Now, really.
Really really Hello, and welcome to Really No Really Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden to predict you will find true love and great fortune if you've become a subscriber to our show. Now, maybe you don't put much stock in predictions and psychics, but their tiny storefront shops are popping up in some pretty exclusive zip codes Beverly Hills, Uptown, Manhattan, Main Street, USA, and.
All over Europe.
Their windows feature sun faded curtains and neon signs promoting palm readings, cures for curses.
And prophecies about your future. Fun.
Sure, but there's a much darker side hidden behind the tarot cards and crystal balls. In this episode, we meet Bob Nigard, a private detective who has recovered millions of dollars for victims of psychic fraud.
He'll talk about the techniques.
He uses to surprise and bust Drup psychics, and he'll also reveal a huge secret about the covert organizations that run many of the psychic scams in an industry with a projected income of over three billion.
Dollars a year.
Really, No, Really, I don't need a crystal ball to predict Jason and Peter are gonna love this one.
So here they are.
I don't want to know. I don't want to know. You know who's no, no, no, there was. We don't pay for that. You pay me. I don't want to know things. I'd rather be in the dark. I don't wanna know things unless it's where to park my car when I saw you know, was never advertised on our show many but what I thought would be a natural because if I turn on my car radio, twenty ads every day for the California Psychics, l A Psychics, the Hotline, the Psychics, the hot Life. Still have those people. Yeah,
that's and they're advertising big. So apparently somebody he's making some money on the l A hot looks amazing psychic and so people go, I want to know is they're going to be Am I going to be rich?
We used to make that Am I going to die young? What do I want to know that psychic is going to do? We don't want to know.
We used to do a motivational call called Donnie Clay is going to show you the way away to find you that's inside of you, that's holding you back? Okay, And one of the things we used to do is Donnie Clay's four words to guaranteed income.
Right, You'll increase your income ten percent, twenty five to fifty percent, maybe even one hundred, one hundred percent of your incomeing forwards, and not a program.
Not an exercise, not a book.
Double your income in four words, everybody, and I'd get the whole audience worked up about it.
We say a few money, and then the audience would be screaming, we want few money. And we're bringing some guy from the audience and we trom a picture of a yacht and say you want that. You said, yeah, Jason, what are you gonna do with it? Yeat?
You're already wasting money. Why would I make it?
After we've milked this thing?
And there and I could get out your pencils, get your pens. Here are the fourth forward, double triple, You're in Unmi rover ready here they are, get a second job.
There you go guarantee or if the guy was clumsy, he'd say, or fall off the stage, and Caesar's will argue, billow you some money. Yeah, the psychic thing never did it for me. But the really no really started when I said to you, if people who don't know southern California, the wealthiest neighborhoods are like Brentwood, Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisade. We're the midworsh area, and you have psychics. They all have storefronts in those locations, which are the highest rent
storefronts in the world. They haven't a man to open.
A basket in robins in those places would be hundreds of in ice creams a day.
And they're just for the rent. And all these stores closed during COVID Neon signed psychics manhat manh Midtown Manhattan.
Well they ova had as much like you got a woman on a couch.
That's why it's a fortune. So that the question is how much money does a psychic make. We have a guy on Niguard who was a PI, a retired cop that must be a trip, yeah, in New York and New Jersey who decided to go after psychic crimes because his feeling was that the police and the legal system the worst they do is they go after them for reparations, but they don't go to jail. They maybe pay back some stuff, but it's a multi billion dollar a.
Year crime and you victim sham because you go who's stupid enough to believe this?
Who's falling? And just like sex crimes, I'm wondering with Bob if a lot of these people are too embarrassed to say that they were ripped off the amount of money some of these people are able to.
Well, here's one.
There was a person named Patrice Runner from Canada. This is amazing, built over a million people over twenty years, built over a million people out of a grand total of one hundred and seventy five million dollars. Really, he represented that he was working for known psychics Maria Deval and Patrick gurn who were not involved in all.
But he represented, oh he knew the name and then, and that he was.
Sending letters of referral, you know, saying it used to send me the questions, I'll consult with them and I'll get you the answers, and and made promises of guaranteed wealth and happiness to people and built them out of one hundred and seventy five million dollars.
So this is noth where's our person today? They caught him and and they're behind bars.
I'm really interested to see what mister niguard why he decided. I know why he went decided the same reason we're outraged by this new paging adventures, but how he did it because he's how people recover millions and millions of dollars and has been involved in every kind of psychic scam there is. Knows how to go after these people. So yes, why do they all have bad drapes? They make so much money.
