[HN Gopher] A copywriter swindled victims out of $200M by preten...
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A copywriter swindled victims out of $200M by pretending to be a
psychic
Author : firstbase
Score : 43 points
Date : 2023-07-26 19:38 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thewalrus.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (thewalrus.ca)
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Is this really a swindle if your "victims" are willing
| participants? Every purported psychic is "pretending" even if
| they don't realise. My sister in law makes good money giving
| readings over zoom. She genuinely believes in this nonsense, as
| do her customers. Is there a practical difference though, whether
| she believes it or not?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The victims paid for personal readings from a specific person,
| and got mass-produced ones from someone else instead. Psychics
| are bullshit, but that's an extra level of fraud on top, and
| far more actionable by law enforcement.
| cosmotic wrote:
| Sounds like shuffling a deck of cards and then selecting
| cards from the deck at random. It's redundant. Fraudulent
| fraud gets collapsed into just fraud, which is what the
| customer wanted from the start.
| dmonitor wrote:
| not really. a "psychic reading" may not be supernatural,
| but it is still advice from a person. in this case they
| advertised advice from a specific person, but sold advice
| from a different person.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| If both believe in it and fulfil their bargain, it is not
| fraud.
|
| Fraud requires intention of missleading.
|
| Also, what most customers want, is emotional comfort. And
| whatever we think of it, it seems to work for them. Even
| though personally, I'll go with south parks take on it:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sH0dZDnD_GI
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Does it work for them "less" if the purported psychic
| doesn't believe?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| If they find out, definitely. And if they don't find out,
| I would think yes, as they subconsciously probably notice
| some things are off with the intention of the "psychic".
| pessimizer wrote:
| They paid for a psychic reading, and from someone who they
| thought was a psychic. They weren't paying for psychic
| powers to be real. If I buy a book on psychic readings, is
| it alright for them not to send it to me because psychic
| readings aren't real? Is it "redundant?"
| coldtea wrote:
| > _They paid for a psychic reading_
|
| And they got one.
|
| > _and from someone who they thought was a psychic_
|
| And that person provided one. How he procured it should
| be of no consequence.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's more like you ordered a book on Amazon, but it was
| shipped from Wal-Mart instead.
|
| You still got your book. These people got their psychic
| readings. Just from a different source.
|
| Can you prove that the different source was of lower
| quality, for something that you can't prove quality for
| in the first place?
|
| It reminds me of famous artists where a lot of their work
| was done by assistants.
|
| Should I be able to sue a celebrity when their
| autobiography was ghostwritten but that wasn't publicly
| disclosed? Or when their tweet is written by a publicist?
| We seem to have decided the answer to that is no.
| cosmotic wrote:
| There aren't real psychics nor real psychic readings
| mromanuk wrote:
| Si if he did a personal reading with a "real psychic" it
| wouldn't be fraud?
| mplewis wrote:
| That's correct.
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| I'm reminded of Robert Tilton, who was exposed for
| depositing/trashing prayer requests/donations without
| actually praying over them. Sadly it seems like he largely
| escaped intact. I suspect being a grifter is a very strong
| risk factor for being too lazy to grift 'correctly', no
| matter how easy it would be.
| steve_taylor wrote:
| It's not like praying over them would have made a
| difference to the lives of the people who sent them in. If
| you're that stupid, you deserve to be swindled.
| somehowlinux wrote:
| I wonder the same sometimes but then think it might be due
| to survivorship bias that I think as much.
| SCAQTony wrote:
| Not just bullshit, but money laundering centers as well since
| they are mostly a cash business with anon users.
| [deleted]
| squokko wrote:
| Whether there is a "practical" difference, there is usually a
| big legal difference in outcomes based on what the
| perpetrator's intent.
| insanitybit wrote:
| Willfully and knowingly defrauding someone is worse, yeah. Also
| giving "readings" and making vague comments / giving advice is
| very different from promising health outcomes.
| ggm wrote:
| I'm somewhat bemused by the idea what they did, is morally any
| different to what any psychic does. The assumption appears to be
| a psychic genuinely believes they have insights into you as an
| individual based on some criteria.
|
| Is that it? Is the lack of overt signal they "believed" what
| makes this bad because I would suggest, they were a clever
| psychic who did what all psychics did, they just did it better.
| mondayp wrote:
| Aren't all psychics pretending?
| mjtechguy wrote:
| How is this different from a religion or a church. Seems like BS
| charges to me.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If you pay your religion for a religious service, and they fail
| to do it, you should sue. If you book a wedding at a church,
| they can't just call off the wedding and not give your money
| back.
|
| If your church turns out not to even be a church, but a
| copywriting scam, and you donated to it, you should sue.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Practically speaking, they charged for a service with given
| parameters -- So-and-so will perform the reading personally --
| and did not appropriately deliver on the purchased service.
|
| This is not a case where someone is being discriminated against
| unlawfully because they consider Psychic Reading to be their
| religion, which is what laws would traditionally protect
| against.
