Psychics Are of One Mind in Objecting to Proposed Law : Fortunetelling: Los Angeles would charge purveyors of the metaphysical a $450 fee to pay for fingerprinting and background checks.

Robert Leysen might be called the Col. Tom Parker of the metaphysical world.

Just as Parker is credited with shrewdly marketing Elvis Presley into a multimillion-dollar musical commodity, the gray-bearded Leysen says he can mass-produce psychics.

He mentions the name of one very well-known psychic-to-the-stars whose career he claims to have launched. Then he shakes his head and says her inflated ego ruined her.

“The biggest mistake a psychic makes is believing they’re psychic,” said the businessman, who employs 42 psychics at the six Psychic Eye bookstores he owns, located from Tarzana to Torrance.

Leysen’s beliefs are more hardheaded.

“I believe in ‘Monday Night Football,’ the L. A. Lakers, the L. A. Kings and James Bond.”

Linda Liddell, on the other hand, is a fervent believer in the metaphysical, a universal consciousness and reincarnation. The 37-year-old woman works for a 900 psychic line and is so convinced of the power of Tarot cards that she carefully puts them “to bed” in a silk bag after every reading.

These two could not be more at odds if his Taurus the Bull kicked over the furniture in all her astrological houses. Yet they and scores of other astrologers, spiritualists, psychics and card readers in the San Fernando Valley have found themselves drawn together under a common banner by a proposed law designed to regulate purveyors of psychic phenomena.

The law as proposed by the Los Angeles Police Commission--the City Council has not considered it yet--would impose a $450 fee on each metaphysical business. The money would be used to fingerprint and investigate the backgrounds of local psychics to discover whether they have committed crimes in other states, and to keep tabs on them in Los Angeles.

Police who investigate psychic fraud say the controls are needed because, although con artists have long plied their trade in Los Angeles, the problem has grown worse recently. In 1988, the average amount taken from a victim was $6,000, figures show. By 1990, that amount had risen to $15,000.

“Last year, $500,000 in crimes was reported,” bunco Detective Dennis Adams said. “God knows how many were not reported.”

Local soothsayers who gathered recently at a news conference in Canoga Park expressed concern that the new regulations won’t stop con artists who appear and disappear with the speed of Mercury transiting Gemini. All they will do, they said, is drive law-abiding psychics out of business because most cannot afford to pay such a fee.

Angel Thompson, representing the Assn. for Astrological Networking, said at the news conference that the psychics would “all go down to City Hall and protest.” She estimates that there are 4,000 astrologers in Los Angeles County.

No matter how it turns out, the public discussion of controls on psychics is shining a light into a corner of society that has been lampooned and maligned for centuries as purveyors of superstitious poppycock, to no avail. Psychics proliferate. In fact, police say they have found records of 150 metaphysical businesses in Los Angeles County and believe that the number would be much higher if they counted every house with a placard in the window reading “World’s Greatest Psychic.”

The psychics speaking out on the proposed controls are proving that the modern-day soothsayer is far different from the old crones of legend.

Charlene Whitaker, for instance, has tried to inject professionalism into the field by offering diplomas in Tarot, asking questions on her final exam such as “What can you say to a client when the Death card comes up and he has asked about health?”

Her Cosmic Academy of Metaphysical Arts in Canoga Park has given out hundreds of diplomas at $120 each during its 10-year existence.

Far from fitting the stereotype of gossipy society matrons who throw salt over their shoulders, the clientele has also changed. Psychics do readings at swap meets and business conventions and are often found in minority communities, where residents may have relied upon the curandera , or healer, in the old country.

A Sherman Oaks reader who uses the name Fay said many men call for appointments. Out of embarrassment, they usually ask if she has a side entrance to her shop on Ventura Boulevard so that they can enter and leave discreetly. When she tells them she doesn’t, they come anyway.

For most visitors to Liddell or Leysen’s psychics, the experience can be a low-impact exercise in ego gratification. The readings are designed to be upbeat, observing the canon in the trade against discussing the three D’s: “death, divorce and disaster.”

But Adams and his partner, Robert Ramos, who have together worked the bunco unit for more than a decade, see lives ruined by con artists who observe no ethical code and who often soak their clients for their self-respect as well as their money.

