Feds: Psychic mail networks cheated 200,000 clients

Two "psychic" mail networks, including a key player based on Long Island, together cheated more than 200,000 clients out of tens of millions of dollars with supposedly unique talismans and clairvoyant visions, the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday in seeking court orders to stop the long-running operations.

They were actually "mass-produced trinkets" and bulk mail from the network run by Manhattan-based CLGE and I.D. Marketing Solutions or the one operated by Hong Kong-based Destiny Research Center and the Canadian company Infogest Direct Marketing, according to complaints filed in U.S. District Court in Central Islip on Wednesday.

The companies got lists of people interested in astrology and preyed on the financially vulnerable and elderly, who paid $20 to $50 for services and products that were supposedly used by historic figures but were purchased cheaply, for $1.20 each, from a Hong Kong vendor in one instance, federal officials said.

In operations that began as early as 2002, letters written by purported psychics appeared to be personal and predicted lottery fortunes and ruptures in the person's "energy field" -- windfalls or fixes that would be lost if the victims didn't purchase psychic services or talismans within a short time, the complaints said. The complaint quoted some mass letters as warning, "Goodbye peace, Goodbye 7 million Dollars . . . Hello sadness and neverending anxiety."

Deer Park-based Metro Data Management, doing business as Data Marketing Group, and its chief executive, Keitha Rocco, received mail from consumers, including letters to psychics about health and money problems, and processed the payments, the complaint said. Rocco declined to comment.

In March and April, Rocco's company processed more than 23,000 consumer responses for CLGE, federal authorities said.

The company processed as much as $500,000 in consumer payments every two weeks for Destiny Research Center, which has sent out 56 million pieces of mail since 2006, according to court filings and an investigation by the U.S. Postal Service.

Attorneys for the companies involved could not be located.

The U.S. attorney's office for Long Island has filed temporary restraining orders against the businesses and is also seeking court orders to empower the postal service to step in.