MIAMI _ Miss Cleo, the late-night TV pitchwoman for psychic services on the telephone, died Tuesday in South Florida.
Her real name was Youree Harris, and she was a cultural touchstone to 1990s and early 2000s. Harris died of cancer in Palm Beach County on Tuesday, TMZ reported, at age 53.
With Miss Cleo's Afrocentric attire and Jamaican patois, her commercials for Psychic Readers Network hustling 1-900 telephone readings became camp entertainment to some. To those searching for supernatural answers to love or money questions, the late-night advertising staples proved more alluring than astrology or a Magic 8-Ball.
Harris told Vice.com in 2014 that her supernatural talents and Jamaican background were real as was the lousy accent _ her Jamaican parents taught her to squash the patois, she said. The "Miss Cleo" character actually was owned by Access Resource Services, based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Miss Cleo's time as an A-list cultural reference ended in 2002 when the Federal Trade Commission charged Access and the Psychic Readers Network with, among other illegal business practices, billing people $4.99 a minute for initial calls advertised as being free. The companies agreed to cancel $500 million in customers' bills in that case alone.
Lawsuits for similar violations sprouted around the country at the state level. For a time, the Florida state attorney's office sued Harris, too, for deceptive trade practices before dropping the suit as Access reached a settlement with the state.