One man who said he was bilked out of more than $200,000 by Valley psychic Erica West described how she ordered him to show up at her posh hotel in San Diego for a spiritual cleansing with a valise full of money in one hand and a live chicken in the other, police said. The desk clerk refused to let the man in the hotel, so he had to sneak up to her room via a freight elevator. West is now serving a prison sentence, Adams said.

Another con artist told a client that he had to rent her a limousine for the evening so that she could drive the evil spirits out of town.

Though they apprehended West last year, Ramos and Adams said it is getting more and more difficult to catch frauds after they bilk clients.

The standard police practice in investigating a fortunetelling crime is to show victims a mug book containing pictures of known fortunetellers. But these days, victims looking at mug shots often don’t see anyone they recognize. Adams said that is because in 1975, the California Supreme Court threw out a statute used by the city of Azusa that outlawed fortunetelling. The court said the law violated the freedoms of speech and religion.

Because Los Angeles had a similar law, Adams said, enforcement efforts were hamstrung. Too often, he said, his book of mug shots contains pictures of the parents and grandparents of today’s con artists.

That is a major reason for the new ordinance requiring fingerprints and photographs of professional psychics. Tracking them down in other ways is often impossible because some carry fake identification and do not put their children in school.

But fortunetellers have been bilking the unwary in pursuit of the bujo , or big score, for ages. Some say the gullible should look out for themselves. Et caveat , sucker, they say.

A man whose wife gives readings in the front room of their ramshackle bungalow in Reseda exemplified that attitude. “You could say we’re honest crooks. We tell people what they want to hear,” said the man, who refused to give his name or his wife’s.

His wife, wearing a formless shift and heavily made-up with arching black daggers for eyebrows, said she helps people, often by urging them to do things they know they should do but have been afraid of doing. If they want to pay her a few thousand dollars for that help, what’s so wrong?

A lot, say Ramos and Adams, because crooked psychics exploit weakness. The man who police said lost $200,000 to Erica West was grief-stricken over the death of his wife and desperate to find someone who could give him answers.

Con artists use certain tricks, experts say. First, the reader will do an inexpensive “cold reading,” impressing the client by telling him things about himself. Leysen, Ramos and Adams said any insightful person can guess a lot about another person through body language, dress and mannerisms. The psychic may say, “You’re having trouble with a relative,” knowing that all families have conflicts.

Having impressed the victim, the psychic says there is an evil force or spell on the person that can only be removed by the psychic’s intervention.

A 33-year-old writer and sculptor became so desperate to remove such a “curse” that she said she gave West nearly $10,000, according to police accounts. She even went into debt to buy a washer and dryer--which West said should be almond-colored--for West, so that she could cleanse the woman of evil, police said.

Law-abiding psychics want the police to crack down on crooks. But they worry that legitimate prognosticators will be hurt. They also say the modern psychic community is so eclectic, filled with everything from phrenologists who do readings based on the bumps on people’s heads to biorhythm analysts, that they find it hard to understand how the regulation can be enforced.

Leysen’s shops, for instance, are Safeways of the metaphysical world. Big and colorful, each is identically laid out, with candles and incense in one area, bookshelves along the walls and a riot of crystals, jewelry and medieval figurines.

Liddell works out of her Sylmar home. Not only does she do Tarot and astrology readings, she claims the ability to travel the astral plane in pursuit of knowledge. While Leysen is satisfied if his psychics “amaze and amuse” their clients, Liddell says, “To me, this is no joke.”

The proposed psychic ordinance attempts to deal with this diversity by defining fortunetelling as predicting the future or furnishing information not obtainable by ordinary processes of knowledge for money. The ordinance mentions techniques including “clairvoyance, psychometry, phrenology, spirits, mediumship, astrology, palmistry, telepathy, necromancy, seership, gypsy-cunning or foresight. . . .”

There are many others, but astral traveling is not on the list.

Does that mean that Liddell can work on the astral plane but not on Earth? That could be a problem because things on the earthly plane, such as money, are tight right now and forcing her to pay $450 would be a severe hardship.

Adams said communities such as Long Beach impose even stiffer fees.

He also argued that this is not being done in an effort to target psychics.

“Taxi-cab drivers have to have permits--for much the same reason,” Adams said. “We need to know who’s operating out there.”