The Snake Oil Bulletin: When Your Psychic Tells You To Buy Her A Time Machine, Run Away

Jun 13, 2015

Welcome back to the Snake Oil Bulletin, your weekly round up of the worst in fraudsters, scamsters, and con artists to grace the pages of this here internet machine. We have an update from a story we ran last week, involving one of our beloved psychics who is guilty of nothing more than loving her job too much. Well, that and $700,000 in grand larceny, but it was in the quest for true love and time travel, so that makes it okay, right? Yeah, this story has a time travel angle because it wasn't insane enough yet. Let's Wonksplore THROUGH SPACE AND TIME!!

Psychic fraudster was also a time traveler, because of course she was

Last week, Yr Wonkette reported on the story of one Priscilla Delmaro , a psychic fraud (but we repeat ourselves hurf hurf) who had conned one New York man out of over $700,000 before finally being caught by police and private investigators. While initial reports were scant on details (such as how the balls a single person can scam someone out of so much money), reports are coming out this week that fill in the blanks, and for the love of Christ they are hilarious. We're talking time machines, 80-mile golden spirit bridges, and reincarnation portals hilarious. Read on!

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Delmaro first met her victim in 2013. The gentleman was distraught because he was trapped in a middle schooler's journal entry: he was in love with a girl who lived far away and wanted nothing to do with him. She wouldn't even let him touch her butt, gawd. Delmaro saw the perfect mark when he walked into her West 43rd St fortune telling booth wanting advice. She told him that he and his love, Michelle, were total twinsie spirits in lurve (how Lannister), but that evil spirits were stopping her from lurving him like she was s'posed to. The man dropped $11,500 in two days to rid himself of the spirits, but anyone who's ever read this blog knows it never stops there.

Delmaro later informed her victim that his energy was being assaulted by these evil spirits, and that the only way she could protect his aura is if he gave her diamonds. Specifically a $40,000 diamond Tiffany ring, which Delmaro super promised she would give back to him someday, super secret pinky swear. It sounds like an obvious con to people with ears, but this whole "give us money that we'll give back to you one day" schtick is kind of a common thing among psychics. They say they're just hanging onto the money until it's been "cleansed" or the evil spirits have stopped attacking it, but the fact is that the money is just resting in their account , so it isn't stealing, Dougal.

Delmaro encouraged her mark to go see his lady love in Los Angeles, which predictably went wrong. When he returned devastated, Delmaro informed him that Michelle's sudden coldness at some guy she barely knew flying half-way across a continent just to stalk her was because of more evil spirits. Of course. The cleansing ritual required $56,000, and then an additional $40,000 a month later in order to "perform a fake funeral ritual to make the spirit think the man was dead." They were going to fool the ghosts with an old tax fraud scam.

But this is where it gets good: when all else had failed, Delmaro asked her victim for a goddamn time machine so she could go back in time and cleanse his past of, I dunno, body thetans or something. What form did this time machine take? A charming relic of 1960s Britannia or perhaps a souped up muscle car from the '80s? Fuck no, it took the form of a $30,000 gold Rolex, and that was one of the cheaper options. Are you starting to consider a change in your career path after reading this shit? You're not the only one.

After the time travel plot didn't work (probably because Delmaro didn't have the stomach to kill Hitler ), she sold him on the idea of buying an 80-mile long golden bridge in the spirit realm so they could trap the spirit on the bridge through, uh, bridge magic? Yeah, sure, bridge magic. Not only would they need that first bridge to trap his spirit, but they'd need a second bridge, 10 miles longer, in order to trap the spirit haunting Michelle. Anyone can see why this plan to trap the ghosts on the bridge won't work because Shaggy isn't going to flip the switch at the right time and Velma is going to lose her glasses in the tar pits. Total cost of these literal bridges to nowhere? $170,000. We wonder if the spirit realm takes personal checks.

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It was at that point the man checked his Facebook and found that, after all this rigmarole and nonsense, Michelle had actually died over a week ago. You'd think the psychic would have known this what with being a fucking psychic, but she had a plan! The evil spirits (the same ones trapped on the bridges? Not clear) had killed Michelle. But the two of them could trick the spirits through a cunning ruse, specifically a reincarnation portal to bring Michelle back from the dead. Of course she wouldn't be back in her body, but rather would possess the body of an already alive 31-year-old woman. How was this supposed to help our lovelorn patsy? Duh, it was his job to go find this mystery woman who had the soul of his unrequited love inside of her. By this time he had been paying Delmaro's bills and rent full time, and was borrowing money from colleagues and family in order to make up for his completely empty bank accounts, sold car, and lost apartment, so what the hell? What's one more stupid fetch quest added to the pile?

What was the final tip-off that Delmaro wasn't telling the truth, you ask? Our friend finally did find a lady that he could love again and who maybe contained Michelle's soul, but the problem? She was 24, not 31. THAT was the lie that brought down the whole house of cards. Not the spirit bridges, the reincarnation portals, or even the Rolex fucking time machine, but the wrong age of his new sweetheart. If you literally can't even at this point, we understand.

All in all, Delmaro and her boyfriend bilked their victim out of $713,975. The story really is a cautionary tale for how con artists operate. Little payments at the beginning add up to much larger payments at the end, because by the time the time machine Rolexes come up, the victim has spent so much money on this project and is so invested in its success that they will do absolutely anything to make it finally end. The takeaway lesson is that, as the nuns always taught us, it pays to practice pulling out even when you really don't want to.

Flotsam, Jetsam, and Hokum

Lastly, let's take a look back at a week's worth of science and magic as brought to you by your beloved Wonkette.

A California Assemblywoman has figured out the real reason California's drought has gotten so bad: angel babbies sucking up all the water in heaven.
Speaking of babbies, the first kitten-pixel hybrid was born to your Editrix! Sources confirmed Donna Rose was born adorable and perfect so everyone else can stop having babbies now because any more would just pale in comparison. Congrats, Trix!
Our nation's top foot-shooting scientists are hard at work shooting themselves in the foot . Tentative conclusion: shit hurts.
Creation "scientist" Ken Ham was really into the idea of 22-year-old Miley Cyrus fucking an animal . Like really into the idea. Like someone-please-investigate-his-browser-history into it.
Some old dude scientist was all like "Dames can't do science with guys -- they always be cryin' and fallin' in love with me and shit. Broads, amirite?" and had to learn the hard way that apparently he was not right.
Pat Robertson is a human testicle lump . Just, ugh, fuck that guy.