 Welcome to the Randy Show. I am the James Randy Educational Foundation's field coordinator, Brian Thompson, with me as always is James Randy. Good to be here. So how are you enjoying the last year anyone is ever going to be on earth? Well, every day is to be treasured, of course, as we all know because the Mayans knew about these things. Brian, they just, doesn't dawn on anybody who's taken up on this thing that the Mayans just ran out of stone. They had a wheel, you know, you can go around a wheel and then you come back to the beginning point again and you say, well, I guess that's enough. I don't have a 2013 calendar in the house. Does that mean that it doesn't exist or it won't exist or the end of the world comes at the end of 2012? Come on friends, let's get real. Yeah, I think the Mayans were behind on calendar technology in a lot of ways. Like their calendars were pretty cool looking, but I don't think the Mayans ever came up with the puppy a month calendar. No, no, no, nothing like that. Maybe sacrifice of the month or something like that. That's not, I don't want to see that every time I roll over to a new month. Very true, very true. I just want to see an adorable puppy. So we're also going to be talking about psychics or self-proclaimed psychics in particular, there's one psychic named Nancy Marks who last month was found guilty of stealing close to $300,000 from some of her clients. This was in Colorado. Apparently she demanded money from them in order to draw out their bad energy. Oh, of course. And she took their credit card numbers in order to look for how many times the number six appeared in them. It didn't dawn on any of these victims to tell her the number of sixes that were in their credit card. Of course, they had to send her the credit cards, no doubt, or at least give her the whole number. And she went off to Macy's and Gimbles and a few other places and spent all kinds of money, I understand. Yeah, yeah. So she went on trial last month and it was a pretty speedy trial. I think it was a fairly open and shut case. So I'm not really sure what her punishment is going to be right now, but she was certainly found guilty. And I wanted to talk to you about how you feel about psychics being prosecuted in general. I mean, in this particular case, she was stealing money from people. She wasn't just providing a fake service for money. She was actually stealing their cash and spending it at Target. Well, I find that's a pity that it has to get to that point, Brian, that it has to get to a point where there's an actual theft of goods and or cash from these people where they actually reached into their credit card. That's the sacred thing with Americans, of course, is the credit card and the credit rating. And that would spoil the credit rating. That seems to make it a crime much more than just taking the money, actual currency, that they put in the basket and leave with them or whatever. The particular bejour is at that moment of time, the one that's most popular on Saturdays or whatever. It's incredible that it has to be that kind of a theft. But maybe that's the only kind of theft that some judges recognize that actually taking $100 bills from someone is that's nasty. You shouldn't do that. To actually take out their credit card and use it in Macy's, whoa, that's heavy. I don't see the difference at all. Theft is theft. There are some parts of the world that actually have outlawed psychic or storefront psychics anyway, people who set up a shop and say they'll tell your future for a couple of bucks. But there aren't many places like that in the world. And why do you think that is? I think it's political correctness and there's sort of an indolence, there's an inertia with law enforcement authorities. They're a little afraid of this sort of thing because they don't know on what kind of ground they stand. I can tell them they're standing in quicksand and it's going away underneath their feet right now. But they don't seem to want to listen to that. It is incredible that these people haven't come to justice before this and particularly the Marx family. Now, whether that's their original name, I have no idea. But there's Linda Marx and there's Suzy Marx. There's all kinds of Marx's all over the place. And the funny thing is, of course, that their term for a sucker is a mark, M-A-R-K. It's strange that they would be using that name. But this family is notorious, all over Florida, certainly, all through the South and in Georgia and all over the United States. They are notorious and they've come into contact with the law, so to speak, many times and many of them have gone to prison. But the amount of money they make far outweighs any prison penalty. They just have to sit there for a couple of years and wait till the time goes by and then they've still got the money. How many of these families do you think exist all over the world that have just, this is the family trade, is setting up a psychic storefront and they've been doing it for generations and generations? Well, there is a gypsy culture. Make no mistake about that. The gypsies call their maneuvers these various swindles that they carry out. They call them bajours. We've had several different guesses that where that name may have come from. But they use it among themselves, but certainly not with their victims. And they're all kinds of them. Everything from repaving your driveway with motor oil, which is a very popular one. They have a huge truck with a sign on the side of it and they stop by. Oh, we have some of this coding for the driveway left over here. We can give you a really good buy on it. That's a