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PSYCHIC IN COLORADO SENT TO PRISON FOR 5 YEARS - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPFwHe6OyHo
Related:Psychic Sent to Prison for 5 years for Fraud – So can we jail them all now?
BOULDER, Colo. (CBS4)- A woman claiming to be a psychic has been sentenced to five years behind bars for stealing more than $300,000 from her clients.
Nancy Marks told her victims she needed their cash and credit card numbers to “draw out bad energy.”
In Dec. 2010, a jury in Boulder found Marks guilty on 14 counts of fraud and tax evasion.
Now here is what I find confusing. How is this woman different (other than the tax evasion) from other psychics who claim to be able to predict the future, talk to ghosts, or otherwise lie in order to extract money from their victims?
“One of our victims had a son who was thought to be dying within less than a year. All of them were desperate. She in particular was desperate to find some way to save him,” said Deputy District Attorney Mike Foote.
Foote said Marks’ fraud was deliberate. She groomed their victims, he said, and then ruined their lives. She convinced them to turn over cash, bank account numbers and credit cards so she could “scare the evil out of them.”
Foote told the judge the only way to protect the community from Marks was to put her in prison.
I agree, the only way to protect the community from fraud is to imprison the fraudsters, but I’m still confused. How is this different from 1-900 numbers? Palm readers? Tarot readers? etc? Her victims were just more gullible? She took more money under false pretenses than is standard? Isn’t this really just a matter of degree?
Her lawyer’s defense seems particularly poor:
Marks’ attorney believes the sentence is too harsh and that the victims the jury believes she scammed, kept returning to her for advice.
“I think the sentence is over the top because I really think that the victims in this case were complicit,” said Defense Attorney Stanley Marks.
Marks said the victims may have been duped but no one held a gun to their head. He argued for probation in exchange for restitution.
This is a weak argument. Fraud, simply, is lying to someone in order to extract money or otherwise take advantage of or harm the victim. Just because it doesn’t involve guns doesn’t make it any less criminal, or any less wrong.
I know inevitably people will show up in the comments and say the victims deserved it, or that it’s Darwinism in action. But blaming the victim of fraud is pretty low. Just because someone is stupid, or gullible, does not make it OK to steal their money. And it isn’t Darwinism unless it prevents them from passing on their genetic material. No one has demonstrated to me that the stupid are any less fecund than the smart. If anything the opposite is the case.
– denialism blog
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2012/ ... n-for-5-y/
Hollywood psychic fraud sentencing - Sun Sentinel
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2011-1 ... ral-prison
Yoga cult leader convicted of forced orgies, sentenced to 11 years | Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI).
http://rapsinews.com/judicial_news/2013 ... 31574.html