If you were alive in the 1990s, the name “Miss Cleo” needs no explanation. For everyone else, Miss Cleo was the ever-present infomercial spokeswoman for a company called the “Psychic Readers Network” (not to be confused with Dionne Warwick’s “Psychic Friends Network”).

With her Jamaican accent and unforgettable catch phrase “Call Me Now!”, Miss Cleo was as much of a part of the 90s experience as slap bracelets, Fresh Prince, AOL chatrooms, the Spice Girls, and Baywatch.

So, at any point in the last 20-30 years, have you ever wondered what happened to Miss Cleo? Or, more importantly for fans of Celebrity Net Worth, have you ever wanted to know how much money she made for appearing in what had to have been a thousand different commercials? Get ready to learn some pretty shocking facts about Miss Cleo and the history of the Psychic Readers Network (which we sometimes abbreviate as “PRN”)…

Call Me Now!

The pitch was simple. “Find out what I see for you. Call me now to receive your free tarot reading!“

A free tarot reading? Sounds great! Who wouldn’t want to know what the future holds?! Will I live a long time? Will I be rich someday?? Will I find love in a hopeless place???

There was just one catch. The free reading wasn’t really free. More specifically, before you actually got your free reading, you’d probably have to wait on the line for 20 minutes. And every minute that went by cost $4.99. A 30-minute call would show up on the phone bill with a $150 charge.

In retrospect, this should have been an obvious fraud to any reasonable adult human being. Heck, even as a 12-year-old, I knew something was very fishy about Miss Cleo and psychic hotlines in general. But I think we were all a little bit curious. And when a service is billed as being “free”, some innocent people are always bound to step on the mousetrap.

Show Me The Money

So, how many people were tricked by Miss Cleo? A few thousand? Maybe ten thousand people AT MOST, right? I could even see how this might have earned its owners (presumably Miss Cleo was one of the owners) a few hundred thousand dollars. Let’s be a little liberal. I could see how the owners might have even earned a few million dollars each off this scam.

Well, apparently, my powers of deduction are very poor. According to an FBI investigation, the Psychic Readers Network earned around $25 million PER MONTH for two years straight. That’s $600 million. In total, the service reportedly generated over $1 BILLION in revenue.

Lawsuits Fly

After reportedly earning $1 billion in total revenue and generating thousands of consumer complaints, the Federal Trade Commission put a big bullseye on the Psychic Readers Network. At one point in 2001, the PRN was sued by the FTC in at least 10 different U.S. states. The lawsuits initially targeted three individuals:

A woman named:

And two men:

• Steven L. Feder
• Peter Stolz

Feder and Stolz were two cousins from New Jersey who owned a Fort Lauderdale LLC that was the principal shareholder of PRN’s assets. Feder lived in a three-story multi-million-dollar waterfront mansion. In the driveway, Feder parked a fleet of exotic Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Bentleys, and more. A 40-foot luxury yacht was docked on the home’s harbor side. At his birthday party in 1997, Feder was reportedly “dripping in diamonds” while Gladys Knight performed a private concert. Less is known about Peter Stolz.

According to FBI investigators, here’s how the PRN’s business model worked:

The first thing the “psychic” had to do when someone called in was gather their name, home address, email address, and home phone number. Next, the psychic would try to sell the caller a $9.95 monthly membership. When the caller resisted, the psychic would offer a free set of tarot cards, 15 minutes of free readings, and a personalized astrology chart. This back and forth typically took 10-15 minutes if the caller stayed on the line. Oh, and even if the caller eventually gave up, they would soon find themselves inundated with spam phone calls at home, junk mail, and dozens of other unsolicited offers because their vital information was immediately handed over to a lead generation company.

For their efforts, the psychics were paid 14 cents per minute. They worked from home, and if they struggled to keep callers on the line for a minimum of 19 minutes, they would not receive any more callers that day. The average 20-minute phone call would translate into $2.80 for the psychic.

Assuming the psychic could reasonably handle two twenty-minute phone calls per hour, that’s $5.60 an hour in earnings. Oh, and most of the people answering the phones were not psychics at all. Just women and men who needed jobs and were good at keeping people on the line for a long time.