I'm guessing they blow all the money on the Neon signe and nothing left in the budget for the drapes. So let's let's talk to our guest we have in studio, flew In. I'm shot when anyone makes any efforts on our behalf.
I don't understand.
Say that to Laurie Browers said, then they're coming in and go really listen to the show.
Uh, we have with us mister Bob Nygard, who is a retired New York City Police officer and president of Niguard Investigations, and, according to the New York Daily News, is the one guy fortune tellers don't want to see in their future. He's a private investigator specializing in swindles,
particularly cases involving romance and psychic fraud. Works in places like New York City, Chicago, South Florida, and he's been instrumental in the rest, arrest, and conviction of numerous psychics, helping the victims obtain justice, including financial institution amountington millions of dollars. And we were just we're just saying Bob that, first of all, welcome, thanks for coming in, Thanks for having me your nuts.
I left my Fedora in the car, said, wow, I'm always prepared. How is the question? You're a private investigator, right, do you blend?
No?
No, No, I don't. I don't blend.
Well wait, wait, bop, somebody wait, hold on.
If I was sitting in a restaurant, I would go, I think there's a private investigators.
There's somebody following. How can you tell?
Just do you ever dress that at the next table?
You ever hear the phrase sore thumb?
But what I do is I do wear disguises and go into fortune telling. Paula's do you really you know, dressed in different guys you know, baseball hats and different things like that.
Love you already because you call them polots?
Yea, yeah, exactly like the Hitman film, Like the hit What I do is I go in I wear various like recording devices. Okay, so you have like recording glasses, watches, you know, well pens, you know, kinds of different things like spy equipment.
This is great.
And then I go in and I make believe I'm a client and I let them rip me off.
The legality of this I tried to discern. Some states it's legal, but you have to say you're an entertainer. Some states it's illegal. What what way in the states that are illegal? What's the illegal that you're telling people that you're you're You can't represent that you are, No, I don't right.
For example, in the state of New York, it's per se, it's against the law. You cannot tell fortunes for a fee and say that you can influence evil spirits and stuff like that. Same with Pennsylvania. I think Oklahoma might have that, but the most majority were looking that right, the majority of states like California, Right, you can do it. You know, you take money from someone, you tell their fortune.
There's no crime committed there per se. But what happens is generally what happens is you have a person that walks into one of these forts and telling Paula's off the street, and they go in and they're vulnerable because they're going through a difficult time in their life. Okay, so they're going through love, money, and health. That are three big things. So their boyfriend broke up with them, their husband left them, their wife left them, their kid
has cancer, you know, they just lost their job. So they walk in off the street vulnerable, and the psychic does what's called the cold reading. Okay, cold reading is when someone comes in off the street cold. They look for verbal and nonverbal clues. They see, is this person here just on a lark, they just are here to just you know, do a fifty dollars reading and want to just for entertainment, sure, or is it that they
have a serious problem going on? So they're able to pick up on the people that have the really serious problems, the people that are vulnerable. And then they say, you know something I see in darkness around you. I see a certain negativity. I see something plaguing you. You should be further in your life than you are right now, but there's something holding you back. I see that you're a good person. You always do for others, but others don't always.
Do for you.
And then they start to throw out these things, you know, like get to know the person, and the person starts to open up as oh I lost my job, oh my husband left me, and then they start to repeat things back to the person in a way that makes the person think that they are psychic, but they're actually giving the psychic the information the seltwacame psychic. Then they say, now that we've established that this negativity, what we need
to do is I need to do deeper research. I need you to write your name down, and I need you to write your data birth down, and write his name down and your.
Boyfriend's day of birth.
Now we go from a cold reading situation to a hot reading situation where when the person leaves, they're now going to research on the internet this person learn all about them. So we went from cold reading to hot reading. Then what they do is they say, you know, before you leave, we have to do deeper research. I have to get crystals and candles, but that's going to be eight hundred dollars. The initial reading is a nominal feet maybe fifty dollars, one hundred dollars, but now all of
a sudden, it's eight hundred of nine. Then what they say is come back to see me, and they say, upon doing the deeper research, I see that there's a curse that's been placed on you. It's a generational curse, and it's been on your family. And what happened is back when your father was dating your mother, he was seeing another woman and he decided to marry your mother
instead of out of other woman. And what happened is that other woman put a curse on your family, and when it passed to you when you were in your mother's womb, and it's been on you, you're thirty years old, been on you for the last thirty years. We have to undo this curse or it'll pass on to you and your children's children and forever. You're the want in your family that has to stop this. You don't want it has the power to stop this. So they put
this pressure on the person. Then they tell the person. So now we got established that there's this darkness, there's this curse.
