First, Jack was diagnosed with clinical depression after his father died in 2006. Two years later, his 14-year marriage collapsed and he had to fight for access to his two children. Four years after that, he fell in love with a co-worker and got engaged, but the relationship fell apart justbefore the wedding.

In 2013, his ex-fiancée filed harassment charges and he spent a night in jail. Almost immediately, he lost his job.

On the road to rock bottom, Jack, an educated professional in his 40s, did what most of us would do: he reached for something to turn around his fortunes.

But seeking spiritual guidance from five Toronto fortune tellers only pushed him deeper into turmoil. By the time he was finished, he had lost as much as $25,000 and had to sell his house.

The Toronto Star, Ryerson University’s School of Journalism and W5 have spent months investigating Toronto’s thriving fraudulent fortune-telling industry that uses spells, potions, sleight of hand and smooth sales patter to collect small fortunes from thousands of vulnerable victims.

Interviews with a dozen psychic clients, including a teacher, real-estate agent, a doctor, corporate manager and a Bay Street stockbroker, and hidden-camera visits to psychics, reveal the secrets of an industry estimated to be worth $2 billion (U.S.) in the United States alone. One in four North Americans believes in some form of paranormal activity, according to a 2005 Gallup poll.

A skilled, convincing fortune teller can earn as much as $500,000 a year, says Miki Corazza, who has been in the business for 42 years and is increasingly concerned it has become rife with fraud.

“There are people in this business who are not legitimate, and there are people — a lot of people like myself — who are legitimate, that have gifts and varying degrees,” she says. “Part of my service is providing empathy and support to people. I’m not in the business of false hope. I’m in the business of truth, whether you like it or not.”

Related: What it’s like to see a psychic

But most victims are too embarrassed to turn to police. Those who do realize quickly that this cash-on-demand business means there is often no paper trail or evidence.

The business is a combination of grooming and sales techniques linked to sometimes extravagant fees: charging hundreds of dollars for candles and bath salts to ward off evil spirits; asking clients to purchase gift cards and expensive items so the psychic can pray over them; the promise of wishes fulfilled through animal sacrifice; and signing upclients cursed with the “evil eye” to long-term cleansing.

All this happened to Jack and he knows what you’re thinking.

“I know it sounds ridiculous. It’s like how could you fall for such a thing,” says the 46-year-old single father who asked that his name and appearance be changed to protect his job and his family. “But depending on the stage of your life and the vulnerability and what you’re going through, they’re very good at making you believe.”

Jack’s financial descent began in 2009 when he visited Marina, who works from an office in a cavernous strip mallin Woodbridge. Pictures of Jesus hung on the walls, scented candles flickered and a small, black Bible sat on a large, mahogany desk.

He sat and poured out his troubles. When it came time to pay, Jack was stunned — it was hundreds of dollars for a single session. But he paid and he kept on paying, moving from psychic to psychic based on streetside advertisements and ads.

Before he finally quit a couple of years ago, he had been taken in by the tool box of psychic offerings.

One told him he needed to sacrifice a lamb or a pig to lift a curse. Another told him that since he bought his former girlfriend a television, he needed to buy a Best Buy gift card the psychic could pray over.

He never saw what happened to the gift cards but now assumes the psychics used them for themselves.

Jack blew so much on bogus psychic services and supplies over the course of a decade that he had to sell his house. He now lives there as a tenant.

“It’s not like I have the money to go put on a down payment on another house,” he says. “I used to own this, and I just threw money away to psychics who were supposed to help me.”

Lumped in with prohibitions against the practice of witchcraft, sorcery and “enchantment,” the Criminal Code makes it illegal to fraudulently “tell fortunes” for profit or “pretend from skill in or knowledge of an occult or crafty science to discover where or in what manner anything that is supposed to have been stolen or lost may be found.”

Yet victims tend to have little hard evidence. And fraudulent fortune tellers look exactly like those who earnestly believe their psychic powers can be used to help people.

Fraud is difficult enough to prove, says Toronto police Det. Alan Spratt of the financial crimes unit, but the challenge is greater where the law and spiritual beliefs intersect.

“I would be reluctant to charge anyone just solely on the basis that they could tell the future. If that’s their belief system and there is genuine intent and they don’t have criminal intent, I think it would be a difficult charge to prove.”

Since 2010, Toronto police have charged 15 people with fraud relating to psychic practice, “fortune telling” or “witchcraft,” says Spratt.

Shame surrounding the crime is a major impediment to prosecution. Most victims are skeptical about what the police can do to help them.

“Going to the police is probably going to reveal a lot of personal stuff about me,” says Jack, who remains too embarrassed to tell his family what happened. “How do I prove that I went there? There’s no receipts, there’s nothing other than some candles, right, or some bathing salts. . . What’s the point?”