|
| Maybe the defendant could try to say that the victims (for lack
| of a less leading word) were just practicing the religion and,
| if they agreed, maybe that's actually what happened. That
| doesn't appear to be what happened.
| gagged_s_poster wrote:
| [dead]
| gre wrote:
| > pretending to be a psychic
|
| This is redundant.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The fraudsters were pretending to be someone else, who claimed
| to be a psychic.
|
| They tricked people into paying for communications that were
| supposedly from a specific, real person. The letters they
| received did not actually contain communications from that
| person.
| pbsladek wrote:
| Well said
| pessimizer wrote:
| Plenty of people think that they are psychic. We _all_ think,
| at least on some dumb lizard-brained level, that we can
| continue to steer the bowling ball after it 's been released.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| well "being a psychic" has a particular meaning in English so I
| figure it has to be pretending or claiming to be a psychic.
| humanistbot wrote:
| The moment I read the headline, I was expecting to find a bunch
| of low-effort comments that don't engage with the article,
| which actually speaks directly to this issue. Congrats.
|
| Yes, all psychics can be seen as committing a kind of fraud,
| but most stay in their unfalsifiable lane. This psychic used
| the mail to advertise health services. They didn't just claim
| to predict the future or sending good energy into the universe,
| which you can still legally charge for. They claimed to be able
| to cure diseases in exchange for a fee, which is fraud, and
| they did it over the mail. But then they rebutted that they
| were basically selling the placebo effect, which is kind of
| real... it makes for a much more interesting case than your
| comment makes it seem.
| jrflowers wrote:
| >The moment I read the headline, I was expecting to find a
| bunch of low-effort comments that don't engage with the
| article
|
| When did you first realize that you have the Gift of
| premonition?
| renewiltord wrote:
| What's fascinating to me about this whole thing is that the
| original woman used a couple of hits to cultivate an audience and
| then sold that image onwards. She's like a modern day
| influencer/creator/brand marketer. Fascinating.
|
| It would be quite wild if people were to take present day money
| techniques with modern LLMs and create this thing wildly. After
| all, if you cast a wide enough net you'll get some people who
| will believe!
| somat wrote:
| How is this different from any other type of marketing?
|
| "We will use our special|professional|proprietary|psychic
| knowledge of the market in order to make your product sell
| better"
|
| On the one hand marketing is critical for any business, they do
| need to sell things after all. On the other, the marketing group
| is really good at selling things, most importantly themselves,
| that is, selling how good they are at selling things.
| Aurornis wrote:
| A lot of these comments are jumping to victim-blaming, but the
| headline doesn't really describe the fraud. The article says the
| fraud they were prosecuted for wasn't even for the "psychic"
| services. The fraudster took a famous psychic's likeness and
| purported to be selling interactions with her, when in fact the
| letters were being destroyed and the responses were mass produced
| copy. Obviously "psychics" aren't real, but that doesn't mean
| anyone committing fraud around psychic services gets a free
| license to swindle customers.
|
| The prosecution's concluding remarks are a good statement about
| this:
|
| > The prosecution concluded with a simple argument: "We all have
| beliefs," lawyer Charles Dunn told the jury. "You may think my
| beliefs are crazy. I could have the same opinion about your
| beliefs. We may think other people are foolish for what they
| believe. That's okay. That's not a crime. What's not okay is
| taking advantage of people because of what they believe. What's
| not okay is lying to them because you think they're a fool. And
| it is criminal, it is a crime when you lie to them about their
| beliefs and take their money."
| scifi wrote:
| It is interesting to note that some states (NY comes to mind)
| have anti-fortune telling laws on the books. I'll refrain from
| commenting on the validity of those laws. Likely they are
| forgotten and unenforced.
| 314156 wrote:
| Is is possible to be a psychic without pretending?
| paxys wrote:
| It is possible to pretend to be psychic without pretending to
| be someone else.
| atdrummond wrote:
| This article doesn't make clear the most important part of the
| scandal: the letters contained information that was unique to the
| recipient, to allow them to believe that maybe the psychic was
| legit. They didn't use standard, mass copywriting techniques;
| they leveraged newspapers and, later, consumer information
| databases to share info about people that no "stranger" should
| have known.
|
| I think it was this level of effort to deceive about their
| abilities, as well as the clear evidence that Maria did not write
| the letters or engage with the received items, that sunk any
| claim that people 'knew' what they were buying into.
| paxys wrote:
| The HN title is inaccurate. He didn't simply pretend to be
| psychic, but rather pretended to be _one particular_ psychic,
| fraudulently using their name and image for profit.
| otikik wrote:
| > Most people are too busy earning a living to make any money.
|
| A lot of people spend their lives making money without actually
| living though.
| [deleted]
| stalfosknight wrote:
| Aren't all psychics pretending to be psychic?
| dmonitor wrote:
| he was pretending to be a specific person, not just pretending
| to be a psychic
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(page generated 2023-07-26 23:02 UTC)