$1250 for body wash? Was she working at Bath and Bodyworks?

Yes...but the teen *was* getting something in return. Under this law, 90% of used car salesmen should be arrested too. "Sir, you know this 1990 Saturn is NOT worth 5,000...at best, perhaps $1,500, come with me, we are going downtown."

Was this teen mentally handicapped? That's the only way someone would believe the curse bit.

If the teen wasn't mentally handicapped, they should have been arrested for criminal stupidity along with the con artist.

I wish I could go back in time. This is an Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode waiting to happen.

Where on earth do teens have access to $1200 in "mad money".

Was she a former Best Buy employee?

@Wireless Joe:
Apparently, New York.

I was unaware that fortune telling was illegal. I do not believe in fortune telling by any means, but never that someone could be charged for it.
Learn something new every day.

Telling someone they're going to die if they don't drink your magic potion is pretty much a crime in my book. Everyone dies anyway, can't keep the reaper at bay. Now if they could arrest the purveyors of wang pills and magic hair growth formula then we'd be pretty much set.

@Eleanor Ramilly:

I was thinking more of "Goosebumps". "If you don't use this bodywash, the curse will take effect and you will have spiders crawling out of your pores the rest of your life." Teenager: "First acne, and now spider pores? OMG I hate puberty!!"

I reallllly need to learn cold reading. If John Edwards can get sold out events, people fawning over him praising him as something special, and this lady can get over 1k, I need to get in on this scam.

@B: LOL. My wife used to work there and got pissed whenever I asked her who would pay the ridiculous prices for things. $9 for hand soap, seriously?

wait, the woman was charged with fortune telling? what? i've always wondered why chinese restaurants gave a way fortune cookies... charging for them would be illegal!

I don't think it's fair to pass judgement on the fortune teller without knowing just how bad the curse was. I will assume that really bad curses are more difficult to remove and, therefore, the associated costs can be significantly higher -- compared to your run-of-the-mill ones.

Wrong:
You tell people that they have a curse and the $1200 cream you have will remove it

Completely Acceptable:
You tell people that the $1500 laptop you sell will keep then from getting a virus.

@Saboth: Yes, I believe you are right!!

@nstonep: Well she didn't say she was going to die, she said she was cursed and had bad energy.

@drizzt380:
That's a couple days rent in New York. No big deal.

So it's illegal when a stereo store tries to sell you some monster cables because without them your receiver will be cursed with bass that isn't very black? Good to know.

@wickedpixel: I don't think fortune telling is illegal in and of itself. I know that in Michigan, to read palms or tell fortunes as a "business", that a entertainment or similarly categorized license is needed. Maybe it is a similar situation for NY,

@Saboth: The key term in there is 'accosts', which is basically seeking out your 'mark' for the swindle. Also even douche-bags like John Edwards make it very clear to their marks that what he does is for 'entertainment' purposes only, thus he claims that he is putting on a performance and thus not swindling the people.

@GitEmSteveDave_GotOff2HoursEarly:

Although often times crass and obnoxious, I recommend to you Penn and Teller's Bullshit! You'll find numerous health scams in it, and you can easily come up with your own. Since you're a pet lover, I recommend puppy healing - get to know your inner puppy by having one walk on your back. Sleep with the puppies. Eat with them. Learn to BE a puppy again. All for only $3.5k for 8 4 hour courses over the course of 4 weekends.

"A person is guilty of fraudulent accosting when he accosts a person in a public place with intent to defraud him of money or other property by means of a trick, swindle or confidence game." <- Is it just me, or doesn't this describe virtually all salespeople? I think they're just going after this fortune teller because she's an easy target. She should have called the body spray 'homeopathic' or something.

@Wireless Joe: Hong Kong, my friend-- Hong Kong.

[www.cnn.com]

@GitEmSteveDave_GotOff2HoursEarly: Or you could just go into Sales Management like I did. Pretty much the same thing. Lucrative if your good at cold reading people.

@nstonep: "Telling someone they're going to die if they don't drink your magic potion is pretty much a crime in my book" - Wouldn't that make all religion a crime then?

