What Ever Happened to Miss Cleo the TV Psychic?

this video is brought to you by Squarespace whether you need a domain website or online store make it with Squarespace check out squarespace.com for a free trial you'll find a link in the description below now for those unfamiliar around the turn of the century no psychic was more famous than the purportedly jamaican-born miss Keough aka URI del Harris she represented the psychic readers network P R n appearing on late-night infomercials Miss Cleo hooked her audience with a combination of charisma tarot card readings concerned looks and imperatives like call me now at it in a comically bad impression of a Jamaican accent by the way if you want to see a snippet of one of her infomercials you can find a link in the description below complete with her temporarily losing her accent entirely at one point Harris had originally come up with the idea of the Jamaican character of Cleo in a play she wrote called for women only in 1996 around 1997 she was also involved in two other productions summer Rhapsody and summer Club Cafe these were both in Seattle at the time she was going on to the name reap heiress and also claimed that she had attended the University of Southern California as a theater arts major though the school has no record of anyone with any of her aliases attending ultimately she was given a grant by the Langston Center to produce a play but she then skipped town with the money apparently without even paying the cast telling them according to one of the actors that she had bone cancer and so wasn't sure when she'd have the money to pay them according to the Langston Center no effort was taken to recover the money because the legal fees would surpass the amount that was actually given to her how Harris became involved with the psychic readers Network PRN and ultimately became the face of it for a time using a character of Miss Cleo is not actually clear presumably given the acting backgrounds one would think that there was probably a job listing somewhere that she applied for and figured Jamaican cleo character would work for what they were looking for however this all happen she was a hit although her persona was obviously a bit of a sham at the time Miss Cleo and PRN were obscenely successful at getting people to call then 900 number and keeping them on the line in fact thanks to a rather public court battle setting some light on things it would appear PRN raked him about a cool billion dollars yes with a B during the brief run with Miss Cleo as the face of the company so why the core battle well among other things while the advertisements and infomercials would claim they offered a free reading this was really just five minutes for free reportedly a time period when callers simply gave personal information or were put on hold while they awaited being connected with Miss Cleo in the end according to the Federal Trade Commission that's the FTC short the average caller would pay about $60 per call paying $4.99 per minute beyond all of this the FTC noticed that once you called in you could expect to get many automated calls back with messages stating things like Miss Cleo had a dream about you and you should call her back or spam emails whether you're ever called or not saying things like Miss Cleo has been authorized to issue you a special tarot reading it's vital that you call immediately of course Miss Cleo wasn't even likely the person you'd get to talk to if you called with most calls fielded by other people according to one former employee Rebekah bar furel who briefly took a job as a psychic while in college to avoid having to work retail she was instructed to tell people who calls the Miss Cleo was on vacation and again according to barfle becoming one of these psychics for the channel that this time was actually quite easy she did it simply by answering an ad looking for people who wanted to make $12 an hour with no real screening whatsoever she was set up so her phone would receive calls from people who wanted to talk to a psychic barfle states that the longer she was able to keep people on the line remember they were charged $4.99 per minute the more calls that sent her way and thus the more money she would make the psychics were paid by the minute at around 12 to 24 cents per minute if the average call time was short your phone Wittering unless with more and more calls given to other psychics who were better at keeping people talking employees were also given scripts to read structured to drag out the conversation and leave people feeling good about the call as barfle stated it was basically telling people what they wanted to hear even if we had to make it up for instance if the person just wanted a quick answer to a question she stated we were supposed to tell them we needed to feel their vibe to get their energy before we could answer any questions the scripts were very general you will come across money love is in the future someone at work is jealous of you someone at work likes you yada yada yada we also had the taro script which was the same bunch of general information not surprisingly in 2001 lawsuits sprung up in states across the country and in 2002 the FTC stepped in and charged PRN and its sister company access resource services incorporated ARS with deceptive advertising billing and collection practices the parties settled with PRN and ARS agreeing to cancel five hundred million dollars in currently outstanding bills return all uncashed checks and pay a five million dollar fine and although it wasn't included in the fraud charges as a result of the FTC complaint it was revealed that Miss Cleo was actually born in Los Angeles California as for Miss Cleo while many among the public thought she was behind the whole thing she was actually just an employee of the company and if she's to be believed not even a particularly well-paid one relative to the money she was making her employer she claims she earned only about twenty four cents per minutes on the phone calls plus some extra fees for the infomercials and the like which is where she made her real money she stated I probably made a little less than four hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the two-year run of the thing I got $1,500 for the first show and was making more by the time I was finishing with them Wow certainly a large sum of money for two years work considering the billion dollars also the company reportedly made before having to cancel 500 million dollars of