Miami Fortuneteller Imprisoned for $3 Million Family Curse Scam

Samantha Stevens, a self-described non secular guide, allegedly instructed a Miami consumer she knew the way to monitor down family members within the afterlife and would open the gates of heaven for the consumer’s deceased father, whose soul was trapped. She additional pledged to carry a curse that was the supply of ache and misfortune suffered by the consumer’s household, federal prosecutors say.

The non secular help would come at a value.

Over a three-year interval, the consumer paid practically $3.2 million to Stevens in reliance on her preternatural guarantees. Stevens and her associate, Michael Guzman, spent the cash on a Miami townhouse, high-stakes on line casino video games, a brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee, and a luxurious leisure car, prosecutors say. 

Stevens allegedly warned the sufferer that if she didn’t pay up, the curse would persist. “Failure to take action — the sufferer was led to consider — would lead to hurt to her and her household,” prosecutors allege.

This week, the Department of Justice introduced U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles sentenced Stevens, 51, to two-and-a-half years and Guzman, 42, to greater than three years in jail in reference to the scheme.

Though Stevens had initially tried to battle the costs, each she and Guzman wound up pleading responsible to cash laundering in a take care of prosecutors, which helped them keep away from the utmost sentences: 20 years on their conspiracy costs and 30 years for Stevens on wire fraud costs.

According to court docket paperwork, Stevens met the consumer, a longtime Miami monetary advisor, greater than 15 years in the past at Stevens’ psychic sales space. After Stevens held herself out as a non secular information and an skilled within the nether realm, the 2 ladies grew shut, linking up at Catholic church buildings across the Miami space.

Stevens stated she may break the curse on the consumer’s household if the consumer forked over her cash, which Stevens claimed was “soiled” and wanted to be “cleansed.” In September 2013, the consumer started paying the fortuneteller in $200,000 installments utilizing cashier’s checks.

The self-styled psychic managed to bilk the sufferer out of $1.6 million by May 2014, prosecutors say. She allegedly saved the scheme going by telling the determined girl that one other cleaning ritual needed to be carried out to push back evil spirits and counteract the curse. In the three years that adopted, the sufferer gave Stevens one other $1.59 million by way of checks and wire transfers.

As the scheme drew to a detailed, the sufferer “knowledgeable Stevens that she wanted to help her mom and that she must borrow… towards her property to supply Stevens with extra cash,” a federal indictment states. Stevens broke off contact not lengthy after, the indictment says.

The girl and her lawyer contacted legislation enforcement in 2016, reporting Stevens to the FBI, the Miami Police Department, and the Coral Gables Police Department, in line with court docket paperwork. No costs have been filed at the moment, however after a 2020 assembly between the sufferer and the Internal Revenue Service in regards to the case, federal authorities took motion.

A grand jury was convened, returning an indictment in December 2020.

Fashioning herself as a non secular chief, Stevens argued in court docket that the consumer “obtained precisely what she bargained for.”

“There was no settlement that the cash can be returned,” Stevens’ public defender wrote in a movement to dismiss. “When the cash was not returned after the primary cleaning ritual, the complaining witness, understanding the settlement that she entered, continued to offer Ms. Stevens cash to make use of as a part of the ritual.”

Stevens tried to persuade the court docket that the ceremonies have been an expression of her faith as an individual of Romani heritage. She claimed the rituals have been carried out in Catholic church buildings “with holy water” within the presence of church figures named the “Mother Superior” and “Father.” She likened her acceptance of the consumer’s cash to Christian leaders taking massive donations or contributions from church members.  
 
U.S. Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres was not persuaded.

In May, the decide wrote that even when the consumer didn’t anticipate the cash to be returned, prosecutors may show fraud by exhibiting Stevens was a charlatan who by no means really believed within the rituals. On the problem of freedom of spiritual expression, Torres famous that “there are lots alternate options for Stevens to follow her faith with out participating in a scheme to defraud.”

“Where a person violates an in any other case legitimate legal statute, the First Amendment doesn’t act as a protect to preclude the prosecution of that particular person just because their legal conduct has a connection to non secular exercise,” Torres wrote. 

After the court docket adopted Torres’ advice and rejected Stevens’ try to dismiss the case, the fortuneteller and her husband struck their offers with prosecutors to keep away from many years behind bars. In addition to the jail sentences, the duo has been ordered to pay full restitution to the sufferer for the practically $3.2 million they took from her.

Guzman claimed in the course of the sentencing part that he met Stevens on the age of 16 within the Romani group. As a youth, Guzman stated, he grew to become reliant on her and her fortune-telling earnings.

“They have been each bodily and mentally abusive towards one another. Their heavy drug use additionally led to the lack of custody of their youngsters,” his lawyer instructed the court docket.

Guzman was in the end sentenced to an extended jail time period than Stevens due to his legal historical past, which included battery in addition to drug- and alcohol-related offenses.

Spiritually pushed fraud schemes usually are not unusual in Florida, and plenty of circumstances contain soothsayers like Stevens concentrating on susceptible victims by telling them they’ve evil spirits haunting them or that their cash must be cleansed.

In 2019, a Florida girl was sentenced to greater than three years in jail and ordered to repay $1.6 million after she allegedly satisfied a lady to pay her massive sums of cash for objects akin to crystals and candles for “meditation work” with the intention to carry a curse. The following yr, self-proclaimed psychics Annie Vwanawick, 74, and her daughter, April Miller, 44, have been sentenced in West Palm Beach federal court docket in an analogous scheme.