Two Manhattan psychics — Samantha Vlado on Horatio Street and Sylvia Mitchell on Seventh Avenue South — were arrested last month and charged with the all-encompassing grand larceny. But the latter, whose promises to remove “blockages” for large sums of cash have been described in this space, was also charged with offense No. 165.35 in the penal code, “Fortune Telling.” The misdemeanor, punishable by 90 days in jail or a $500 fine, takes aim at people who obtain money for “claimed or pretended use of occult powers” to give advice, answer questions or “exorcise, influence or affect evil spirits or curses.” (A law that protects evil spirits: only in New York.)

The law appears to have been passed in 1967, tucked into everything-but-the-kitchen-sink revisions to the penal code. Fortune tellers had theretofore been charged with disorderly conduct, and their cases reached the state’s higher courts over the years, as in 1945, when an appellate court determined that belief in the ability to tell fortunes is not a defense, and in 1913, when a fortune teller argued that she was merely practicing her religion, as president of the “Brooklyn Spiritualist Society.” But her reliance on talking to dead people led to her conviction.

A 44-year-old law against fortune-telling was news to several fortune tellers this week.

A psychic on 17th Street near Union Square, her children scattering upon a visitor’s approach, said she had never heard of it and no, thank you, she did not want to be interviewed. Same with the psychic Jessica on East 10th Street, who hangs garlic in the entrance and who retreated to a room behind a door that looked like a bookshelf without further comment.

Ms. Mitchell, newly charged, said Tuesday that she could speak on Wednesday, but then stopped returning calls.

The police said 10 people had been charged with the misdemeanor since the beginning of 2010. Not many people. It would seem that the city could fill its jails — and coffers — twice over with psychics and fines. But fortune-telling cases are not slam dunks, because of a loophole that you don’t need a crystal ball to find, that allows the practice for “entertainment or amusement.”