But then they want them to do a ritual. You need to go home.
You need to get thirty thousand dollars out of the bank. Because you're thirty years old. We have to undo each year of your age, get one thousand dollars thirty thousand, put it under the bed but I need.
And your guy doesn't say, well, why isn't a dollar, Let's do thirty.
Yeah, if they go for the big money.
But does the fortune teller at some point do an investigation to see how much money this person has?
Yeah, well they look at what kind of car does the person drive up? Okay, what is the person wearing it?
You know?
Do they have expensive jewelry on all? This is part of the cold reading. Now we're at thirty thousand. Now they say you got to go to the store, a grocery store and get up caught in the eggs and take one egg out and put the egg under the bed with the money. Because money is the root of all evil, and we need to attract the evil will want to go to the money. So now the evil's going to go to the money. When you sleep at night, call me up. We'll say some prayers from the Bible.
There's a lot of religious terminology.
This is God.
I'm doing God's work. God wants me to help you. I was put here to help you. You know, it's not about money. But you got to get thirty thousand dollars and put the money under the bed. So now the person does this gets the egg. And the reason we need the egg is because the evil's gonna go to the money, be attracted to the money. But we need to trap it in something. So we trap it
in the egg because the egg represents the soul. Sure, And then what happened is yes, sure, all right, so now right, okay, yes, So now the psychic calls up the person in the middle of the that oh, we've angered the spirits. The spirits have gone to the egg. The person's coming to my office. It goes to the Offisa, the office what they call Offisa. They go there to the forts of telling Paula that the room is dark, you know it's And they say, look, take the egg.
Put it in this bag.
And they'll have a bag there or a cloth that they're holding in their hands. Put it in the cloth. Then they do sleight of hands. They already have an egg that they've doctored up. They've injected some cayenne pepper into it, a red dye into the egg, or they put a little black snake in there. And they say put the egg in the bag, or put the egg in the cloth. The person puts it in, they say, it won't break, it won't break. And they're like trying to hit it, and you know, an egg should breaks
and not. It like being really dramatic, you know. And then they pull it out and they hit it and all sudden blood comes flying out.
What a snake is that? They say, Oh, this is the curse that manifested itself. It came. This is the evil.
And now once they get over that hurdle, now we start to go on and on and on where we need to do more work.
We need more money.
Thirty thousand under the bed hands, right.
So the psychic says, but.
Wait, how does the thirty thousand under the bed hands?
Right?
So the psychic says, as soon as they hit the thing, the egg and the blood comes out, they.
Say, you got to get out of here right away.
You gotta leave because my family's in jeopardy. You're in jeopardy the evil. I gotta take the money. I got to take it to my church to the author, and I got to cleanse the money of the evil. And then next week I'm going to give you the money back. Don't worry. But once I cleanse it of the evil. So here in lies the crime. The person is not
paying thirty thousand dollars to remove a curse. They're just given the psychic to thirty thousand the hole, temporarily thinking it's going to be cleansed and returned.
But the crime is money laundering, buddy laundering.
There you go exact.
So do the psychics then keep it going or do they move so right?
So now when the person comes back the next week and they're like, where's my thirty grand Oh, you don't realize this problem is worse, much worse than I thought it was. And what we need you to do is we need you to go get some more money because money is power, and I need to accumulate power through the money, and I got.
To keep going.
I have to put it in a special room at my church, at the altar, and I keep accumulating it until we get enough where I can defeat and vanquish the evil. Now we have a principal psychological principle, the sunk course fallacy. Once someone starts putting money into something, there's a psychological principle that you'd rather keep sinking money into.
It then say, oh, that scam.
And so it's just human psychology that they're using.
And did they eventually is the end game. Once they get it, they disappear.
So yeah, at the end of it, once the person comes around and says, oh, I've hit rock bottom, I'm wiped out. I've borrowed money from family members. I've wiped out my bank account. I opened up credit cards and maxed them out. I took out loans, I lied to family members and got money from them. So it affects other people this crime too, not just the individual. And then they hit rock bottom and then they call me, and a lot of times people are suicidal. They're suicidal. Yeah,
I can't and embarrassed. We got our answer. I really know, really how they afford the storefront. Obviously there's huge money when you.
