In February 2013, on a visit to New York, Ruth spent an afternoon walking the streets, thinking about her divorce. She’d had a good life, once. A healthy, happy family. Beautiful children. But the past few years had been soul-crushing, and the divorce had descended into a no-holds-barred courtroom fight that had broken her family apart and made her feel hopeless and alone.

As the sky darkened, the cold air sank through Ruth’s clothes and crept across her skin. She decided to head back to her midtown hotel. When she got closer, she noticed a sign for $5 psychic readings at a storefront nearby. She hesitated. Maybe this would give her the guidance she’d been craving for so long. And if not, what was the harm? “I didn't think $5 was much to spend for hope,” she recalled.

Ruth walked up a narrow staircase to a second-floor apartment, where she was greeted at the door by a woman with dark hair and thick-framed reading glasses, who went by “Psychic Zoe.” The woman led Ruth into a tiny office with glistening purple amethysts in each corner—protective stones, she said—and they sat down together.

Ruth told her everything: about her divorce and depression, the sexual abuse in her past, and the lingering pain that racked her body after an accident years earlier. Her children had become emotionally distant, she said, and she feared she was losing them. She didn’t know how to make it right.

The psychic promised to spend that evening at her church, meditating about what to do. Ruth would need to come back to find out what she’d learned from her spiritual communications.

Walking out, Ruth felt a tiny rush of hope. The woman had shown her so much compassion—she’d really listened. It felt like the first time in years.

When she returned the next day, the diagnosis was shocking. “She told me there was an extraordinary number of curses placed on me and my family,” Ruth said. “She said she was at the top of her field, and she’d never, ever seen someone surrounded by so much evil, so much darkness.” It wasn’t a stretch for Ruth to believe she was cursed. “I was in such a vulnerable, depressed state at that time that I was looking for answers,” she said.

Zoe assured Ruth she could remove the curses: After her spiritual “work” was done, she said, Ruth would find love and her children would be happy. Her husband would even come back, if that’s what she wanted.

To make this all happen, Zoe said Ruth would need to buy gold, which was the strongest element in the universe and could create a powerful, impenetrable shield around Ruth that would protect her and her family. Zoe went into the next room and spoke with another woman. She came back holding a heavy gold chain and a collection of coins. She told Ruth she could buy one coin for each person she wanted to protect. It would only be a temporary arrangement, she said. Ruth could get her money—or the gold—back whenever she wanted. If she didn’t ask for it earlier, she would get it back by March 1, the deadline Zoe set for when the work would be completed. Before then, Zoe would need to place Ruth’s gold on an “altar” inside a special room that no one else could enter at her church in New Jersey. There, the gold would strengthen Ruth’s aura, gradually building a protective shield.

“I asked to see the alleged room, but Zoe told me that I wasn’t allowed to see or go into the room because no darkness or negativity could come in to expose or disturb the spiritual purity of the altar,” Ruth said. She eventually agreed to buy the chain and 15 coins for a total cost of about $18,000, making sure to take photos of herself with the items so she had evidence she’d bought them. “I didn’t see any harm in purchasing the coins, because they would be used temporarily to help my life,” she told me.