Rosemary Altea

Rosemary Altea is yet another crap merchant who claims to be able to talk to the dead and have some sort of healing powers. She appeared on Larry King and Oprah Winfrey, proving once more the credulity of prime-time TV viewers.

She was featured in an episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! where mentalist tore her a new one explained how she cheated by using hot reading: she talked to audience members beforehand, who gave out information, and audience members were referred by her agent. She's also shown using cold reading, or rather, trying to, as she gets it absolutely wrong. One genuinely-impressed audience member who "contacted" his mother and was quite literally crying later sent a letter to the show explaining that he'd had a think about it, and realized everything she said was pretty generic and probably not that impressive after all. Good for him.

James Randi challenged her to the $1 million prize, which she chickened out of.