The fortune takers – or ‘wrong profession, love!’

Sophie Evon, 79, a Seattle psychic has just been sentenced to one and a half years in prison on first-degree theft charges after fleecing a customer out of US$220,000. She had been on the run since 1999. Her daughter-in-law and partner in crime, Sylvia Lee, had received an 18-month sentence in 2001.

In Miami, psychic Linda Marks was sentenced to prison for five years and ordered to pay back two million dollars for a scam in which elderly and seriously ill people were told they could be magically cured of diseases. Linda Marks told them she could cure them by praying over their money. Marks read one woman’s fortune, telling her she was wealthy and evil in another life, and all her money was therefore blood money needing to be cleansed by her for a huge fee. The elderly woman gave Marks $38,000 because she believed she had been cursed. Then, Marks said her daughter had a terminal disease, so the woman mortgaged her house to give Marks her last $14,000.

The news article below explains the scam that psychics Lee and Evon used, and I have to say when reading it I have to wonder about why there are differant standards applied to Lee and Evon and Marks, than the standard used against many (not all) of today’s tele-evangelists and preachers.  Why are the psychics criminalised and the tv preachers completely ignored when they both effectively do the same thing – that is scam people?

If you read the article below and ignore the word ‘psychic’, and a couple of other New Age connotations, you can easily see the very same sort of claims made in many North American ministries today.  They too promise lucrative rewards for sending them in large amounts of money (the more you can ’seed’ to them the better), to win you deliverance, love, health and/or wealth, and they make far fetched and unverifiable claims for what this financial gift to them will do for you – practically guaranteeing you favour with God in return for the contents of your wallet. The rich young ruler turned away by Jesus in the gospels would not be turned away by these ministries – no, he would be fleeced for every cent he had and then turned away with his pockets empty!

These prominent ministries, popular on ‘Christian’ television channels (who themselves are not averse to fleecing), deliberately, systematically, and seemingly without fear of God or man, fleece the flock for every cent they can get to support their exorbitantly luxurious and over the top personal lifestyles. The gospel is deliberately distorted in order to rake in cash.

What really  is the differance between these scam psychics who got jailed and these scamming preachers who don’t? They are both con artists! Both sets intentionally and blatantly defraud their customers and fully know their claims to be untrue. If the police jail Evon, then why not jail Juanita Bynum or the Copelands or any of the others who expound their false theologies and seed-faith garbage and other deceits in order to intentionally  rip the flock off to further their own selfish ends?

Why doesn’t ‘master prophet’ E Bernard Jordan get done for scamming, for instance -http://endtimespropheticwords.wordpress.com/category/e-bernard-jordan/  – he and all the others like him including the infamous Peter Popoff (who was caught faking it wearing an earpiece feeding him ‘words of knowledge’ from an accomplice http://www.bible.ca/tongues-popoff-39-17Mhz.htm - but despite this this charlatan is still  on the tv screens selling us miracle spring water etc). These guys send out computerised personal chain letters pretending to be individualised personalised prophecy from the Lord but they are not, they are computer generated junk mail. See also http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/popoffback.html  and http://www.pulpit-pimps.org/archives/2006/01/05/184#comments.

There is testimony coming out from more than one ministry – including from someone who used to work at KCM (Kenneth Copeland’s bunch) – that their staff are instructed to bin the prayer requests (after extracting any check from the envelope) without even reading them, and the minister does not even see, let alone personally pray over, the numerous prayer requests despite what they lead their adoring flock to believe. (It should be noted that even if they did personally pray over each and every envelope, they should not ask for money for prayer anyway). All they want is the dollar that comes with the request. When will the church wake up and realise this is what these ministries are really about? MONEY. They are scammers. Why or why are they not prosecuted? It is wrong, totally wrong. And the people that support them: financially or with their silence are wrong too. Ah, but they are nice people, religious people who  only want to help. Wake up! Exactly the same thing was said of the psychic scammers! They were apparently nice sincere people who only wanted to help too!  Is the church really so naive?! WAKE UP!

Surely  there is a law against this sort of thing?  Why isn’t it enforced? And worse still why do most of the church protect these evil scammers – because they are ‘anointed’, because they do not think it their place to say anything or ‘judge’?! Just whose place is it to protect the public fleeced in Jesus’ name, and indeed the church’s image? If not yours then whose? You’d surely warn your children if there were a dangerous unrepentent paedophile living on your street so why not warn off the other predators that lurk on ‘your street’?!

It is not fair and highly hypocritical if psychics like Lee and Evon get jailed and these people do not. The only thing these psychics seemingly did wrong was not claim to be a Christian ministry. If they had been a ministry they would not only have gotten away with it but gotten a lot more famous, gotten on Christian TV and been a lot more idolised – and have a few books and DVDS out. So sorry you were jailed, but you were in the wrong profession, love! Con artists do much better within the church. (If you do not like what I say, I do not either, but facts must be faced).

