Gloria Acunia comes to this bookshop for a New Age treatment known as raking. She sees it as a sort of spiritual counseling.

"I feel like some energy needs to be boosted."

But in the past Gloria says she has been hoodwinked by so called spiritual advisors, psychics who frightened her with the same line. "You have this curse and I can do candles. She said put your money on the bible." Says Gloria.

Or how about the one where the client is supposed to give money to be buried here in a cemetery. All fortune-telling scams center around curse removals, but now the city of San Francisco is trying to stop those scams by forcing fortune-tellers, palm readers and the like to get finger printed and get a permit.

"We're trying to identify the people so that we will know when people get ripped off," says a city consumer protection advocate.

This San Francisco woman says she got ripped off seventeen thousand dollars [by] a psychic who told her daughter would die if she didn't give the fortune-teller her money. "She actually told me I will do something to my daughter and she going to die."

Fraud investigators say the fortune-tellers prey on people's fears.

"They show there's a piece of grapefruit with blood in it or a little skull in it that the person is supposed to bring them, and please bring me your card to Macy's as well because I know you don't have enough money, but we will go shopping."

"People really fall for this?"

"They fall for it again because they are desperate."

Anjelique Royce, manager of the Psychic Eye, says psychics here give legitimate one-time services. "We don't practice curse removals for a certain fee of any kind."

"Hey it's a good opportunity. Go for it," says card-reader Patricia Carroll. Patricia Carroll reads tarot cards and practices raking for a one-time fee. She says the proposed law won't stop the rip-offs.

"Do you think this is going to drive the scam artist fortune-tellers underground?" asks Rusty Dornin.

"Oh definitely. But not away. Just underground. Because I think they will still operate and I think it will still be very difficult to stop them," says Patricia.

[This] new regulation [is] for people who want their fortune told, not taken

For additional information, look at these Web sites:

• San Francisco May Soon See Psychics Regulated; San Francisco Chronicle
• The Art of "Cold Reading"
• About James Randi: an investigator and demystifier of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims
• The First Amendment Is for Fortune-tellers, Too
  
• It's All Miss Cleos Fault