FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Jan. 14 (UPI) -- A South Florida woman has been sentenced to federal prison and ordered to repay $2.2 million to victims she had told she could help with her psychic powers.
Nancy Demetro Marks, 44, of Fort Lauderdale, had pleaded guilty last year to her involvement in a psychic fraud scheme led by her mother-in-law, Rose Marks, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Monday.
Nancy Marks was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison by U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra, who said she had to begin serving her sentence by Feb. 14.
Marks and eight other family members were arrested in August 2011 on charges they fleeced clients seeking psychic help at their shops in Fort Lauderdale and New York City.
Susan Abraham, an English woman, testified she gave Nancy Marks about $300,000 beginning in 2010. She said Marks told her she was in danger because her husband had murdered her in their previous lifetimes in the 1600s.
Prosecutors said Marks, her mother-in-law Rose Marks, and other women in the family fleeced another woman who wanted to have a child of $900,000 between 2009 and 2011.
Romance novelist Jude Deveraux said she lost $17 million in the group's schemes.
Rose Marks, 62, will be sentenced in March.