He’s right, experts say.

“There’s no mechanism for getting that money back,” says Toronto private investigator Richard McEachin, who says he has worked on at least 50 spiritual fraud cases in his career. “For any of these kinds of confidence scams, the people who are victims are seen to participate in their own problem.”

And that makes them poor witnesses in the eyes of prosecutors, he says.

“This type of person would be considered the type that would not hold up under cross-examination — he was so easily duped, therefore he would be easy to manipulate, confuse, or get flustered during the cross-examination. . . Prosecutors only want slam dunks and plea deals and this is a long way from that.”

Spratt agrees recompense is rare.

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“The percentage that gets their money back through the criminal justice system is very, very low — and I think a lot of the public knows that,” Spratt says. “It becomes a choice: If I’m not going to get my money back, do I want to go through this process that’s going to take a couple of years? They know it could be publicized… They just don’t want to go through that experience.”

The social stigma aimed at victims helps the industry continue to flourish, experts say.

But the stigma is unfair, says Dr. James MacKillop, a leading addictions researcher at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton.

“These kinds of behaviours are not to be dismissed simply as crazy, or as character defect, or moral deficiencies. They’re clearly causing people a great deal of distress. Certainly they have some responsibility for their behaviour, but also in terms of perspectives, I think we have to try to help people. And both from the mental health community standpoint and also from the legal standpoint, I think we have to minimize the harm that comes from these predatory behaviours.”

Jack’s life has improved dramatically since he’s stopped seeing psychics, from his relationship with his children to his performance at work.

He’s confident his addiction has been overcome and that, the next time something goes wrong, he will be able face it independently, uncertain of the future and simply doing the best he can.

“You just let it go, and you start living your life,” he says. “This has been a very tough lesson learned.”

The Evil Eye

There’s no one type of person who falls for these scams. Victims interviewed included men and women of all races and cultures, all income brackets and professions. What they had in common when they spent money on the scams was desperation.

All names have been changed.

Amal:

Amal, who spoke on condition of anonymity, is a 26-year-old sales professional from Toronto who began seeing a psychic when she was a teenager in 2007. She stopped five years later when she was a university student at York and the woman began demanding her OSAP money.

“My parents are from the Caribbean and we grew up around superstition. I grew up hearing about these things. I’m a very spiritual person and I do believe there are people who have gifts and can tap into things. People use it for good and people use it for bad.”

“She just wanted money all the time to do all of these things and it didn’t make sense. She talked about selling me $800 candles she would light and pray for me. I said, ‘Are you insane?’ ”

Samantha:

Samantha, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, is a 30-something sales professional. Many in her Guyanese community believe in some form of black magic. Desperate to rekindle a relationship, Samantha turned to three different psychics and spent nearly $9,000 over five years beginning in 2007. Two psychics told her that she was cursed and that while the man she loved wanted to be with her, another woman wanted him. One asked for $1,700 to be paid in instalments. The other was more ambitious — she asked for $6,600.

“I was very desperate. I was so in love. I struggled and made the payments. They ask for money for candles and incense to remove the darkness around me. I would pay a couple of hundred dollars at a time.”

Marian

Marian is a Toronto stockbroker who, between 2010 and 2012, was in seven car accidents, watched both of her children become severely ill, divorced her husband and lost her 13-year position at a major bank. When a Mississauga fortune teller told her she was cursed, her response was, “of course.” She spent about $5,000 on six fortune tellers between 2008 and 2014.

A devout Roman Catholic, Marian eventually became convinced that all things “occult” were the cause of her problems. She swore off fortune telling, burned her tarot cards and booked a flight with her sister to Vatican City. She was looking for an exorcist.

One of the psychics offered Marian a $1,000 package of special bath salts, an amulet and candles to rid her of her curse.

“You’re afraid of what’s going to happen next,” she says. “You live in fear. And, at that point, you look at how to rescue yourself.”

Anthony

Anthony, a 30-year-old high school teacher, “wasted” $2,000 on a psychic after a breakup five years ago. What began with small fees for readings, then hundreds of dollars for prayer candles, quickly became a scene from a horror film and ended his visits.

“There was this girl I liked. Things fell apart and I wanted her back. He did a prayer thing over this water before I drank it and then told me to look up and gargle with it. I did what he told me. But when I spit on the piece of paper, there were all of these insects. It grossed me out completely. Centipedes and crawling bugs. I was just like, ‘That didn’t come out of me.’ He said, ‘Yes, it did.’ His reaction was like I was going to die. He said I was cursed. When I wasn’t looking, he obviously tossed these bugs onto the desk. Then he asked for money to lift the curse on me — $2,500. I never even got the girl back. I’m embarrassed to talk about it now.”