She promised ‘witchcraft services,’ Florida police say. Now, people are out $100,000

There’s a “witch” hunt in Naples.

No, this isn’t Salem and it’s not Massachusetts in the 1690s. This involves supposed witchcraft and lost money, with at least one person giving a woman more than $29,000 cash, according to WINK News. According to Naples police, they started to receive reports on March 14 about a woman who was “providing spiritual/witchcraft services.”

Police, in an alert that included composite sketches, are calling her a fraud, and say they need the public’s help to find the woman they say has conned at least 10 people out of a combined $100,000.

Naples police say people were duped after reading ads that were placed in Spanish-language newspapers and on Spanish radio. Fliers also were placed in coin laundries and stores in the Golden Gate and East Naples area. The media ads were published in December 2020 and the “in-person scam” began in mid-January and ended in mid-March.

The police released a photo of a flier on a pole that was written in Spanish and featured a drawing of a $20 bill and the words, “Se lee las cartas. Amarres limpias.” Roughly translated “The letters are read. Clean moorings.”

Victims told police the woman is of possible Hispanic or Eastern European descent and speaks Spanish with an unknown accent or dialect. She is about five-foot-two, of medium build with blonde hair and dark roots, and has light brown eyes.

According to WINK, investigators said the woman offered tarot card readings and other spiritual services. and asked her customers “to bring her as much cash as possible.” She allegedly told one man she saw “darkness” in the money and would take it to her “temple” in Fort Myers to clean it.

If she did, she still has it, investigators say, because the people who handed her their, well, “dirty” money never got it back.

She may have been going under the name Rosalia, police say.

NBC2 reported that a man said he met with Rosalia at an “office” and she told the man to fix the darkness by sleeping with three eggs under his bed and to bring them back to her. When he did a day later, she waved them around his head and face and allegedly opened each egg to reveal blood, needles and worms in each respective egg.

“Rosalia” told the man the eggs weren’t enough to remove the darkness and that he needed to bring her “all the money he had and to borrow money from friends and family so she could bless it and multiply it,” NBC2 reported.

He’s out $29,500, he told police.

Naples police released composite sketches of the woman and ask that if you have information that can lead police to her, call the department at 239-213-4844.