before this of telling her how much I made at my job, thinking I needed to tell her lots of things to help my situation, as she encouraged me to. Looking back, I'm sure the amount she wanted me to sacrifice was calculated based on that. if I had told her I made half of what I did, I bet the amount to be sacrificed would have magically been lower, and maybe based on a different number other than 9. Because this Gypsy psychic was insistent -- no money, no work -- I had to settle for her helping me by doing regular, basic prayers for my protection. Also, she said I could pay her as I go and that once I had given her the full $9900, then she could do the work. That's what I did. That summer I also started working as an independent contractor in my field because my job was getting downsized. She also encouraged me to move back in with my parents on the South Side. That way I'd be closer to her house to meet with her. I told her they'd never go for it, but she assured me it would happen. When they did agree, I mistakenly took that as a sign of her powers. I did do a little dating that summer. It didn't go very well -- the girl, who I'd been set up with and who initially this Gypsy woman endorsed my dating, turned out to be really superficial. The summer was hard. I constantly thought of ways to come up with this money. Finally, by the end of the year and New Year's Eve, I had come up with the money. I did have to take another big cash advance from a credit card for half of it, when I finally had the available balance to do so, but I did it. As things would happen during that year -- for instance if I had a bad day where I started feeling really anxious and scared about what I was doing with my life but then would feel relaxed a few hours later -- this Gypsy woman would tell me on the phone later that she had sensed my distress and had "put some special prayers on me". She was always saying she would "put some special work on me" or "put some special prayers on me" or on an issue when it arose. I thought, " Wow, when does she not do 'special' prayers?" They all seem to be pretty special. What I didn't realize was happening however, if had paid closer attention at that point, was that every time something good would happen, she would take credit for it. Every single time, she would say, "See? My work is reaching you!" or "See? My prayers are reaching you." My intuition began complaining that she and her work can't be responsible for everything. That would mean I'm totally dependent on her work for my happiness at some point (See what's going on here?). But the thing about it I wasn't noticing right away -- because she had said how badly I needed to be protected by her -- is that she would take credit for things AFTER they happened, not before. More on this in a moment. The first huge point I reached that was the first sign of my finally beginning to realize what all of this Gypsy stuff was really about, that all of this "supposed" work wasn't real, came that August, and it was because she accidentally took credit for the wrong big thing. The backstory on this is that my dad had suffered a heart attack two years before and had undergone an angioplasty. He was doing the usual cardiac rehab regimen (e.g. light running on a treadmill) like all other cardiac patients, but he was also doing something very unique. My family was in a fortunate position to have access to a new form of therapeutic treatment for heart disease involving a nutraceutical that was developed to basically nourish cardiovascular cells back to health (think a vitamin with 1,000 times more power than normal). The nutraceutical my dad had been taking was designed so that cardiac patients who took it each day faithfully over time would see their tissue begin healing and their artery blockage incrementally go down. This is normally not the case in patients who don't do this. Anyway, my dad went for his annual stress test on his cardiologist's treadmill. The doctor said he saw something in the test he didn't like. He was concerned there might be new blockage (which is very common in heart patients since nothing's really done to get rid of what's causing the blockage to begin with). My dad was scared so he agreed to another angiogram. After the procedure, the doctor came out to the waiting room and told my mom and me that my dad was fine, it must have been a shadow that he'd seen in the test. Not only that, my dad's tissue had shown signs of healing. I was really pleased, but not surprised. My dad had been taking the high tech stuff and it did what it was advertised to do. When I told the Gypsy psychic the good news, however, she said that actually what had been healing my dad's heart tissue was her work. That she had put very special work (there's that "special" word to describe her work again) on his heart. My intuition winced at this. I knew better. But I was still under the Gypsy mind control and still under that fear that they'd all instilled in me that if I don't have this spiritual work done, bad things will happen and I'll never be saved. I kept this nagging thought in the back of my mind. And focused in error, just as I'd done in the past, on her work fixing things so my personal life would be great like it's supposed to be and that I'd be healed once and for all. The year 2000 came, and she let me know that the work was going beautifully, but she would need to do some extra special work to keep all these good things going and bring the opportunities I want my way. She would need more money. Right around this time (and this is the only thing I'd ever give a Gypsy credit for having a 6th sense about) my contract work started to really pick up and I was making really good, steady money for a client each week. But just as soon as I would earn the check, she needed more and more money for crystals, or for her "Church". (I've