gypsy scan, too. They're all over the world in different cultures. And their basic philosophy is that the Marx are out there and we, the Marx, are going to go after them and we're going to get their money and we'll leave them and maybe they'll get smart and maybe they won't. If they won't, we'll come back and do it again. Yeah, I know the term gypsy has become kind of slightly politically incorrect, at least in Europe, but not so much in the States. People say it all the time in the States. But in Europe, I think it's sort of been used. There are certain governments that have tried to use, I think gypsies, as scapegoats to pass anti-immigrant legislation and stuff like that. But you're right. There is this culture of generations and generations. These families that pull off grifts, I guess, if you want to use another word for it. My favorite one, when I was in Rome, I was told to watch out for this particular scam, which was that an old lady would be carrying a baby and she would trip and the baby would come flying out of her arms. And when someone would sort of dive in to catch the baby, a bunch of other people would swarm and just steal everything out of this Good Samaritans pocket, which I thought was a great trick because really the only defense against this is that whenever you see a baby flying through the air, just forget it, throw up your hands. Let the baby bounce and go on your happy way. Of course. Yeah, there's no good way to inoculate yourself against that scam. No, I think not. The bejure is out there and you've got to be very careful of it. I don't know whether I told you on one of these interviews, the story of me in Spain, we were in Barcelona. Did I tell you the story about that? I don't think so. Well, I'll try it now and you let it out if it's redundant. Sure. Pause for edit. Yeah, I was visiting my friend, Sonny Fontana, a magician friend from many years ago in Barcelona, at the way they say it, though I'll say it the same way. As in the general square there, and we were sitting around having endless cups of coffee and getting a buzz on. And I noticed that they were doing the three-card Monte business, the business of three cards facedown, which one is the queen, you have to point it out. And they had a couple of people, taller guys, standing there looking around to make sure that there were no interruptions coming, because this is strictly against the law to work the tourist trade like this in Barcelona. Other cities in Spain, I can't speak for, but I know that it is there. And every now and then, while I was watching them, and Sonny was telling me some of the acute gimmicks that they were using, a very interesting story and very interesting development of their culture was given to me in those few minutes. And then I heard a hum, and I thought, what was that? It's very, very loud and very obvious. And it was from one of the two gentlemen, this gentleman, ho, ho, ho, who was looking out for the cops. And indeed, a police car started to cruise by. And the gypsy just folded up the whole operation, the tip, as they call it, they just folded the whole thing up and looked around at the skies and the swallows going by and whatnot. And the cop car passed, there was a knot of ascent, and they went right back into it again. And so I did something rather daring, and Sonny told me afterwards that he was, what's the expression? Yeah, scaring shitless is the expression. It says something better in Spanish, I'm told. And in the case, I had been doing something which was rather risky. And so by observing this thing and seeing what the gimmick was, and I decided to move further into the fray. So I got a little closer into the operation, and while looking in another direction, I did a ho, sort of a thing like this. And everybody dove for cover and they covered up the gimmick. And there was no police car coming by, and they're looking around for it wondering, where are the cops? You know, that was me, you see. Didn't know that, but I made them clear the whole area. And then they went back to business when they saw no police car. And I did it a couple of times and then Sonny came to me and advised me that discretion was a better part of any kind of dollar that I wanted to display. And he took me out of the square. Perhaps I might not have lasted another hoon. Well, if you want to ask any more questions of Randy, I think next time we're going to answer some viewer mail, if you don't mind. If you want to ask any questions about possible practical jokes or world travels that Randy has had in the course of his life, you can send them to me. I'm brian at randy.org, b-r-i-a-n at randy.org. And just put Randy's show somewhere in the subject line. And I guess we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks, Randy. Yes, please do. But I just want to add one thing before we go, Brian. This woman, Marks, who has been convicted already, I want to follow that through and find out whether she actually does go to prison because they have huge amounts of money to invest in lawyers. And I'm very surprised to find out they got this far that it actually went to trial because usually they bring in 30 or 40 lawyers and they sit around the room and they offer all kinds of objections. And usually the thing blows over simply because it's too involved and too expensive for the local authorities to follow through on. They just can't afford to do it. And when justice is something that can't be afforded, you're in serious trouble. The Randy's Show is a production of the James Randy Educational Foundation. To learn more about how we promote science and critical thinking, go to randy.org.