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Delaware State Police
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Troopers Charge Psychic with Felony Theft and Warn Citizens of Fortune Telling or Curse Removal Scams
Released-Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Ocean View- Earlier today, Delaware State Police criminal investigators assigned to the Financial Crimes Unit at Troop 4 charged a Maryland woman with felony theft after she allegedly scammed a 57-year-old Ocean View woman out of thousands of dollars.
The investigation began on Monday, April 21, 2008 when the victim reported a theft of $65,400.00 in cash. The victim told investigators on March 10, 2008 she was working at the Salisbury, MD Wal-Mart when the suspect identified as Tiffany A. Stevens, 21, of Hebron, Maryland approached her.
Stevens, a licensed fortune teller, allegedly gave the woman an advertisement claiming she was a psychic. As the two conversed, Stevens began to tell the victim of some occurrences in the victim’s life. Stevens allegedly told the victim she could help her more but she needed $30.00 and the money would go to a church. Stevens then asked for the victim’s full name, date of birth, and cell phone number.
The following day, the victim travelled to Stevens’ residence located along the 27000 block of Ocean Gateway Hebron, MD. Once there, the victim observed a psychic advertisement sign outside the house and went inside.
While at the home, Stevens went on to say, someone put a curse on the victim’s family. She also told the victim her sister and mother who both died in 2002 were in limbo, in neither hell nor heaven.
After this first visit, the victim went to see Stevens approximately six more times. During these visits Stevens talked about the victim’s finances and the victim disclosed she recently inherited over $100,000.00 from her mother and money was in trust fund at a local bank.
Stevens told the victim the bank was evil and told the victim to transfer $75,000.00 from her bank to a new account in a different bank. According to the victim, Stevens claimed the name "Chase" came to her so she transferred the money to a new account at the Chevy Chase Bank in Rehoboth Beach, DE.
After the transfer was complete, Stevens told the victim to withdraw $9,000.00, however she could only withdraw $3,000.00 a day because of set limits on cash withdraws. After the first withdraw the victim went to the bank on March 28th and March 31st and withdrew $3,000.00 each day.
Stevens allegedly told the victim to put the cash between her mattresses and sleep on it. She did that and the next day the victim told Stevens she could not sleep. Stevens then told her it was because the money was evil and she was to put the money in a dark room, so the victim put it in a closet.
Stevens then had the victim bring her the $6,000.00 so she could "cleanse" it of the evil. The victim took Stevens the money and thought she was going to get it back, which she did not. Stevens then told the victim she needed to wire $59,400.00 from her bank account to Stevens’ bank account.
On Friday, April 4, 2008 the victim went to the Chevy Chase Bank in Rehoboth and transferred $59,400.00 to Stevens’ account. After transferring the money, the victim went to Stevens’ house. When she got there, Stevens told the victim her mother and sister are now free and everything was done.
Normally they spoke or saw each other every day but since that day the contact stopped. On April 19th, the victim responded to Maryland and contacted Stevens to get the money back but was unsuccessful.
As a result of this investigation detectives charged Stevens with one count of Felony Theft. She was arraigned at the Justice of the Peace Court 2 and released on $5,000.00 unsecured bond.
There is no available photograph of Ms. Stevens.
During the investigation detectives contacted The National Association of Bunco Investigators (NABI) and spoke to the Executive Director. NABI is an association that keeps track of various scam artists that conduct frauds by way of deception.
According to their research this is classified as a Fortune Telling or Curse Removal Scam. Many of the scams that they see related to this type of incident have similar characteristics to this particular crime, such as removing a curse from the money.
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