Are the teleevangelists above the law? I am glad that Sen. Grassley is presently investigating some of these ministries for tax evasion and other IRS irregularities, and he has highlighted in the process what Christians have long known about their own greedy media celebrities. BUT, the IRS scenario is only one side of the coin. What about the deciet and lying and psychological scamming, for some ministries are just as guilt as Evon and Lee and Marks are – in fact they are worse as they do it on a wider scale and dare to do it in the name of Jesus Christ.

I for one have had enough of them. Go to Jail, do not past ‘go’, and do not collect US$200.

‘A Seattle woman was so heartbroken over breaking up with her boyfriend that she thought some psychics who had just moved into the neighborhood could help. They did. They helped themselves to nearly $220,000.

Over 12 days in August, the two fortune tellers talked of casting out evil spells and sensing a battle between light and darkness. Leaves were burned for spiritual cleansing and a dozen gold coins were bought to build a danger-proof wall around the woman. Along the way, they persuaded her to give them the money.

“I call them fortune takers,” police Detective John Lewitt said. “Not fortune tellers.”

They disappeared after getting the cash, and police are still searching for them. The boyfriend didn’t return to the woman. And it only gets worse.

The money was the life savings of the woman’s elderly parents in her native China. They had invested it in retirement accounts in the United States, believing the money would be safer here.

“I feel so bad, so guilty,” the 26-year-old woman, who asked not to be identified, said yesterday. She hasn’t told her parents the bad news.

The college-educated woman admitted she has been so despondent that she has thought about taking her own life. A lingering hope is that police will find the two women accused of fleecing her. Prosecutors have filed first-degree theft charges against Sylvia Lee, 32, and Sophie Evon, 71. Evon is believed to be Lee’s mother-in-law. Warrants for their arrest were issued after they failed to appear for an arraignment Sept. 21.

“I guess people should be careful,” the victim said yesterday. “Don’t trust people too easily.”

It was trust that the fortune tellers built, little by little, starting the night of Aug. 8.

The woman said she was weak and emotionally vulnerable over the breakup with her boyfriend.

“That lady could sense it immediately,” the woman said.

Lee asked the woman if something was wrong, learned about her troubles and offered an instant diagnosis. Her boyfriend had pulled energy out of her, leaving her with “a darkness” inside of her, court documents quote Lee as saying.

Lee, who had set up her business down the street a month earlier, offered to do a spiritual cleansing for $300.

A few nights later, the woman met Lee…Lee told the victim that another woman had cast an evil spell over her boyfriend. But Lee claimed great powers, invoked the name of the Lord and promised that “darkness can never win over the light.”

The next day, Lee said she and Evon would lift the spell. Lee burned leaves and prayed in a language strange to the woman. Then, court documents say, Lee produced a white candle and a piece of white paper, telling the woman to write down the amount of her savings.

Evon said a spirit would double her savings and that she could make a donation to Lee and Evon from the proceeds, court documents say.

The woman wrote down $330,000, and the fortune tellers told her to bring the money. The woman said she couldn’t, and Evon asked “if she wanted her boyfriend to be lonely and miserable forever,” police said.

A couple of days later, the woman agreed to bring them $45,000.

“It sounds ridiculous to me now,” the woman said yesterday. “They were good. I trusted them.”

There were plenty of warnings. A customer at the video store and another psychic the woman called urged her to take caution. What’s more, she had been told that she and her estranged boyfriend were soul mates, but that he might be in trouble and that he would marry another woman soon. Now there was a sense of urgency.

“I just wanted to get him out (of trouble),” the woman said.

Then came what Lewitt calls “the hook.”

Lee took the woman’s $45,000 Aug. 14 and gave it back the next day. Doubts the woman had began to vanish. “I didn’t see this as a scam,” said the woman, who had access to her parents’ accounts. “Every penny I spent was temporary. I was planning to return it.”

Also on Aug. 14, Lee persuaded the woman to buy $5,000 in jewelry at Northgate Mall. Lee said she would put the necklace, bracelet and ring in a mold to make something magical for the boyfriend.

They went to a shop in Seattle, where the woman bought 12 gold coins for $4,520. The coins would make up a wall “so nothing bad would come through,” police quote Lee as saying. The jewelry and coins were not returned, police said.

The woman had $170,000 transferred from her mother’s account to her own. On Aug. 19, she withdrew the cash in new $100 bills. The same day, she handed Lee the $170,000, plus about $40,000 she had left from the $45,000, according to court documents. The money was divided into piles of $175,000 and $34,000.

Lee put the $34,000 in her purse, and the $175,000 on the mantel in her house. She said there would have to be 24 hours of praying.

Two days later, the woman returned for the money, but no one was home. Boxes were strewn about as if someone had hastily moved out.

The woman managed to get inside but couldn’t find her money, according to court documents. Police arrived less than an hour later, responding to a reported burglary. They found the woman, crying hysterically.

“I hate them,” she said yesterday.

The woman, who came to the United States five years ago, said she can’t figure out why anyone would be dishonest in a land of so much opportunity.

“You can make a living here. Why should people cheat people?” ‘

Article from http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/scam08.shtml