When you are able to get these people into courts and now they're charged. Now you're in the legal system. I imagine that there is some some burden. Maybe I'm wrong to prove fraud, which to me, if I unders correctly, and I'm sure I don't, means that you've got to prove that this so called psychic knew they were defrauding, as opposed to having them go listen it worked or it didn't work, But I I believed in what I was doing. I was doing the work that I was being compensated for.
How did.
It?
That's a very important question.
So what you do is you I build a case, and I build it based on a totality to facts and circumstances. So starting off, a lot of times the psychic lies about their name. Okay, when I go to best Buy to buy a TV set and the guys has mic on his name, He's not Jose, He's not you know, Paul, he's Mike.
You know.
So when you go to these psychics, they're never using their real name, well not never, but a lot of times they're not using their real name. And then when they say, hey, we need to do this egg trick. I mean that's something I've seen over and over again. Or they do a magic trick where you have to bring in a jar and spit in the jar and then I'm going to put water in the jar and then they make the water turn.
Red or black.
So you know, when you start off with you lying about your name, you start off with then a progression of fees. Okay, you're using a scripted story about the father of seeing another woman. I've heard that a million times. You know, that same scripted story I've gone into psychics, and I've seen a woman reading the script off her leg on a piece of paper. A young psychic was
reading the script. So when you add up the fake name, the progression of fees, the magic trick to pursue the existence of a curse, building the case so that a jury of twelve people at the end of the day is going to say, well, you needed a certain amount of money and you'd complete it in three months, but now all of a sudden, you need more, and so you know, and then you have different ways of theft
which people don't understand. So like one time I had a case with the FEDS, and the FEDS at this huge multimillion dollar case and they call me up and they say, Bob, we see that you've been successful. And they were worried about just what you're talking about. I could see when I was in a room sitting with all these agents and prosecutors, they were like, well, you know she's going to go to try well, you know, like, how are we going to prove whether she's psychic or not?
You know?
And I said, time out, hold on, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. You're off in a wrong direction. I said, let's say Bob is a psychic. Let's just say psychic ability exists. Bob's a psychic. And Bob says to Joe, Hey, Joe, you know what I see it. You're gonna be in a terrible car accident next week and you're going to die in that car accident because your car is possessed by evil spirits. And jo says, oh, I don't know, you know, I don't
know if Bob's really psychic or not. But I don't want to die in a car accident, you know. And Joe says, listen, just give me your car for one week. I'll take it to my church. I'll have some people at the church. We'll all pray over it. We'll remove the evil spirits. Come back next Friday here in the parking lot, I'll give you your car back. Joe says, you know what, I'd rather give Bob the car and take the chance. Joe gives Bob the car. Bob's gone. Next Friday comes, Bob's nowhere.
To be found. The car is gone, right.
So I looked around the room and I said to everybody in the room, I says, did Bob steal Joe's car and they said, well, yeah, Bob stole those cars. Question, I said, Bob psychic, right, and they said, well, yeah, we said Bob's psychic. I said, so, so if Bob stole Joe's call on Bob's psychic, I said, obviously a psychic to commit theft, It's not about whether the person's psychic. They're like, oh, really, it doesn't even matter whether Bob a psychic or not.
I said, welcome to the game. That's by false problem.
One of the things that I read about you were trying to get law enforcement to take this stuff seriously. The ones you investigate, what percentage do not just remuneration, but end up in jail.
A good percentage actually either do a plea bog and to pay the money back so they stay out of jail, that's really what they do, or they go to jail.
So yeah, I mean it's one or the two.
There are lots of psychics on television with their own shows, being interviewed, being treated with legitimacy. That is setting the scene for all these con artists, because you've got these people that are being given enormous credibility, enormous remuneration to to what degree do you hold the You know, I'm pleased our audience. I'll talk later about my own experiences.
So I don't mean to dump on anybody, But when you see a John Edward or a Tyler Henry or Teresa Capudo and they're being you know, they're being treated as legitimate people with ability, what's what's the feeling towards that, because there might they're they're they're compounding the problem for the people that you have to deal with.
Yeh See, I've never dealt with any of those particular people, so I've never investigated them, so I can't speak to them.
Sure, and I'm not saying they're not legitimate, but they do give legitimacy to people that are you know, full of it.
Right, Yeah, And it is a problem. It bothers me.
Yeah.
