Tag: SCAMS
‘Psychic’ busted for allegedly scamming woman out of $12K
She should’ve seen it coming.
A Westchester County “psychic” has just been busted for the third time in fewer than two years — this time for allegedly bilking a woman out of her life savings by convincing the client she’d been cursed in a past life as a mute Egyptian healer.
Accused serial Scarsdale scamster Janet Lee, 44, was arrested Tuesday in Bedford and charged with third-degree grand larceny for allegedly ripping off a 64-year-old local resident for more than $12,000, according to court documents.
The woman had sought out Lee’s services in June after growing “despondent” that she’d never achieved her dream of a career in writing or filmmaking, according to a statement provided to The Post by Bob Nygaard, a private investigator she recruited to help bring the psychic to justice. Nygaard said the statement also was submitted to authorities.
The woman said Lee told her there had been “a dark force” plaguing her since her days as an Egyptian miracle worker on a mountain thousands of years ago — and the bad vibes had been placed on her by a rapist she refused to heal.
She said she ended up giving Lee her sole retirement fund, an IRA worth more than $11,000, and quit her job to help “cleanse’’ herself.
She said she handed over the cash outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, where she says the psychic claimed to have an “office.”
“Janet told me to go into the church, to walk down the left side of the church, to kneel and pray before the shroud of Christ and to leave all the darkness behind,” the woman said through Nygaard. Lee allegedly told her she would put the cash in a lock box at the cathedral for safekeeping until the cleansing work was done.
A few days layer, the woman said she did a Web search on Lee — and discovered she was a convicted felon who’d been sued in Connecticut for an alleged scam that closely mirrored her own experience.
“My world came crashing down, having come to the realization I had been conned,” said the woman.
Lee was first busted in Manhattan in June 2017 on identity-theft and forgery raps for posing as another woman to rent a luxury Soho pad apartment. She later pleaded guilty in exchange for three years’ probation.
She was arrested again this past June and hit with grand-larceny and scheme-to-defraud charges for an allegedly fortune-telling scam in the Westchester town of Mount Pleasant. She pleaded not guilty.
She was also sued in Stamford, Conn., last year by a Greenwich woman named Sheila McKiver, who said Lee conned her out of $32,900 by telling her she’d found a “terrible darkness” around her during a Tarot-card
reading in 2015.
Earlier this month, a judge found in favor of McKiver and ordered Lee to pay her $30,000, court records show.
Nygaard says he has been trying to get authorities to arrest Lee for years. The Westchester DA declined to comment. Lee couldn’t be reached for comment.
Additional reporting by Ruth Brown
via: https://nypost.com/2018/11/30/psychic-busted-for-allegedly-scamming-woman-out-of-12k/
Mail carrier accused of swiping thousands in social services checks
A Brooklyn postal worker and three accomplices targeted the city’s neediest — plucking social services checks from the mail.
Making matters worse, since-canned letter carrier Vanessa Bandie, 29, and her co-defendants allegedly carried out the scam during the holiday season — from Oct. 25, 2016 to Dec. 27, 2016 — stealing nearly $30,000 in benefits checks from 66 people, according to Brooklyn prosecutors.
The group even allegedly swiped nearly $4,000 from residents of a homeless shelter, prosecutors said.
Bandie, whose route was in East New York, was approached by James Black and Lauren Johnson with the proposition to find mail with checks inside to later cash. Bandie, who would get paid from the proceeds, agreed to help them, prosecutors said.
Then the trio brought the checks to a Pay-O-Matic check-cashing business on Linden Blvd. where employee Paul Daniels would cash them and take a cut, prosecutors said.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said Monday that the group, “stole from the most vulnerable among us, including residents of homeless shelters. We will now seek to hold them accountable.”
They were charged with grand larceny, identity theft and related charges and pleaded not guilty in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
Bandie and Daniels were released on their own recognizance while Black — who was already in jail on a separate matter — was held on $25,000 bail. Johnson was held on $1,000 bail.
Bandie stopped showing up to work in 2017 and was officially fired in Aug. 2018, according to a law enforcement source.
She is due back in court on Dec. 5 while the others are due back on Nov. 28.
Bandie’s lawyer, Gary Farrell, said, “She has no prior contact with the criminal justice system and is a hard-working single mother.”
