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TV psychic Miss Cleo dies at age 53 in Palm Beach

 
Harris
Harris
Published July 26, 2016

FORT LAUDERDALE — The actor who became famous playing the Jamaican psychic Miss Cleo, claiming to know callers' futures in ubiquitous TV infomercials and commercials 15 years ago, has died of cancer.

Youree Dell Harris, 53, died in Palm Beach, her lawyer, William J. Cone Jr. said.

The Los Angeles-born Harris was a struggling actor when the Psychic Readers Network of Fort Lauderdale hired her in the late 1990s to play Miss Cleo. She adopted her family's Jamaican heritage for the role, persuading viewers to call for allegedly free psychic readings.

The federal government said those "free" calls cost consumers about $1 billion. The Federal Trade Commission said the psychic service promised a free reading, but consumers calling a toll-free number were directed to a 900 number charging $4.99 per minute. The agency said nearly 6 million people made such calls and were charged an average of about $60 apiece.

The Psychic Readers Network's parent company forgave $500 million in customer charges in a 2002 settlement, including roughly $44 million of fees incurred by Florida consumers, the largest amount of any state.

After the settlement, Harris mostly faded from view for over a decade. She voiced a character in the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City video game and was an advocate for gay rights after coming out as a lesbian.

Harris returned to the public eye in 2014 when she appeared in the documentary Hotline on telephone psychics, phone sex workers and suicide prevention specialists.

Tony Shaff, the film's producer, said he found her to be "warm and welcoming and bigger than life."

Harris briefly reprised the Miss Cleo character last year in a series of online advertisements for General Mills, which was bringing back its French Toast Crunch cereal. The ads stopped after the Psychic Readers Network sued, saying it owned the character.