since learned from a Chicago detective what this "Church" really is -- for more info, see the FAQ's section). Again, each time she would pressure me for money, she'd back it up with, "You know I don't put pressure on you for money, right or not?!" She was CONSTANTLY reminding me how she never puts pressure on her clients for money. And then demanding in the next breath that I agree with her about that. At one point in this whole experience, I remember saying to her, "That's a joke. You do nothing BUT put pressure on me for money." It seemed like the better off I did with work (working very long hours, 7 days a week I might add), the more money she was demanding. Only I wasn't strong enough yet to see the connection. She kept saying that she was praying to keep bringing more work my way. Another big thing was happening. I'd met a girl and stated dating and this was a good relationship for a change. Only, it was really difficult to have money to go on dates because so much of it was going towards the supposed spiritual work. This dating experience was the second huge point in figuring out what had been really going on. The girl I was dating was fortunate that her childhood had been a lot happier and a lot less dysfunctional than mine. As I became friends with her friends and saw life through her eyes, the story about the source of my plight and this evil curse became tougher to reconcile when measured against her world. The Gypsy psychic just kept up the pressure though. It was almost as if every other visit to her house was an ATM withdrawal. At this point, the money I was sacrificing under orders by her wasn't coming from cash advances, it was coming from money I'd earned. By the time the end of the year arrived, I had made my best salary so far, but I had worked consistent 55 to 60 hour weeks, and had paid the Gypsy psychic $21,300 on top of the $9900. Almost 40% of my income had gone to the work she insisted she was doing in order to heal me and protect and bring more work my way. I began thinking to myself, "Great, she says her prayers are bringing me work, but who's making all the money after I work?" By the next summer, I was getting worn out with all of the sacrifices. This Gypsy talked the best game of all of them, and she would constantly remind me that "the spirits" would tell her I need to show more effort, and that if I don't they're going to be upset and bad things will happen to me and my healing. But that summer, she would slip up again, and something would finally happen that would change my life and, in an instant, rewrite in my mind the past 9 years of a lie I'd been conned into living by very clever and persistent crooks. Back when she had first explained that my family was cursed, she had told me that some cousins of mine and an uncle had gone to Europe and buried something in the ground to curse the family for their own gain. In being mentally controlled by these Gypsies by this point, that seemed to make sense because my extended family did go to Europe a ton. Only that summer, when they all went again, I learned that my uncle had never been to Europe before. "Okay," I thought, "Maybe we were all just lead to believe that." But still, it weighed on me. Then she slipped up again and this time, my intuition had had it. It had been building up its own strength inside me for months and was starting to challenge everything I'd been told to do in exchange for the healing. Things had been going pretty well with my clients, but I wasn't seeing any new work come in. It was a much slower summer than the previous year. One day she had me come in to visit her house. Sitting at the dining room table, she informed that she didn't want me to be scared, and that everything is okay and she had taken care of it, but that two of my clients were going to drop me a few weeks ago and use someone else, but she had made them think differently using her work. She said that she had to do this on her own without telling me so that I wouldn't worry, but now she demanded that I needed to give her another sum of money for this. This time, I couldn't just go with it any more. "Which clients?" I asked her suspiciously. "Which two clients?" I wanted her to name them specifically before I'd agree. But naturally, she insisted she shouldn't tell me so I wouldn't worry about it or think badly about them, because it might upset her work. I was frustrated, and for the first time in 9 years, I was finally willing to ask myself what would really happen if I stopped this work. It's funny with this mention of prayer and how the Gypsy spiritualists, this last one included, would have me pray at home saying that it would help their work (actually, what it was really for was to help reinforce their control over you). That summer, with my intuition nagging at me and being burned out working so hard only to see it all go to this Gypsy spiritualist with nothing left over to try to pay down my incredible amount of debt, I did begin to pray. I prayed to God for a sign that what I was doing was really from Him. That He really did want me to be making these financial sacrifices and that this last Gypsy psychic/spiritualist really was doing his work as she insisted. Especially at that point with all of the "sacrificing" for the "work" made over the past 9 years, plus all of the interest on it still accumulating at 18 to 21% APR's. Real, genuine, nonGypsy-influenced prayers can be a funny thing. As the song goes, you can't always get what you want, but you do sometimes get what you need. There were two programs on TV I happened to catch that summer. I hadn't planned on viewing them, I just happened upon them. One was an episode of "Mystery" on PBS. It was a detective caper involving what else but a Gypsy fortune teller, who in the show was running a con game. After the show, the host of "Mystery", Diana Rigg, went