Miss Cleo, famed TV psychic, dies of cancer at 53

Miss Cleo Dies At 53

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. --

The actress who became famous playing the Jamaican psychic Miss Cleo, claiming to know callers" futures in ubiquitous TV infomercials and commercials 15 years ago, has died of cancer.

Youree Dell Harris, 53, died Tuesday in Palm Beach, her lawyer, William J. Cone Jr., said.

The Los Angeles-born Harris was a struggling actress when the Psychic Readers Network hired her in the late 1990s to play Miss Cleo. She adopted her family"s Jamaican heritage for the role, persuading viewers to call for allegedly free psychic readings.

In one commercial, she is seen poring over tarot cards before telling a caller that the father of her baby is the "one who is very unpleasant and had another girlfriend while he was sleeping with you...but you knew that." The commercials ended with the tagline, "Call me now!"

The federal government said those "free" calls cost consumers about $1 billion. The Federal Trade Commission said the psychic service promised a free reading, but consumers calling a toll-free number were directed to a 900 number charging $4.99 per minute. The agency said nearly 6 million people made such calls and were charged an average of about $60 apiece.

The Psychic Readers Network"s parent company forgave $500 million in customer charges in a 2002 settlement.

After the settlement, Harris mostly faded from view for over a decade. She voiced a character in the "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" video game and was an advocate for gay rights after coming out as a lesbian.

Harris returned to the public eye in 2014 when she appeared in the documentary "Hotline," which looked at the world of telephone psychics, phone s*x workers and suicide prevention specialists.

Tony Shaff, the film"s producer, said he found her to be "warm and welcoming and bigger than life."

"She was smart as a whip and very intuitive," Shaff said. "There was so much negativity surrounding psychic hotlines that she wanted to tell her personal story." He said she understood that some consumers felt they were swindled, "but she was being paid to do a job."

He said Harris claimed to have paranormal abilities, but didn"t like to be called a psychic or tarot reader because she felt her powers were much broader than that.

Harris briefly reprised the Miss Cleo character last year in a series of online advertisements for General Mills, which was bringing back its French Toast Crunch cereal. The ads stopped after the Psychic Readers Network sued, saying it owned the character.

(Copyright 2016 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Source: http://abc7chicago.com/entertainment/miss-cleo-famed-tv-psychic-dies-of-cancer-at-53/1445072/

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"Miss Cleo" dies in South Florida at 53

Miss Cleo Passes - Free Reading

PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. - Youree Harris, the self-proclaimed psychic who was the face of nationwide infomercialsas Miss Cleo, died Tuesday of complications with cancer. She was 53.

William J. Cone, Harris" attorney, said in a statement that she died in Palm Beach County, while surrounded by family and close friends.

Harris also called herselfReePerris,YoureeCleomili,YoureeDell Harris,YoureePerrisand Rae Dell Harris. Her Psychic Readers Network character Miss Cleo had a Jamaican accent. But she wasn"t from Jamaica.

"The cards never lie," was the hotline advisor"s catch phrase. But many thought she did.

As a Los Angeles-born actress in Seattle, she left behind a trail of deception in the late 90s, according to alleged fraud victims who talked to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She allegedly told some of her colleagues that she suffered from bone cancer and sickle cell anemia, an inherited blood disorder.

At the height of her fame, Harris was the subject of a "deceptive advertising, billing and collection practices" federal civil case filed against Florida-based Access Resource Services, the parent company of the Psychic Readers Network. The company paid a $5 million fine.

Prosecutors took a hold of her birth certificate to show Harris was born in Los Angeles and not the Caribbean, as she claimed as Miss Cleo. She would later tell Vice that she juggled both the Jamaican patois accent and a "little valley girl" accent.

When she could no longer be the face of the TV business, she told the New Times in 2007 that she was charging for one-on-one consultations as a spiritualadviser, she was an author and a poet, and she also performed "energy cleansings" and "house cleanings" as an "Obeah" woman.

"I"m not a psychic," Harris said during the interview. "I am a mambo, a Haitian high priestess -- that"s what I was trained to do. Being a psychic that was not my idea. That was a package that was put together. And it wasn"t me."

Some of her South Florida followers said she lived in Miami Beach and later in Southwest Ranches. About a decade ago, she told a reporter with The Advocate that she was a shaman, a lesbian, and the mother of two daughters. And she also said she had only made about $450,000 during her years as Miss Cleo.

"My family had to deal with the lies and the garbage and the misrepresentations," Harris said during the 2006 interview about the end of her relationship with the Psychic Readers Network. "People really believed that I owned the company. I"m said to have gazillions of dollars. I wish people would tell me where it is."

Harris" voice lives on as Auntie Poulet, also known as voodowitch Madame Haitian, a character on the 2002 "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" video game. And her story was featured inthe 2014 "Hotline,"a documentary about the telephone hotlines phenomena.

"I don"t know who, but I"m certain that I helped some people," Harris said during an interview for the documentary.

Copyright 2016 by WPLG Local10.com - All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.local10.com/news/miss-cleo-dies-in-south-florida-at-53

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