But if someone if someone wants to give one of these popular psychics their money and there's no promise that the money's coming back magic trick to prove the existence of a curse, they're not lying about their name.
It's a whole different ballgame.
My guest too is and I don't know this, maybe Laurie could check or David Denheim. If those and again, I'm not going after those people. But I bet Jay, because it's on television, you have to sign a release, and I bet the release is specific saying that I don't. I'm not predicting anything about you. I assure that there's a legal disclaimer saying it's an more entertainment based than I'm trying to get money out of you for something else. Yeah, a lot of times.
Well, I was backstage one time at a talk show and a psychic was on the talk show. Alleged psychic came up to me in the green room and said, hey, Bob, can I give you a reading?
Like poor people?
You know?
And so I said, listen, come on. You know I'm not into that. You know, No, No, hold on, a second, hold on. I see I see that you have a relative. I see you have someone a brother. I see what the name begins with a K. And I'm like, all right, you know what, I'll tell you what because I do have a brother that's name starts with the letter K.
Right.
So I just said, you know what I see you, Well, let me read you.
She says, what do you mean read me? I said, I'm going to read you.
I see that you.
Were born you were born like somewhere with like an S and then like an F. And I'm just making this up to places and like my brother, but I said San Francisco, and she happened to be born in the place that I mentioned, right, And she goes, you looked me up on the internet before you came here, And I said, just like you looked me up, honey, you know me if I my relative's name, you know, come on.
And no one. I mean, I'm I maybe maybe I'm wrong.
I'm imagining that the average person has very little sympathy for your clients.
Right.
So, like an NYPD cop, one day I called them about a psychic. I had a victim with me, and a psychic ran into an apartment and I said, hey, listen, you know the psychic ripped her off and for like fifty thousand dollars and the psychic just ran into an apartment and we want to get a report and make it arrest. And he looks, he says, come here. He brings me away from the victim, and he says, you know something about those they're all forth for going on
there and believing in this in the first place. He goes, nobody put a gun to her head, and I said to him, yeah, you know something, You're right, if it was a gun through her head would be a robbery. But it's not a robbery, and you're a cop and you should know better. It's theft by deception, and there's a specific portion of a law that's, you know, for
theft by deception. It's not always there's a lot of non violent crimes that go on with consensual crimes such as this where the people are willingly but they're tricked into giving their money. You can't consent to something you're tricked into doing. See, And so my forte, really, I'll tell you what my forte is is fighting with police and prosecute because they have a negative attitude. And I worked with guys like that, and I'm I don't want
to give a blanket. There's plenty of good cops and prosecutor or I wouldn't have got the cases that I've done done, but there's a lot of fighting that goes on in terms of me going at them and bringing people back into a state she announced that would turn away and will laughed.
At, like, give us what a case looks like where you're undercover, and was one that blew your mind.
Even well, I just would say, like the story wise, I'll give you a story wise, Like they come up with these elaborate stories. So I had this lawyer who was ripped off by a psychic and she was told that she was part of a group of twelve and that it represented like the twelve Disciples of Christ, and she was one of the people.
Already, good, yeah this is so.
Then she's told that she needs to poke holes in the condom when having sex with a boyfriend because she needs to give birth to a child.
Sure, and it's gonna be twins.
And the reason it's going to be twins is because she's gonna give birth to the baby that's gonna save the world from the anti Christ and do battle with the anti Christ. And one twin is a decoy and the other is the actual baby. So girl is poking holes in condoms and having sex trying to have a baby because the psychic told her that she's supposed to save the world. Like, you know, this is the crazy stories that go on, all right.
So wait, so what's your disguise to go in and confront this person?
No, I didn't, I didn't wear dis guys I'm just giving you an example.
Okay, disguise. What kind of disguises do you have?
One time I walked in like a Hasidic Jew with the with the curls down and the black hat and all that, and so I used that disguise.
Yeah, yeah, a lot of times I got to have Just again, just to abstract, why would that persona have appealed to that particular psychic.
Because they will go and move it in any direction as long as you have a vulnerability, right And they will say if they see like I'm wearing a cross right now, they'll think, oh, he's a Christian, so I'll cater it to that. If someone is Jewish, they'll they'll know, stay away from mentioning Jesus. You see, these people are very astute at picking out the things that they see in somebody and then going and running with these.
Screen is it like a family business, and it's a.