bills largely on the strength of the character she came up with Ventura charisma not to mention the massive merchandise bearing her liking and catchphrases one might have expected have gotten more but as she stated I got into some real bad contracts and it's spiraled in any events after the FTC crashed PR ends party as Harris was just an employee and had no part in the various deceptive practices performed by the company the only consequence to Miss Cleo herself from the court battle was simply the side effect of losing her job with charges against her being dismissed not done with the character however she later moved on to doing more or less the same thing but face to face for $75 to 250 dollars an hour and switching from calling herself a psychic to calling herself a voodoo priestess bizarrely she kept up the fake Jamaican persona despite at least as far as any record we could find indicates never actually having been to Jamaica she went on about her post PRN days I'm more of a shaman and the elder in a community who has visions and gives direction to people in their village my clients and my students are my village I take care of this community if you sit down at my table you have to take away a lesson and not just learn what is going to happen tomorrow I also perform weddings both gay and straight marriages and house cleansing and blessings in other subsequent work she also voiced auntie poulet in the video game Grand Theft Auto Vice City from 2002 for which PRN in 2017 bizarrely sued Rockstar the game maker for and published the book keeping it real a practical guide for spiritual living in 2003 she joined other infamous 1990 celebrities Tammy Faye backer of the PTL Club Fame and a cable pornography star Robin Bird to become a spokesperson for a new music network called fuse among other promotional work in 2014 appearing as clear Millie Harris Mysterio appeared in a documentary about telephone relationships called hotline the next year she reprised her Miss Cleo role for a number of advertisements for General Mills cereal although shortly after the ads were pulled when PRN challenged that they owned the rights to the character she even for a time hosted a podcast which is still up even despite her death yes indeed all good things must come to an end and sadly Miss Cleo died of cancer on July the 26th 2016 at the age of 53 and there's no word on whether she saw it coming but what I do see coming for you dear viewer is an amazing deal with a Squarespace and that's what I want to tell you about before we get into the bonus facts for today's episode Squarespace allows you to create a powerful online identity maybe you're looking to set up an online consulting business and run into trouble with the FTC or you know maybe not but for whatever you are looking to start Squarespace is how you should go about getting set up with your online presence it all starts on Squarespace with a beautiful template and these templates come with the requisite cool names like pursuit and Royce you can either start from scratch or easily move over from an existing domain making everything super easy to manage and once you've gone through the very easy customization process there are no updates no patches no tech BS to deal with because no one likes tacitly yes but you know what everyone does like that would be Squarespace is 24/7 customer support they are there to help you whenever you got a question and Squarespace it's not just about an online presence you can also totally sell stuff or services on a Squarespace site look if you're looking to start a business pursue a dream etc please do with Squarespace head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to Squarespace comm forward slash brain food and you can save 10% on your first purchase of a website or domain and that said let's go on with some bonus facts Miss Cleo came out as a lesbian in 2006 describing herself as gay as a $2 bill and if stops there we might still be a bit uncertain about her sexual orientation but thankfully for those of us who were confused by the meaning of that statement she went on in the interview and I mean no disrespect because I'm gay and for a long time long before you were even born in fact and in the black community and the jamaican community that's not easy not at all as a matter of fact when i came out publicly in 2006 i lost a large portion of my family it's so difficult i'm grateful for all you younger folks it's not that way anymore but I'm a mom I've grown children I'm not sure how old you are and I'm pretty sure at least two of them are older than you and it was tough worrying that someone would take your children because of who you are and now for another bonus fact for those unfamiliar to a previous reference here Tammy Faye Bakker was host of the PTL Club from 1976 to 1987 it's a Christian evangelist television show and she did it with her husband Jim Bakker among the show's most notable features was when Tammy Faye would famously and messily cry on camera with particularly striking effect owing to her trademark shockingly high amount of mascara and eyeshadow that she wore the hip Joan came to a crashing halt in 1987 however when it was revealed that Jim secret of 287 thousand dollars from the PTL organization which made most of its money by soliciting it from viewers his money he then paid to a young woman called Jessica Hahn with whom he apparently had an affair Tammy fate stood by Jim during the scandal even after he went to prison he was sentenced to 45 years for fraud and conspiracy and she remains married to him up until 1992 when they divorced in 1993 she remarried and took the name Tammy Faye Messner like Miss Cleo Tammy Faye also developed colon cancer in 1996 and it also spread to her lungs Tammy Faye died of the disease on July the 20th 2007 so I really hope you found that video interesting just let me thank Squarespace again you can check them out through the link in the description below it's great way to build an online presence also do subscribe to this channel brand new videos every day of the week and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Today I Found Out

Views: 379,907

Rating: 4.8439689 out of 5

Keywords: today i found out, tifovidz12, tifo, awesome, facts, didn't know, What Ever Happened to Miss Cleo, Miss Cleo the TV Psychic, Miss Cleo, Psychic Miss Cleo, The Legend of Miss Cleo, Miss Cleo facts

Id: eWJI5jVX9uA

Length: 12min 46sec (766 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 27 2018