Florida Woman Sentenced To 40 Months Of Prison And Has To Pay Back $1.6M Because She Said She Was A Witch
(NYT)–She was a 27-year-old medical student in 2007, suffering from depression and going through hard times, when a self-proclaimed spiritual counselor approached her at a mall in Houston with the promise of supernatural help. The student, looking for an answer, agreed to a psychic reading.
The purported psychic said her name was Jacklyn Miller and told the student that her mental problems stemmed from a curse that had killed her mother.
The student met with the psychic, whose real name is Sherry Tina Uwanawich, several times a week and, for years, paid large sums of money for meditation materials, including crystals and candles, in order to lift the curse and protect her family.
Over a decade later, the psychic was charged with three counts of wire fraud, one of which she pleaded guilty to in June as part of an agreement with prosecutors
On Friday, Ms. Uwanawich, 28, appeared in federal court in West Palm Beach, Fla., and was sentenced to pay $1.6 million in restitution and serve 40 months in prison.
Ms. Uwanawich claimed she had “God-given powers” and could communicate with the spirit world, according to court documents. She said a witch in South America, where the student’s family was from, had cursed the student’s mother before she died.
Jesus Christ. Do we even live in America anymore? This is a GROSS overstep by the government here. Who are the courts to determine what the going rate is to get rid of a family curse? This is a free market economy. It’s supply and demand. If there is only one witch in your area that has god-given powers to remove curses then said witch gets to set her price. That’s how the world goes ’round. She covered the cost of crystals and candles. All the normal curse fighting tools. And then she charged for her services. And it’s not like she was dealing with some person who was incapacitated. Her client was a medical student. A medical student with a very real curse. A curse that she was willing to $1.6M to get rid of for her and her family. That seems like a fair price. As a Cubs fan I have a lot of history with curses. When you’re cursed you’ll pay almost anything to get uncursed. Maybe this curse was too powerful for the witch and it didn’t work, but there’s no guarantees in life. Does the witch who lost her case get to sue her lawyer who couldn’t get her off fraud charges? Nope. Does Dave Portnoy get to sue Matt Nagy for costing him $25,000 last Thursday? No fucking way. It’s buyer beware. For the courts to throw around words like “fraud” seems like a pretty serious charge. I am sure nobody would worse about not being able to get rid of the curse than the witch. It’s bad for business. Not as a bad as a curse, but still.
Everyone involved in this case is FUCKED. When you’re dealing with a witch you can’t go light on sentencing. 40 months is a VERY short period of time. This witch will be back on the streets in no time and then the plaintiff, the judge, the lawyer, EVERYONE…curse city. You can’t just charge her with wire-fraud if you’re going after the witch. You have to charge her with Witch Craft, endangering the youth and sentence her to be burned at the stake. It’s too risky to let her just go back to witchcrafting in 3.5 years. They all left themselves open to major curses.