At the peak of operations, PRN employed 1000 “readers” across the nation, answering calls 24 hours a day. The advertisements that were placed to attract the “readers” blatantly stated:

“No psychic experience necessary“

Youree Dell Harris

The third target of the FTC’s lawsuit was Youree Dell Harris, also known as… Miss Cleo. Understandably, Federal prosecutors assumed that Miss Cleo was a part-owner of this operation. I mean, the whole thing was named after her, and she was the public face of the company! In reality, she was nothing more than a paid actress. Federal prosecutors also assumed Miss Cleo was born in Jamaica. In reality, Youree Dell Harris was born in Los Angeles and had never even been to Jamaica. Her parents were American citizens.

As for her ownership stake in the Psychic Readers Network, she had none. For her appearance in the Miss Cleo commercials, she earned less than $5,000. For the first batch of commercials, she was paid $1,750. That covered two and a half days on set, shooting over a dozen scenes.

Miss Cleo was actually a psychic, though, and a few lucky callers per day would actually reached her line. For her efforts, instead of earning 14 cents per minute, Youree earned 24 cents.

When Federal prosecutors put this all together, they quickly removed Youree Dell Harris from their lawsuit.

The Settlement

When the FTC filed its lawsuit, the Psychic Readers Network was in the process of trying to collect $500 million worth of outstanding unpaid customer charges. In October of 2002, Peter Stolz and Steven L. Feder entered a “no contest” plea to settle charges brought against them in the state of Missouri.

The state alleged the pair had illegally billed Missouri residents for psychic hotline calls—some of which were never made or were initiated by minors—and had used misleading advertising and telemarketing tactics to generate millions in illegitimate charges.

In court, Feder and Stolz entered “Alford pleas,” a type of no-contest plea that allows defendants to maintain their innocence while acknowledging there was enough evidence to convict them. As part of the deal, Feder immediately paid a $50,000 corporate fine, which satisfied the terms of his probation. Stolz received up to two years of probation, though his attorney expected it would be completed in just a few months.

Among the key terms of their plea:

• They were barred from collecting the $18.8 million they were still pursuing from Missouri residents.
• They were prohibited from operating or marketing any 1-900 pay-per-call services in Missouri.
• They agreed not to rent or sell Missourians’ personal information collected during the hotline operations.

A month later, in November 2002, Feder and Stolz also reached a separate national settlement with the FTC. Under that agreement, they:

• Forgave the full $500 million in outstanding charges owed by consumers nationwide.
• Returned uncashed checks to victims who had been billed for “free” calls.
• Paid a $5 million federal fine.
• Shut down their entire psychic hotline business.

Though the companies did not admit guilt in the FTC settlement, they acknowledged that the Commission had a “good-faith basis” for its fraud and deceptive marketing charges. The settlement also followed previous penalties in other states, including $150,000 in fines and civil agreements with multiple attorneys general.

In total, investigators estimated that the Psychic Readers Network and its affiliated entities took in roughly $1 billion over several years, driven by the aggressive marketing and deceptive billing tactics centered around the Miss Cleo brand. Despite the legal fallout, Feder and Stolz retained the vast majority of the money they had already collected.

Notably, Miss Cleo herself—Youree Dell Harris—was never charged in any of the state or federal actions. Prosecutors determined she was a paid actress with no ownership stake or operational control over the business.

Miss Cleo’s Legacy

In 2016, a reporter from Vice.com tracked down Youree Dell Harris in Toronto and got her to sit down for an interview. At that point, she was still working as a psychic. When Vice met with her, Youree spoke with a Jamaican accent! A stronger Jamaican accent than she had back in the ’90s. This is a woman who was born in Los Angeles. A woman who, by her own admission, went to an expensive private boarding school and was an accomplished playwright and actor.

In the interview, she even admitted that Peter Stolz and Steven L. Feder were the ones who actually invented the Miss Cleo character and urged her to make the voice sound “fresh off the island”.

Unfortunately, Youree died later that same year, on July 26, 2016, at the age of 53.

As for what happened to Stolz and Feder, I couldn’t find anything in the news about either of them from the last two decades since the lawsuits. One can only assume they are still out there lying low and enjoying their ill-gotten wealth. Perhaps on an island in the Caribbean where people actually talk with accents!