Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 6, 1995 TAG: 9501060082
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
One day last October, a Roanoke woman went to a palm reader and said she needed help.
Her marriage was falling apart, the woman told Lola Rose Miller of Miss Stella's Palm Reading on Williamson Road, and she was afraid that her husband was seeing another woman.
After several meetings, Miller told the woman to come back the next day with a glass of water, a dirty old sock and $1,200. If she didn't hurry, Miller warned, the husband would be history by Nov. 17.
The only way to save the marriage, Miller explained, was for her to bless the water and then have the woman drink it. That would remove an evil spirit - which was in the form of a potato growing inside the woman's body - and her husband would then fall back in love with her, Miller promised.
The woman paid up, but she didn't wait to see if the spell worked. As an undercover officer for the Roanoke Police Department, she had enough evidence to make an arrest.
At a hearing Thursday in Roanoke Circuit Court, a judge convicted Miller of obtaining money by false pretenses after the police officer described her encounter with the palm reader.
Miller, 44, was sentenced to one year in jail - a term that will run concurrently with a one-year sentence she received last month in federal court for violating her probation on convictions of structuring money transactions to avoid paying taxes.
But just as important as the jail time, prosecutors said, was Miller's agreement to pay back $18,000 to customers she defrauded.
Although Miller has only a first-grade education and says she cannot read or write, she was nonetheless able to capitalize on a lucrative market in the fortune-telling business.
Chief Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Betty Jo Anthony said Miller did it by carefully picking her customers.
"She preyed on people who were already depressed, lonely or vulnerable in some way," Anthony said.
Testimony by the undercover officer portrayed Miller as initially a sympathetic psychic who grew increasingly demanding and aggressive as she gained control of the palm-reading sessions.
As Miller began to ask for more money at one point, the officer testified, "she got up out of her chair and was in my face, yelling at me ... She was very aggressive and very intimidating."
Some of Miller's other customers apparently were so intimidated that they went into debt to pay her bills. After Miller demanded a motorcycle as payment, Anthony said, one person got a loan from a bank to make the purchase. Another customer gave up a $1,000 necklace as payment.
Still others who owed Miller money were forced to work the debts off at her home, the officer testified, either baby-sitting or doing cleaning work.
The investigation of Miller began after police received complaints from at least one customer. Since then, at least 30 victims of Miller's scam have been found; the actual number was probably much higher, authorities said.
"A number of them feel that in hindsight, their judgment was not as good as it should have been," Anthony said.
That may have been an issue had the case gone to trial. Ray Carpenter, a Richmond attorney who represented Miller, had earlier predicted that the charge would be dismissed because customers should have known what they were getting into.
"When you walk in the door" of a palm-reading house, Carpenter said, "you know what you get."
Anthony countered that a city-issued license - the only one in Roanoke for fortune telling - allowed Miller to read palms only, and that she crossed into illegal territory when she claimed to be able to remove evil spirits and influence future events.
Miller's guilty plea came as a surprise at what was to be her initial court hearing. After lawyers spent more than an hour behind closed doors working out a plea agreement, Miller agreed to waive her preliminary hearing and grand jury indictment and go straight to trial.
As part of the plea agreement, Miller agreed never again to engage in any palm reading or fortune telling - not even for her fellow inmates.
As the undercover police officer finished her testimony Thursday, Anthony asked one final question.
"Did your husband, in fact, leave you on Nov. 17?'' she asked.
"No, he didn't," the officer replied.
by CNB