on to explain how fortune telling parlors began in this country. There were two sisters who professed to be clairvoyant. Tons of people believed in them, and they would hold supposed seances in their home, communicating with the deceased spirits of loved ones. This became profitable, and soon parlors of this sort began springing up around the country. Later, the women admitted to being frauds. Only, as Diana Rigg stated, it was too late. The fortune telling phenomenon had blossomed into a good business for many and had spread out too far too fast to too many towns across the land for the truth to catch up with them. I didn't want to believe what I'd seen. Yes, I was praying for God to give me the truth. But just as when Helen had demanded the $15,000, I didn't want to wake up one day only to discover that this was all a crime committed against me, a confidence crime, and that I'd wasted 9 years of my life. That would be too overwhelming a thought. Plus, there was always one thing. this Gypsy's psychic abilities she seemed to have. Those could not be questioned. She had this incredible gift. There's no way she could tell me the things about my life that she did without that gift. And someone with that kind of special power who is talking so much about God and Jesus and religion and Christianity could not be that cruel and heartless. They couldn't put up that much of an act, and have it all really be a scam, could they? The next TV incident happened with a group of friends watching an episode of "Sex and the City." One of the characters visits a Miss Cleo-like fortune teller who tells her that her love life is suffering and she can't meet the man of her dreams because there's a curse on her. But unlike other fortune telling skits I'd seen on tv growing up, this time the fortune teller tells the girl that she can lift the curse for $100. This hit too close to home for me. It felt too familiar. Worse yet for me, the character grimaces, shakes her head in disbelief and walks out. That didn't sit well with me at all. But again, my Gypsy was really a psychic though. She had the gift. How could I explain that? I was already seriously questioning her integrity with this so-called work, especially after taking credit for work she had done after the fact. And also because at one point, after the first time she pulled that, I told her she is not to do any special work without asking me first. But all of these Gypsies had me so scared about the consequences of not obeying them and giving them and their Church money for all of the tireless work they'd been doing for me. The spirits would turn on me if I didn't. I tried to rationalize my suspicions about her and Gypsies in general. Maybe she did need some of the money for her family and this is just how it's done with this unusual Gypsy culture (the ways they lived outside the law and our own culture in the U.S. was very apparent to me after all the time I'd had to study them close up). And other than the Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde thing with the caring grandma bit one day, and the monetary shakedown/pressuring thug the next, she always seemed to act like she really cared. And I knew she had that great psychic power. Until the day my life changed. It was early afternoon and I was in my car heading over to my girlfriend's condo. At this point I was wrestling with my mind each day. Is this stuff real? Is it bogus? Am I going to ruin the work and face bad things happening to me if I challenge it? (Perhaps even by this Gypsy on purpose, using the spirits against me, I feared.) I imagined what life would be like if I were to learn that nine of the best years of my life had been taken from me by heartless, shameless cons, not to mention so much of my money that I still was paying dearly for in credit card balances and a crippled credit record from all the debt. That it had all been a lie and I'd been tricked into spending all of that long time believing lies. I would calm these fears whenever they came up by reminding myself of this Gypsy's psychic ability. I had to "psych" myself back into believing. Once when I had mentioned this doubt to her directly, she said that it was the evil spirits trying to get to me, but don't worry that they can't because she's protecting me, and to just ignore these thoughts. She also said that she knew all along that I'd been experiencing them, and that she had been praying for my protection from them and taking care of that all along as well. That was the summer that John Edward's show, "Crossing Over", on the SciFi channel first became really popular. I had caught some of his shows and he seemed really amazing, and the real deal (he's not, by the way). He too seemed really sincere and his voice reassuring to people. That again made me suppress my doubts and worries because of the psychic ability. Until that day. The day those 9 years of my life came tumbling down. As I drove to my girlfriend's condo, I turned the radio dial to what at the time was the Buzz Kilman and Wendy Snyder show on WCKG. Right as I tuned in, they were finishing up with a psychic who had phoned in and was amazing them as well as callers, with his psychic ability. They were joking about it. One of the hosts was skeptical, the other was like, "Come on, how could he know that stuff if he wasn't psychic?" I wondered if I should keep listening to this, or turn it off -- because Helen and the other Gypsies had always ordered me not watch any horror movies, ghost stories, psychic investigation shows or anything having to do with examining the paranormal because there was darkness stirred up in it and it was bad and could hurt me. In the previous years, I would have just changed stations out of fear of being exposed to evil spirits, as the Gypsies had made me afraid of happening. But this time I decided to keep listening. And