Network of people all across this country in various cities. This networks, okay, And you have family based where like grandmothers will teach daughters how to do it, and daughters will teach their daughters how to do it. And you have families who the daughter will actually be sold into another family where they have like a meeting and they get together and they say okay, they arrange marriages. When I say sold, okay marriages and they come up with like a dowry.
That's what I mean by soult.
So they'll say, okay, you know, we'll take her into our family and then we'll give you a certain amount of money. And then she becomes part of our family and she starts doing the fortune telling. And a lot of times these fortsutne polics, you see these little rundown places with the bad curtains and the chabbelis dressed, and then they leave there and sometimes they go to a house that's a multimillion dollar house that the people that are going there are unaware of.
And they're driving around in.
Bentley's and you know, it's almost mostly mostly women mostly to do this.
And again the definitive on there is there is with some of these organization behind it. Well, what we have with this family certainly give an example.
In some big cities they have what they call a three block rule, okay, where you cannot open up a forts and telling Paula within three blocks of another forts in telling Paula because if you do, then you have a beef, and that beef has to go before a council of elders who then decide who's right and who's wrong on that territory.
So you've got carved out territory. You've got people.
People are saying, this is my town, and when they move out of a certain town, they sell it that town or that territory. The block their block to somebody else. Like a drug dealer has a corner, and the same thing. They have their spot. They have their territory, and they have like you know, like I said, they have like elders, council of elders. They settle the disputes among themselves. They don't go to law enforcement.
A lot of times, couldn't you make couldn't somebody work to say, if you're going to to establish yourself as a fortune teller, you must have a certain kind of license.
You know.
That's what I often say to people is people are making life decisions based upon what someone with a neon sign is telling them to do. And I'm gonna go to it. I'm gonna go to a Seinfeld episode. But George goes to the psychic and you you were in the show where You're gonna go and you go with Elane and you go to a psychic, right, and she said, you're gonna go on a trip to the Cayman Islands. And you're all excited about this trip to the Cayman Islands.
But the psychic gives the the idea that you're gonna maybe die in a plane crash. So you end up giving up the trip to the Cayman Islands to Kramer because you're worried that you're gonna die in his plane crash. Now you made a life decision. It's comedy, right, you know,
But in real life people are making life decisions. Well, in the show, Kramer goes on the trip, right and it meets all time is Life, right, sports, illustrated models who are newd on the beach and these and he comes back and you're like distraught over the fact that you gave up the trip of a lifetime. But what people are doing is people are going to these psychics.
In real life, they're giving them marriages. The psychic is saying divorce your husband because they know they're going to get the divorce settlement, and then the doors settlement will go to the psychic they're telling them to change their wills. They're telling them not to send kids to college because it's bad to go to the college, because they know it's the money will then go towards the college. I mean, there's all kinds of things. They're telling them, don't go
to the doctor to get treatment. And then the person is ending up, you know, like losing their leg over the fact that they listened to a psychic.
What's the most before as we wrap up, what's the most that you saw somebody gave that completely blew you away.
The most that I was involved in was when I helped the FEDS with like one woman was the best selling author and she gave seventeen million dollars approximately.
To the psychic. Psychic ended up getting Let me sit with.
That for a minute. No really, I got to tell you something. If they have a psychic Award show, were they honor psychic? Yeah, it's like Betty Lou who got seventeen million dollars, Oh my god.
And there was like there was multiple victims and it went on for like ten years or so, maybe even more. And the psychic was the best I mean, not the psychic. The victim was the best selling author, and people say, well, Bob, how could one person give seventeen million dollars. You know, well, the woman had a series of miscarriages trying to have a child. Then she had problems of marriage problems and also you know, trying to have a child and everything
that's going on with that. And then she adopted a little boy, Sam, And when Sam was around eight years old, he died in a tractic ATV motorcycle accident.
And so she went to see Rose.
Marx on you know, in New York, and Rose says, you know, I can reunite you with the little boy's souls something to that effect, or you know, the devil is pulling the little boy into purgatory or something to that effect. You know, you know, praying on this mother's vulnerability over having lost her adopted son after she had all these you know, trying to have a child. And when you see something like that, it just it angers you.
And the spiritualist movement, a lot of people don't realize, came about when the Spanish Flu came about because a lot of people had died in the Spanish Flu, and that they attribute that to the rise of spiritualism because so many people wanted to talk to their deceased loved ones. Now right now, I have an uptick in cases because
it depends. So I'm getting slammed with cases that are just coming in now where people have been slammed over the last two three, four years, and they're just hitting rock bottom now, you.
