A pretty Greenwich Village psychic was thrown in jail Friday after a jury convicted her of stealing over $120,000 from two gullible victims.
A stunned Sylvia Mitchell, 38, looked crestfallen after being found guilty of grand larceny and scheming to defraud two desperate women between 2007 and 2009 as her husband anxiously looked on in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“I have a five letter word for her and I’m not going to say it out loud,” said one juror as she left the courthouse. “She might put a hex on me.”
Ballroom dancer Debra Saalfield testified that the conniving clairvoyant told her she was an Egyptian princess in a past life who needed to free herself of an attachment to money.
The single Florida mom wasn’t thinking straight after losing her job and boyfriend in the same week and coughed up $27,000 in July of 2009, prosecutors said.
“I had a meltdown, I lost it, I was unable to keep myself together,” the thin blond confessed to rapt jurors last week. “I feel like as an intelligent educated woman it ‘s one of the most humiliating things that has ever happened to me.”
Mitchell also swindled nearly $100,000 from a second victim to cleanse her of bad spirits. Lee Choong, who has an MBA from NYU, developed a crush on a female co-worker and was struggling with her sexual identity when she sought out guidance from Mitchell.
The soothsayer’s defense lawyer William Aronwald argued that the two women knew what they were doing when they hired his client.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro remanded the curvy blond after prosecutors said she was a flight risk.
“From some of the evidence I heard during the course of the trial I’m not even sure where the defendant lives – Florida, New York or Connecticut, “ he said. “The defendant will be remanded.”
Mitchell’s husband skulked away carrying her black Chanel purse.