We all know money is the root of all evil and she was helping her remove it!

And to answer the first question, the difference is probably better lawyers, and also better client management. Browne and her ilk are famous enough that they can make a very comfortable living scamming a relatively small amount of money from lots and lots of suckers. If a few folks get wise to her chicanery, their individual losses won’t be significant enough to warrant the expense of suing her. (I’d love – LOVE – to see one of these creeps in the crosshairs of a class action suit, but that’s a skeptical law student wet dream.)

By contrast, this cretin milked a single cow hard enough to put a significant hurt on her. Once the mark suspected fraud, her losses were large enough that it made economic sense to sue. If Ms. Miller had known when to stop working the pump, she might have gotten away with it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_pretenses

You can apply this to anything. I’ve never heard of another case like this and I have no idea of how this doesn’t set a precedent for suing and locking up every other psychic in our country (which might not be so bad but come on…). Or how this doesn’t open the floodgates to anybody that wants to make a claim of “false pretense” over virtually anything.

The burden is on the prosecution to prove that she did /not/ have the ability to complete the service she was selling.

Furthermore, people like Brown and Edward get even more leeway because their venues define them as a “show,” IE an act, like a magician, for entertainment purposes. Unfortunately most people are dumb enough to assume that’s just legal-mumbo jumbo and that these criminals are still legit.

$5 to the first person to film themselves going to Brown’s show and demanding she make a balloon animal for them. Then again, don’t support that crook by going to her show.

I also recently found out that a creationist cousin of mine just got a job teaching science. Go figure.

Imagine what the sons are like – maybe they’re wizards?

Every person who shall feloniously steal, take, carry,
lead, or drive away the personal property of another, or who shall
fraudulently appropriate property which has been entrusted to him or
her, or who shall knowingly and designedly, by any false or
fraudulent representation or pretense, defraud any other person of
money, labor or real or personal property, or who causes or procures
others to report falsely of his or her wealth or mercantile character
and by thus imposing upon any person, obtains credit and thereby
fraudulently gets or obtains possession of money, or property or
obtains the labor or service of another, is guilty of theft.

In other words, you can’t take someone’s stuff by lying to them. I assume the elements are similar to civil fraud, in which you have to prove that the defendant made a misrepresentation of material fact with the intent to induce reliance, and that the victim did in fact rely on the representation. There is a whole body of law on what is considered “material.” Advertising, for example, can be fraudulent or just harmless “puffery.”

I can see a so-called psychic successfully arguing that she did not knowingly commit fraud because she sincerely believed what she said. Again, I am not a criminal lawyer, so I could be wrong. I use this defense in my civil cases to avoid punitive damages and other statutory penalties, but then I still have negligent misrepresentation to deal with.

I don’t see any slippery slope twards prosecuting honest people. This kind of litigious action could only serve to put a chilling effect on the use of the supernatural as a business .

GAry 7

Too bad the “victim” wasn’t able to understand psychic power is BS. I guess it just goes to show: you don’t have to be smart to be rich,,,

GAry 7

Great precedent.

What a family of charlatans. Fantastic that they got caught. Maybe this is a turning point for truth.

I don’t get where the line is. It’s all snarky and bad, no doubt, but “theft by false pretense” here is something that exists in somebody’s head (like religion). It’s not like she said “give me $100K and in 3 days I’ll give you a car” and then bolts from the arrangement.

How does the court know she didn’t “take the demons away”? Obviously, she didn’t (painful thought exercise that is). But then how would the court draw the line on anything else like this? Could I go to a psychic, be told what my winning lotto numbers are for $20, and then sue them when I don’t win?

I don’t know, this just seems a little slippery to me legal wise.

‘Psychic cons woman out of $100K, forgets to add “Jesus” as part of her act, goes to jail’

It’s sad because it’s true.

I suspect it might have something to do with the amount of money obtained per person. Sylvia makes millions from many thousands of people rather than getting all her money from one or a few.

I am sad that the woman in the story only got 2 months in jail. However, I am of the mind that punishment should stop the behavior. If 2 months gets her to stop bilking people, then so be it. If it doesn’t, she should go back to jail for longer and longer periods of time until she doesn’t do it any more. Maybe it needs to be something other than jail. The point is, I’d like to get her to stop.