Know, just a night guard, I thank you for coming home.
Do you believe in any of this? By the way, you don't?
You know they don't believe in it. I hate people. It's like Bob said, I hate people being taken advantage of people abused that way. It's all it's bs well, and that doesn't mean it's somebody I don't believe that some people have.
That's that's where I was. Is that so you know this story because I've told it to you. But years ago, prior to Seinfeld, I was not a known entity.
There was no Wikipedia to look anybody up.
My wife and I had unexplainable infertility, but we had moved to California and we were meeting a whole new set of doctors and we didn't know we want to go down this road.
Maybe it's just silly, I don't know.
And we talked to a bunch of doctors, and there was one guy that we thought, well, if we were going to do it anyway, my mother in law goes, you know, there was this psychic in New York that I used to go to. Why don't you just see him. It's like two hundred bucks is not that big a deal. Just go see him. He's pretty famous. His name is Frank Andrews. He's since passed away. We go down to this tiny little guy that kind of sounds like Truman Caponi.
It's kind of like, you know, a thing like a little drawn, a little naison, and he raises papion dogs in the bill and we go in. Now other than were Phyllis's daughter.
And son in law.
That's all you know. They don't know anything.
And he goes in and we sit down and he goes, Okay, this is really strange. I don't work like this. I really I do cards and I have crystals, but I it's like someone's yelling into my head. So I'm just going to tell you what I'm hearing. I don't know what it means. If it means anything to you, Great, you've been trying to get a project going. It has not been successful and you've just met some people that you're considering bringing onto the project, and you're not maybe
you're not sure. There's a guy whose name is either Peter or Paul. I get them confused, and it could be a last name like Peterson. If you do the project with that person, it'll be successful. Well, the guy that we had kind of gone, oh, we like this guy is doctor Richard Paulson, who we came out of this meeting with this guy and we went, well, you want to try it with Paulson. I mean he picked that name out of the Ethan and Paulson, you know,
created my two two children. This guy knew nothing about us. That's where he went to. That's how he described it.
And I go, I can't explain that.
I don't know how to godless. I'm thrilled that you believe it. I'm thrilled that you have to love. I love your your lovely wife, lovely kids. Happy for Paulson, happy for the Truman compub, happy for the dogs, Happy for the two dogs Poppy on dogs. What an interesting guy. I just want to say though, having worked with and I know he's a former cop, I kind of get why cut the police are overburden today with so much stuff. I get, yes, yeah, I get. I love that.
They're doing treos.
They have to do repeat stuff and they have to deal with stuff that they family issues and the biggest people and they have to rest over and over again who have mental mental disorders, and so it's it's tough.
By the way, would make a great series, A great.
Great series because he's against the Lasha who's kind of a him or female, because it may be a romantic thing, who trieslops a thing there, there's a thing there. And then who do you see his nightguard? Who do you see his nightguard? I'm oh you wow? Who do I say, Michael chicklist? Who do I say? So sorry that you weren't well not my first choice, But now I'm seeing it.
What am I developing for other people?
Now?
By all right, I thought we were I'm I'm doing podcasts. I need a Davy gig, Peter.
You know. I am so oh my gosh, Now I get it. You thought when I was talking about that for you boy, I am, by the way, talking.
About but you can't even read the room.
Let me just say the camera. I am so embarrassed. I am so embarrassed.
You know what, you know what, Michael Chickless, It's not bad, right, or maybe maybe Tony Shalou somebody like that.
I like that.
Look, James Cordon, would you like to go James Cord?
Who's the guy from Broadway?
Nathan Lane?
Yeah, show, let's go with Nathan Yeah, sure, absolutely so anybody out there who wants to put together a package.
Yeah, we're anyone sellable.
Anybody.
Let's go to google him for Look at this, He's got the fez and the sweat is happening here.
Oh my, I've.
Been doing a lot of beam.
I got a lot of energy. I'm I'm I got my tarot cards here, I'm Jason. I'm feeling I'm feeling something.
We got the King of Coins.
Yeah, I say that.
There's an s an s funny.
Hold on, Hold on, Jason, I have an envelope. In the envelops it's no longer was Michael Richard No, no longer on the show, No longer the show. I was, Uh No, dumb question here, dumb question here? Yeah, you have that hat.
He was in the production of Bye Bye Birdie. There's a big was my grandfather's a hot store and they said, you need something with some height. Yeah, I'm looking at that. You know, there's a lot of sun in flowers.
