ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 30, 1996 TAG: 9601300090
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER NOTE: Above
THE SWINDLING SOOTHSAYER was ordered to reimburse a Franklin County man she bilked of more than $65,000 by charging him for six numbers that were supposed to win $3 million in the lottery.
Warren Smith did not win the lottery the way his palm reader promised. But he might get his money back - more than $65,000 that he paid to Miss Stella, Roanoke's felonious fortunetelle.
After hearing Smith describe how Lola Rose Miller bilked him of all his savings by charging him for six numbers that were supposed to win $3 million in the lottery, Circuit Judge Robert Doherty ordered Miller to pay the money back.
In a lawsuit filed last year, Smith sought to collect the $3 million he never won, plus his ill-advised $65,724 investment and another $350,000 in punitive damages from Miller.
That was too much for Doherty, who said Smith's decision to blow all his money on a fortuneteller was "anything but reasonable." To award punitive damages, the judge said, "would be the same as giving an award for being gullible."
Doherty ordered Miller to pay Smith $65,724 in compensatory damages.
Miller, who was recently released from a federal prison after serving one year for obtaining money by false pretenses and tax fraud, did not attend Monday's hearing.
Smith, a superstitious man from Franklin County, testified that while he had been to fortunetellers before, he never planned to seek Miss Stella's services.
"I didn't really have no reason to go," he said. "A friend asked me to ride over with her; she was going to get her fortune read.
"I was at the store at the time, so I just got in the car and rode over there with her."
As soon as Smith got inside Miss Stella's palm-reading business on Williamson Road, she began to ask him about his finances. The next thing he knew, Smith said, she was offering him a way to win the lottery.
"She told me she was going to church, and God was going to give her the numbers," Smith said. Sure enough, the next time Smith went to see Miss Stella, she had them - 2, 5, 27, 29, 37 and 40.
"I bought the ticket ... but I never won like she promised me," Smith said. Over the next five months, Smith withdrew $29,000 from his individual retirement account and borrowed money from his father to pay Miller, but she kept asking for more.
"She'd already done got all the money from me," Smith said. "I didn't have no more money to give her."
Smith filed suit shortly after Miller's business was revealed as a fraud in court proceedings. Although Miller had a city-issued license to read palms, authorities said she crossed the line by promising to influence future events for exorbitant fees.
Miller, a small woman with a flair for the dramatic, was accused by prosecutors at her criminal trial last January of manipulating her troubled customers. One woman testified that Miller fainted away after she peered at her hand during a palm-reading session.
When she came to, Miller told the woman that a great tragedy would soon hit her family - unless she paid her $40,000 to rid her of the curse. When the woman said no, she discovered that Miller had a temper, too.
"She had a way of flashing a look at you," the woman said. "She just became irate. She was screeching at me: `You must do this; you have to do this.'''
Some time in 1994, people began to complain to the police about Miss Stella.
In November of that year, Miller promised to find out if a woman's husband was cheating on her. All she had to do, Miller told the woman, was come back with a glass of water, one of her husband's old, dirty socks and $1,200 in cash.
That customer turned out to be an undercover police officer, and authorities raided the business a short time later. After convicting her of obtaining money by false pretenses, a Roanoke judge ordered Miller - who now lives in another state - to stay out of the palm-reading business. The judge also ordered her to pay $18,000 to other customers she had defrauded.
"The evidence is overwhelming that Mr. Smith is but one of many victims [Miller] had perpetrated this type of fraud on," said Smith's lawyer, Bradley McGraw of Roanoke. "She tried to fleece every penny she could get."
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