Jaycee Wasso (Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office)
A psychic was sentenced on Friday for coaching a wife on bilking cash and stealing $1 million from an elderly husband. Jaycee Wasso, 26, must spend nine and a half years in prison and 15 years on probation. Also, she can no longer do fortune-telling.
The psychic scammer was found guilty of organized fraud, conspiracy to commit grand theft of property, structuring transactions to evade reporting requirements, and six other counts of theft.
— Law&Crime Network (@LawCrimeNetwork) May 5, 2023
Prosecutors in Hillsborough County, Florida, said she encouraged Lin Helena Halfon, 29, to marry Richard Rappaport, 80, to take his money.
“Lin, give it your all,” Wasso wrote in August 2018. “Act like he is your soulmate.”
Rappaport fell head over heels for Halfon, said prosecutor Paul Dontenville Jr., who described this as a “very good friendship” that resulted in Rappaport marrying the Israel-born Halfon so she could stay in the United States.
The prosecutor told jurors that evidence would show that Wasso kept pushing when Halfon expressed second thoughts about manipulating Rappaport.
“It offends me that you want to go against all the work I’ve done,” the psychic allegedly wrote in July 2018. “I know what I’m doing, Lin.”
Halfon pleaded guilty in her case and agreed to testify against the Wasso.
Halfon met her when living and working in Massachusetts, prosecutors said. Authorities said that Wasso, a self-professed psychic, exhibited considerable control over her, asserting that she could feel “darkness” from Halfon and that a curse was going through generations of the woman’s family.
“Lin, the spirits want me to tell you what’s going on,” the defendant once said, according to authorities. “Your mother is going to die. You’re going to lose everything. You’re going to be sent away. You are going into darkness. Darkness is going to possess you.”
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