What is that?
Yeah, asked Bob. Why he had.
It?
I actually, I actually have a few things. I got a few things to do.
I can't did you forget it? I can't get no.
I want to hear god.
I take it off.
But I think there's like a lot it is looked at all, you know. Yeah, sure, you don't want to look back. Gosh, you don't want right, that would be silly, right.
Yeah.
So, according to Statista research, the fortune teller industry is approaching two point five billion dollars.
A yeah, how did they know that?
Is?
Are these guys reporting table and had a good outcome? Didn't feel ripped off?
Offline? Is shifty book? Yeah?
Yeah, well you know you got to listen. There's apps, there's.
The stuff's got a good point. So I'm a fortune teller. I have a shop in print with next to the Baskan Robins, and at the end of the year, I'm reporting my learnings. Maybe unreported that I've scammed from people.
Okay, two point five billion.
As Bob was saying that it is illegal in certain states like Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York.
But there are.
Places like Massachusetts where get this, you can get a license after license if you're going to be a fortune teller in some states like Massachusetts. And I actually look, so what does that entail? It's basically nothing. You get the state about two hundred bucks and you have licensing.
There's no like you know, I.
Don't know, like can you think of the letter blue or whatever?
It is like they don't do anything like that.
And there's also free speech considerations that used to be illegal in California. But then in nineteen eighty four there was a case Spiritual Psychic Science Church versus AZUSA, where the Pelic courts struck down the California law saying their First Amendment issues.
So there you go.
And Peter, you had asked me to take a look as far as looking at these licensing agreements if people are going on.
TV and interacting with it.
Well, and I want to use the name, but I was able to find one of these license agreements at least one. Psychics is and I'll read a line from the contract. Due to differing opinions regarding psychic abilities, all services are.
Offered for entertainment purpose.
Oh that was like buried in.
All the mumbo jumbo of all this this type of stuff.
David too, I think that we all decided you must wear that hat every single time you come on as go by the way, I think we got no other show.
Everybody really As another episode of Really No Really comes to a close. I know you're wondering who was the greatest debunker of false psychics ever? Maybe you can predict the answer. But first let's thank our guest, Bob Niguard. You can follow Bob on his website about dot me slash Bob dot Niguard. On LinkedIn, he is simply Bob Niguard,
and on x he's at bun Kopey. Find all pertinent links in our show notes, our little show hangs out on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and threads at Really No Really Podcast, And of course, you can share your thoughts and feedback with us online at reallynoreally dot com. If you have a really some amazing factor story that boggles your mind, share it with us, and if we use it, we will send you.
A little gift.
Nothing life changing, obviously, but it's the thought that counts. Check out our phone episodes on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and take that bell to your updated when we release new videos and episodes, which we do each Tuesday. To listen and follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and now who was arguably the greatest debunker of false psychics ever none other than one of the most legendary magicians of all time, Harry Houdini.
At the height of his.
Career as an internationally renowned magician, Houdini turned his energies toward debunking psychics and mediums in order to show how they were taking advantage of the brief. Houdini was a proud member of a scientific American committee that offered a cash prize to any so called medium who could successfully demonstrate supernatural abilities. None were ever able to do so, and the prize was never collected. Houdini chronicled his debunking exploits in his book A.
Magician among the Spirits.
In short, he busted dozens of prominent fake psychics all over the world, and his passion and success in doing so cost Houdini the friendship of one of his closest associates the author Arthur Conan Doyle, most notably the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle was a huge believer in the occultant psychic ability and actually came to believe that Houdini was a true psychic who used his powers to
block the ability of others. He was so convinced of this that by Houdini's death, Conan Doyle considered him an arch enemy. The irony, of course, is that Houdini wanted to discover real evidence of paranormal powers more than anyone. In fact, he argued that if anyone could escape from the beyond, it would be him.
So he made a pack with his wife.
Bess, that she would hold a seance every year on the anniversary of his death, and that if he could appear to her, he would convey the secret message. Roosabel believed. Houdini died on Halloween night, October thirty one, nineteen twenty six. Bess held a seance every year for the following ten years, with no results. As she blew out the candle at the end of the tenth try, she uttered, ten years
is enough to wait for any man. To this day, however, These ounces are still held on Halloween nights at the Excalibur Nightclub in Chicago and at the Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania. To date, nothing supernatural has ever occurred. Really No, Really is a production of iHeartRadio and Blase Entertainment.