A lawyer for Black did not immediately return requests for comment. Johnson’s lawyer declined to comment and Daniels’ lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/10/01/mail-carrier-accused-of-swiping-thousands-in-social-services-checks/
Parents told 13-year-old son he had brain cancer in scheme to raise cash
FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla. — Authorities say a Florida couple lied to their 13-year-old son about having brain cancer so they could use his fictitious illness to raise money for nonexistent medical expenses.
The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office says on social media that 34-year-old Ginny Long and 47-year-old Robert Long were arrested Thursday and charged with one count of child abuse and nine counts of fraud.
Detectives say the Longs set up a T-shirt fundraiser for the boy at his school last May and shared the bogus cancer diagnosis on their Facebook accounts. A GoFundMe site was also set up for the boy. The sheriff’s office didn’t say how much money was raised.
The sheriff’s office began investigating in November, after school resource officers began to suspect the boy was being exploited.
Jail records didn’t list attorneys for the Longs.
STEVE HARVEY SUED FOR ALLEGED FRAUD INVOLVING CHARITY Blames Oprah, Tyler Perry for Bad Financial Advice
STEVE HARVEY SUED FOR ALLEGED FRAUD INVOLVING CHARITY: Blames Oprah and Tyler Perry for Bad Financial Advice
Steve Harvey is being sued by someone who claims he was hired by the TV mogul to raise $20 million for the Steve and Marjorie Foundation as well as other ventures and got royally stiffed.
Vincent Dimmock claims he struck a deal with Harvey in April to raise the $20 mil, and in return he says he was promised 12.5% of everything he brought in. Dimmock says in the lawsuit he had access to high-level execs, A-list entertainers and political figures including a former President, and he got pledges for $20 mil.
According to the suit, Dimmock delivered on the first million but Harvey refused to pay him his commission.
Dimmock claims Harvey never intended to pay him and then goes on to make various allegations.
Dimmock says he introduced Harvey to an investor in May, and during their meeting he allegedly disparaged women, blamed Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry for giving him bad financial advice and also blamed Barack Obama for Harvey’s “disastrous meeting with Donald Trump.”
He says Harvey and his foundation were in bad financial shape because of a series of P.R. gaffes, including mocking Asian men and meeting with Trump.
We reached out to Harvey’s agent, Todd Frank, who tells TMZ, “It sounds fake. Steve is the most loyal guy in the world. I’ve never been stiffed on a commission from Steve Harvey in 21 years.”
Article via: http://www.tmz.com/2017/12/07/steve-harvey-sued-charity-fraud-oprah-tyler-perry/
Woman busted sprinkling glass shards in food to get free meals
A Delray Beach, FL, woman has been accused of placing glass shards in her food to get a free meal from restaurants.
Kaitlyn Murphy, a 31-year-old resident was arrested earlier this week on felony defraud charges after she admitted to using glass to get out of paying for her food, a trick the woman claims to have learned from someone she knew in rehab.
Murphy confessed that she would carry glass in her purse when she went out to eat and would sprinkle it over her food. She even intentionally cut her mouth by chewing the glass to make her story more realistic.
The police reported that Murphy had visited eleven restaurants in Stuart, FL, from September 15 to September 26 – claiming to find glass in her food “after eating most of her meals,” Local 10 News reports.
After Murphy reported the hazard, the restaurants would either eat the cost of the meal, or offer gift cards and free food.
The police were eventually tipped off about Murphy’s crime spree after restaurants started describing the same woman on social media, coming into their establishments and making the same claims.
“The mistake that she made was this is a tight knit community. A lot of the restaurant owners and employees know each other,” said Sgt. Michael German to WPTV.
The pressure of social media forced Murphy to turn herself in, where police found more glass shards in her purse.
In total, the police say Murphy cost restaurants hundreds of dollars in comped meals, gift cards, lost tips and lost food, as well as damaged the reputation of some servers and restaurants.
Murphy originally claimed that she did it because she couldn’t afford the food, but later a manager said Murphy confessed she did it for the adrenaline rush – a high she was searching for after she had quit drugs and alcohol.
Just before her arrest, Murphy was hired to work as a server in the area.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/10/04/woman-busted-sprinkling-glass-shards-in-food-to-get-free-meals/