Seriously Though, Please Stop Giving Your Money To Psychics
A woman was sex trafficked, a Maryland man was scammed out of $4.2 million, and now a psychic is headed to prison.
Last week, Gina Rita Russell — who claimed to be a psychic — was sentenced to 10 years in prison “for masterminding an elaborate fraud, extortion, and money laundering scheme, which resulted in a Maryland man embezzling more than $4 million from his Washington, D.C., employer.”
It all started the way so many of these stories do, with Russell giving an especially gullible New York City woman a psychic reading. This wasn’t just one of your usual $15 wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am tarot readings at a quirky bar or street festival. Rather, after giving Hollie Nadel a psychic reading, Russell convinced her that she foresaw terrible things in her future. Terrible things that could only be prevented if Nadel gave Russell and her family — which included “her ex-common-law husband Robert Evans, his brothers Tony John Evans and Corry Blue Evans, and the brothers’ parents, Archie Kaslov and Candy Evans” — lots and lots of money.
At first it was just her own money, then it was money she asked her father for, and when her father stopped giving her money, Russell convinced Nadel to get into “sensual massage services and sex work.” Yes, she literally convinced this woman that if she didn’t start selling her body to make money for Russell and her family, then terrible things would befall her. Not sure what’s worse than having to rub down perverts and give all of the money you earn from that to an obvious con artist, but … probably something.
Soon enough, Hollie Nadel met a man, Daniel Zancan, through this sensual massage and sex work gig, who fell in love with her and asked her to marry him despite the fact that he was already married to someone else. Nadel and Russell, along with many of the aforementioned members of Russell’s family, convinced Zancan that she was in serious trouble with some serious people that he needed to pay off to ensure both of their safety.
Via DOJ:
Through one of her ads, she met a Maryland man, who eventually fell in love with and proposed to her, even though he was married and had children. Preying on his affection, Russell and the New York woman conspired with Robert Evans, Tony John Evans, Corry Blue Evans, and Archie Kaslov to extort money and gold bars from the victim. The New York woman told the Maryland man that she owed money to bad people from prior debts and that her life was in danger. As a result, the Maryland man embezzled more than $4 million from his employer between January and March of 2017. As part of the scheme, Russell had Tony John Evans impersonate a mobster during calls with the Maryland man. During one of those calls, Tony John Evans asked if he needed to remind the Maryland man where his children went to school. Russell also dictated threatening texts and provided the New York woman with instructions on what to tell the Maryland man.
The Maryland man converted embezzled funds to cash and gold bars which he delivered to New York drop-off locations, including a hotel room, believing the funds were going to mobsters. In reality, all of the funds the man embezzled and delivered to New York went to members of the Russell-Evans-Kaslov family.
All of these people are going to prison now, because they very clearly committed crimes far beyond “I’m psychic, give me all of your money.” Russell, additionally, is expected to pay all of $4.2 million of the money back. For the most part, however, most “psychics” who drain people of all of their money will not face any consequences or be forced to give it back. You know, because it’s always “for entertainment purposes only.”
Cases like this are precisely why it’s hard for me to be as open minded as I would love to be about people believing in the supernatural. It’s hard to be all “live and let live” when I see people’s belief in these things so often being abused by nefarious con-artists. My instinct, admittedly, is to scream from the rooftops “NO ONE HAS MAGIC POWERS! PLEASE STOP GIVING THESE PEOPLE YOUR MONEY!”
But I won’t, because I’m nice. It would, however, be quite nice to have some actual regulations.
It’s close-to-impossible to regulate an industry in which nothing is provable to begin with, without stepping on anyone’s First Amendment rights. For actual decades, James Randi offered a million dollars to anyone who could prove any kind of supernatural ability and no one ever won it. But there has to be some happy medium between letting people get scammed or hurt by con-artists, while still respecting civil liberties and not explicitly hurting the feelings of people who aren’t hurting anyone but want to believe that they, personally, have psychic powers or who want to play with tarot cards.
Hopefully we can figure something out, though, because you don’t have to be clairvoyant to see that this industry hurts people a lot more than it helps people.
PREVIOUSLY:
If we had laws protecting gullible rubes from fraudulent hucksters, 90% of Republican ads would be labeled “for entertainment purposes only.”
If a telephone psychic knows something important, I figure SHE can call ME.