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Sally Ann Johnson, 41, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge
Denise Casper in Boston, who said the evidence suggested the
psychic took advantage of the Martha's Vineyard resident as the
woman began to suffer from dementia.
"There is a strong inference of fraud here," Casper said.
She ordered Johnson to repay the woman nearly $3.57 million she
received from 2007 to 2014 and to pay $725,912 in restitution to
the U.S. government for the taxes she avoided paying.
Johnson, who never passed the second grade and calls herself a
Romani "spiritual consultant," pleaded guilty in October to
trying to impede the administration of tax laws. In court, she
apologized for that conduct.
But Johnson denied that she took advantage of anyone. Her
attorneys called the elderly woman intelligent if not eccentric
and fully competent when she employed Johnson.
"I am not somebody who would do wrong to anybody," Johnson said.
Court papers refer to the woman only as "V.P." and say she
attended Radcliffe College and Harvard University, was
independently wealthy and was more than 70 years old in 2007.
She is a resident of Martha's Vineyard, a favorite vacation spot
for the rich and famous.
"She is someone who descends from great wealth and power," Paul
Petruzzi, one of Johnson's lawyers, said in court.
Prosecutors said that Johnson, who has lived in Florida and also
goes by Angela Johnson, has operated a small collection of
businesses that offer psychic or spiritual services.
Prosecutors contended Johnson employed techniques commonly used
by fraudulent fortune-tellers who prey on vulnerable and
incapacitated people and cultivated a sense of dependence in the
elderly woman.
The unnamed woman was already prone to believe in the presence
of evil spirits, prosecutors said. They said that as her
dementia advanced, the woman attributed her symptoms to demonic
possession, which she hoped Johnson could alleviate.
To evade the Internal Revenue Service's scrutiny, Johnson used
an alias, directed the woman to wire payments to three different
bank accounts and withdrew large sums of cash to conceal the
money's source, prosecutors said.
She also accrued charges on a credit card held in the elderly
woman's name, spending $20,000 on entertainment and jewelry
alone, prosecutors said.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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