N.Y. / REGION

A Manhattan Fortuneteller Cost Him Fortune After Fortune

The Times Square shop from which, the police say, Priscilla Kelly Delmaro bilked a lovelorn Brooklyn man out of $713,975. Dave Sanders for The New York Times 
Everyone knows that when a man loves a woman, he can’t keep his mind on nothing else. He’ll spend his very last dime. Give up all his comfort, sleep out in the rain.
But for a 32-year-old man from Brooklyn, those things actually happened, and much, much more, during his long quest to be reunited with the woman he loved. Nothing could stop him.
Not evil spirits haunting him from another realm.
Not the sins of his past lives.
Not going broke.
Not even death.
He had an ally in his quest, he said, a fortuneteller who fought the evil spirits day and night from her storefront in Times Square, according to accusations that led the police to arrest her last month. The police and the man said the fortuneteller, Priscilla Kelly Delmaro, 26, had bled him dry over 20 months.
But even New Yorkers who have shaken their heads in disbelief at fortunetelling scams in the past — who could fall for that? — may be surprised by the outlandish creativity described in this case, the eye-popping payouts the man made and the almost unfathomable gullibility that it took to get to that number.
Long past the point at which many people would have become suspicious — the endless need for special crystals, the time machine, the 80-mile bridge made of gold, the reincarnation portal — he kept paying, until he was living his own grim version of the movie “Ghost.”
The man, who lives in East Williamsburg but is not named in court documents, told his story in a written statement prepared with Bob Nygaard, a private investigator, and presented to detectives at the Midtown South precinct last month.
In summer 2013, the man was melancholy. He had a good job in marketing, with an office in New York, some support staff and a growing list of connections. But he had met a woman in Arizona named Michelle. He was in love. She was not. “The girl didn’t want to be with me, and the girl had categorically made that clear,” he wrote in the statement.
On Aug. 24, 2013, he walked across the Williamsburg Bridge and wound up in front of 253 West 43rd Street. The neon sign in the window read “Psychic.”
Ms. Delmaro greeted him and assured him that he and Michelle were “twin flames,” but that negativity was keeping them apart. “Spirits talk to me,” she said, according to the man’s statement, but there was a price. He paid her $2,500 and, after a second visit, $9,000 more.
A month later, in September, Ms. Delmaro told him she needed diamonds to protect his energy. He paid $40,064 for a ring from Tiffany’s and gave it to Ms. Delmaro, who promised he would use it as an engagement ring someday, the man said.
Michelle lived in Los Angeles. Go to her, Ms. Delmaro said.
He went. He texted Michelle. I’m on a boat, she replied, but let’s meet tomorrow.
“I was ecstatic,” he wrote. They met and talked and made plans for that night. But she backed out.
“She felt I had been acting strange,” he wrote.
Ms. Delmaro told him the trouble had come from a spirit that was stalking him. She needed $28,000, then $28,000 more. Michelle had grown cold so suddenly, he thought, that the spirit explanation sounded right, and so he paid.
A month later, Ms. Delmaro suggested they perform a fake funeral ritual to make the spirit think the man was dead. Another $40,000.
When that didn’t work, Ms. Delmaro said she needed a time machine to go back and cleanse his past. When the man balked, she said a suitable watch would do the job, and gave him a list of choices. He said he selected one of the cheaper ones: a rose gold Rolex for $30,000.
In December, Ms. Delmaro said that they had to lure the spirit over a bridge of gold in the other realm, so that it would become trapped. She said $80,000 would buy an 80-mile bridge.
Sold.
Ms. Delmaro, it should be noted, promised to return most of the money when her work was done. By year’s end, the bill had reached more than $320,000.
The spirit was crossing the bridge, “albeit very slowly,” the man wrote. Then Ms. Delmaro said they needed a second bridge, for Michelle’s spirit, and it needed to be 10 miles longer than the first one.
“I thought to myself, ‘I have the money just sitting in the bank,’ ” the man wrote, paying out $90,000.
Then he made a devastating discovery. On Feb. 17, 2014, he pulled up Michelle’s Facebook page and read the most recent post.
Michelle was dead. She had been for nine days.
(Mr. Nygaard said she died of a possible drug overdose.)
The man, shattered, told Ms. Delmaro. She pivoted. I told you she had evil spirits, she said. They killed her.
“Delmaro then told me she was going to reincarnate Michelle,” the man wrote. The new Michelle “wouldn’t be exactly” like the old one, but her spirit would be placed into the body of a 31-year-old woman.
One year and many payouts passed. By then, Ms. Delmaro said she was working so many hours on his behalf that she had no time to tell fortunes and was behind in the rent. He sent money — even borrowing $28,000 from a colleague that he guaranteed with his future earnings — until he finally ran out.
I’m broke, he told Ms. Delmaro after selling his car and borrowing from friends and relatives in addition to the colleague.
The new Michelle was in Los Angeles, she told him. Go find her.
He met a woman in California that Ms. Delmaro later said was the new Michelle. But the woman was 24, not 31, and Michelle did not seem to be inside her.
He had lost his apartment. He had had enough and returned to New York. He sought out Mr. Nygaard, and they went to the police in May. Bank statements were given to detectives: He was out $713,975.
Ms. Delmaro and her companion, Bobby Evans, 27, were arrested on May 26 in a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. A steakhouse. They were charged with grand larceny and remain in jail.
Their lawyer, Jeffrey Cylkowski, denied the man’s allegations.
The man recalled his disappointment upon meeting the new Michelle. “This caused me to start thinking,” he wrote, “that Delmaro wasn’t everything she was purporting to be.”