A New York City beauty spa is facing explosive allegations that it pressured an elderly client into spending an astonishing $675,000 on dubious “snake oil” treatments and high-priced beauty products.
Phyllis Sousa is now one of three women accusing Olle Beauty Clinic of using “predatory” sales tactics that allegedly cost them a combined $800,000. The women claim employees drew them in with compliments, then pushed aggressively for access to their credit cards.
Sousa, 76, alleges in court papers filed July 12 in Manhattan Supreme Court that the Upper East Side spa drained her of $675,000 between 2022 and 2025.
According to the filing, whenever Sousa tried to decline additional sessions at the East 65th Street business, staff members allegedly berated her and used guilt to wear down her resistance.
Another plaintiff, 87-year-old Dinah Evan, claims she was charged more than $27,000 in December 2025 for what she describes as a bogus “membership” after employees allegedly “cornered” her and insisted she accept the offer on the spot, according to the complaint.
The accusations against the beauty clinic first surfaced in February, when 77-year-old Elizabeth Childs-Johnson accused the business of pressuring her into spending $105,000 on treatments.
Childs-Johnson, a semi-retired researcher, alleged that an employee showered her with compliments and persuaded her to enter the spa in December 2024, where she was eventually pushed into buying 12 facials for $40,000.
As those sessions neared their end in late 2025, Childs-Johnson claims a worker confined her in an office and refused to accept “no” as an answer, pressuring her to purchase expensive treatments that staff allegedly said came from Japan, the filing states.
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“It all happened in a matter of minutes,” Childs-Johnson said in February of the terrifying moment she was allegedly cornered by a spa employee and barred from leaving.
“I was stunned. I hardly said a word, all I really did was hand over my credit cards.”
The other women joined the case this month after seeing The Post’s coverage of the situation.
“It’s a pattern of behavior that appears to center on targeting … elderly women above a certain age who are alone,” the trio’s attorney, Andrew Kincaid, told The Post.
“Getting them off the street, getting them into an enclosed private location and pressuring them to do things that they would ordinarily never agree to.”
The filing also accuses the spa of operating under multiple entities in an attempt to make it difficult to track the culprits down.
“The documents started showing a bunch of oddities. Split payments between entities for no apparent reason — and certainly no reason that it was explained to any of my three clients — a bunch of changing addresses, shared addresses, shared email accounts,” Kincaid said.
“Sort of this web that makes it very opaque and hard to deal with, which I believe and we allege is part of the point.”
Olle’s attorney Avram Turkel denied these claims and said the allegations are “fabrications.”
“[The three women] were our client’s repeat and valued customers. At the time of each purchase, they acknowledged the return policy and signed receipts,” Turkel wrote in an email.
