Bryan Greene

That joke almost writes itself.

They hooked up with Miss Cleo, they put her on TV, dressed her in bright colors, gave her a fake backstory, and boom.

A star is truly born.

At the height of her fame, Ms.

Cleo was literally everywhere.

Her commercials ran nonstop.

Her catchphrase, Call me now, became a pop culture joke.

She was even parodied on other television shows like Mad TV.

But behind the scenes, she wasn't a boss.

She was just the face, someone who promoted the network.

The network made hundreds of millions of dollars, while Ms.

Cleo herself was reportedly paid very little and in financial trouble.

When the FTC cracked down in 2002, the Psychic Readers Network was accused of deceptive advertising, aggressive billing practices, and straight-up fraud.

Federer and Stoetz settled for $500 million in forgiven customer debt.

Ms.

Cleo, well, she didn't actually go to jail despite the rumors, but her career was certainly over, and she came close.

After all of the dust settled and all of the spirits went back to wherever the spirits came from, she publicly came out as gay, did some voiceover work — she was even in Grand Theft Auto — and spent her life doing smaller readings until her death in 2016 from colon cancer.

So yeah, just to be clear, Ms.

Cleo was not Jamaican, wasn't a millionaire, and wasn't running the scam.

But she became the symbol of TV psychic culture, the one we all remember when we think of late-night infomercial fraud.