the next caller they put on had called to dispute the psychic (who was now no longer on the phone). This caller was a local magician. And he went on to explain to Buzz and Wendy an old parlor trick called "cold reading". And as I sat in my car and listened, I heard the sound of 9 years of my life come crashing down in a matter of minutes. Cold reading, as he explained, is asking the person general questions, or making general statements you throw out there. The person receiving the reading takes these general statements (like "there's a person who likes you but they've hurt you dear") and runs with them. The con artist says the statement with such confidence and with an act like they're reading your mind. The person being read assumes that the psychic must be referring to so and so, and acknowledges the statement, with "yeah, it's this person who hurt me, and he/she...." and then they give the Gypsy or other psychic more information. The person being read is so wrapped up in the reading, they don't realize they're giving the Gypsy all of the information she needs and will use later to appear psychic. A detective who's an expert at Gypsy crime, fortune telling and otherwise, demonstrated this to me. He said, "You know that cute little blonde you liked in college that hurt you bad? Well she's actually your soul mate and you two were meant to be together." (the soul mate trick is a popular one with Gypsies) Now, he didn't know anything of the story I'd mentioned about the last girl. But when he did this to me for fun, I immediately thought of that last girl to break my heart. She was a very short blonde. I had to stop myself because for a split second I could have almost believed the detective was psychic, he said it so convincingly with such confidence. Until he and I started laughing. But I was amazed at the power of it. Just by his authoritative, confident tone and the fact that he had registered a "hit" with something that related to me, I interpreted that as psychic. After all, when you go for a reading, you go assuming the person is really psychic, or at least you're open to that idea. Otherwise, why would you go? But when you stop and analyze it, anyone is bound to have had a heartache or two in their lifetime. And there are basically only a few hair colors so how hard is it to wager that I would have dated a blonde at some point? And hurt is a relative term. So is "short". This is how a cold reading works. You keep throwing generalized statements out until you register "hits", only the person receiving the reading, if they're into it, won't realize the psychic gets some misses too. They just keep talking. And in the case of Gypsy women scam artists such as Saundra, Helene LaMarr (aka Helen Lamar, aka Helen Cannon), Helen's aunt Laura (aka Viola), her niece Lisa Johns (AKA Mrs. Page of Maryland and New Jersey), her deceased brother and his widow (Stanley and Helen Johns, aka Ann Taylor, in Milwaukee), and her sisters Inez (aka Ashley) and Nancy (aka the "Reverend Sister Faye" in Maryland) they are experts at reading people and reading their reactions. So what happened to me? I spent the rest of that afternoon lying on my girlfriend's couch with the most incredible headache I'd ever experienced in my entire life. I don't think it went away until I went to bed. I had finally been set free by the truth, but now I had to come face to face with all I had lost. Equally as difficult, I had to reconstruct my life story for the past 9 years, and that's not easy to do. It's incredibly draining. And there was one last, huge thing to contend with. I'd been systematically brainwashed by con artists for 9 years. I couldn't just forget all of the fears they'd instilled in me all of that time. It actually took until after the holidays that year before I was officially able to make a break from this last Gypsy "spiritualist". I gave her one last sum of money, out of fear and nothing else. Then, in January, I wrote her a letter telling her how I'd become suspicious and that I needed time away. And that if she was really genuine in her caring, she'd prove it and explain. (But I knew by that point that she's a very heartless con artist just like the others because they all make so much money at this game and have for generations.) She had wanted me to come over to her house one day, to require more money of course, but instead of coming in, I said hi at the door and gave her my note. I never heard from her again. Con artists committing confidence crimes like these women won't keep coming after you once they realize they're not controlling you any more. The con's over at that point. They don't want to risk the exposure to law enforcement and the like. I had to begin rebuilding my life. I spent the first month or two fearful of the repercussions. Fearful of bad things starting to happen in my life from this Gypsy directing the "spirits" to punish me. Nothing bad ever did. In a very short time, I no longer feared that as my mind was being set free, as it was being reprogrammed. I also began doing research into Gypsy crime and Gypsy crime families, and how they operate. And I decided to share my story so that these women and other Gypsy con artists like them can no longer rob people of their livelihoods and destroy their lives so cruelly as they did mine. It's my hope that I can reach any of you working with or considering working with Helen, Saundra, Inez, Laura, Faye, Lisa or other gypsy spiritualists in their crime family, before it's too late. For those of you who have already been working with them and are suffering and full of doubt and confusion and emptiness, I hope that this site will set you free and confirm the truth that you've felt deep down but just couldn't sort out because you didn't have the means, and because these cons made you too afraid to. return to Gypsy Psychic Scams homepage