@Eleanor Ramilly:

/me smells the opportunity for a new series of books by Eleanor Ramilly. Call them "TEENAGE TALES OF TERROR". I'll take %15. Thanks.

This kid is A.) really stupid and B.) has too much money. And apparently she's selectively stupid. She's stupid enough to believe in fortune telling to not only pay $25, but also pay an additional $100. She's stupid enough to believe in curses and magic stones and body wash, yet smart enough to realize no one's going to give you $600 in credit on a purchase based on a hand shake. Everyone knows real gypsy fortune tellers make you pay up front.

@CubeRat: Fraud is illegal. The fortune teller knew she was lying to the kid in order to get money. Now you could charge that all fortune telling is lies in this way, but nominally at least there's "entertainment" value. When it became a transaction for goods other than entertainment (and even if there had been no objects fraudulent "curse removal" would constitute this), then it was a crime.

@trujunglist: Oh no..! I was a huge fan of the genre (I seriously think I read every Goosebumps and Fear Street ever) and I bet I could knock out a few.

@diasdiem: The fortune teller should send the additional $600 to a collection agency.

@AirIntake: Yeah I think this is an attempt to get panhandlers and the like off the streets. No more 3 cup guess for you?

I don't get the larceny charge though? Because she obtained the payment through illegal means?

Also, flimflammery. Teehee

@huadpe:

Ahhh, gotcha. That makes more sense to me.

@satoru:

...and the used car dealer doesn't tell you anything other than that you're missed out on the deal of a lifetime and that it'll never be available again at that price when you tell him to get stuffed.

Whereas the fortune teller explains to you that not buying the overpriced items will devastate your life.

There's a big difference between the two.

@B: I have to admit that, at first look at the title, I interpreted "body wash" as a verb and not a noun.

Which would have made a very different story indeed.

@nstonep: Of course it won't stop them from dying. Unless it's MY magic potion, now only $1249.99!

@Scoobatz: I make my own curses at home.

@Eleanor Ramilly: It was a Law and Order: CI episode. Does that count?

Kudos to you for the tv reference though. I'm having a hard time trying to not imagine a plot and convince myself that it really WAS an episode after you made that connection.

@TCinIowa:
And what is someone that stupid doing with $600!?
(Easy answer: buying $600 body wash.)

@trujunglist: I was watching The Soup this weekend, and they have a new show about monkeys and women who raise them. Well, in the show, a monkey may have eaten a pill. The solution? Call a psychic to ask the monkey what pill it ate.

So why did the teen fork over the $600 to begin with? She obviously knew something wasn't right, considering she went to the cops.

"Mom can I have $1250? I'm going down to the mall 'cause I'm out of body wash and magic rocks."

@satoru:
I'm getting a name like "Patty"...

... Maybe its "Patsy"
... Was she a nurse?
...No? Did she work in health care?
...No?
...Screw it, I'll just run for president...

When I read this I got my hopes up that those people hawking dead sea lotion and hair straighteners were deemed illegal. That would make my day.

@AirIntake: It probably should be. I've bought a few components from a high-end store where they'll let you pay as much as you want for speaker wire, but at least the guy who helps me pointed out that as long as you have decent wire with good connectors, they sound the same. "It's not like you're running an air conditioner on it" I think was the way he put it. That kind of honesty plus quality components makes me a "regular" customer... with the quotes because the speakers I bought 10 years ago still sound so good I feel no need to upgrade them... it's not like I "need" a new receiver or CD player often.

@diasdiem: Real gypsy fortune tellers only accept gold or silver as payment.

@Gracegottcha:

ROFL!

@AirIntake: "virtually all" is quote an overstatement. As long as the salesperson isn't selling you on something the product doesn't actually do, it's not the same thing. "Your music will sound better through this Monster Cable" is not the same thing as "If you don't buy this Monster Cable, the Monsters...er.. cancer will eat your mother's brain." Both are untrue, but one is clearly actionable... oddly enough it's the brain-eating one.

You know its funny, I've ran into the "con artists" selling the dead sea soaps, lotions, ect. and I discovered that they are Israeli. What sucks for them though is
אני יהודי ואני מדבר עברית גם כן.

(I'm Jewish and I speak hebrew too.)