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By: Carly Williams

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Theresa Caputo is a very well known medium and reality TV show star. During my research I have discovered that Theresa's abilities give off many pseudoscience red flags. The last and final red flag is unexplained. There is no real way to get inside Theresa's head and know what really happens in there. Maybe she does have a real gift, or maybe she is just a really amazing performer. From my research I have made the decision that in my opinion, Theresa is nothing but a good performer.

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The photo below is an AD for one of Theresa's live shows. What I have found out during my research is Theresa makes a lot of statements during her show that are almost guesses. She hopes that an audience member will connect with her statement and then she can go from there. A lot of people who have attended her shows have said for every 20 statements about 10 could have been true. This reminded me of the red flag confirmation bias. People who support Theresa and her show only pay attention to the things she got right, while a skeptic would take the right and wrong into consideration.

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This is Theresa's "about me" page on her website. She goes into details about herself and her abilities. The red flag of mystic energy comes to mind when reading her about me section. She speaks about feelings and energy that cannot be explained but yet somehow we are expected to just take her word for it.

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I'm the Long Island Medium (maybe you've heard of my reality show?), a New York Times best-selling author, and an incredibly busy mom, wife, and all-around family gal. I was born and raised on Long Island in Hicksville, NY and have been married to my husband Larry for 28 years. We have two children, Larry and Victoria, and I'm close to my parents, who are still very much alive. I also have a brother named Michael and a feisty Yorkie Louie, and two french bulldogs Bubba and Bentley (yup we have them now!).

I've been seeing, feeling, and sensing Spirit since I was four years old, but it wasn't until I was in my 20s that I learned to communicate with souls in Heaven. After suffering from debilitating anxiety and trying to manage it on my own and with a therapist for years, my mom introduced me to a spiritual healer and teacher named Pat Longo. After just one session, she told me that I was suppressing Spirit's energy, which caused a lot of my anxiety, and helped me learn to channel Spirit through my chakras and release it with my words. I began to heal and come into my own.

When I accepted my gift, I decided to use it to deliver healing messages that would help people learn, grow, and embrace life. I've been a practicing medium for over ten years now and tour the country with my live show "Theresa Caputo Live The Experience." I've also written three books: There's More to Life than This: Healing Messages, Remarkable Stories, and Insight from the Other Side (Atria Books, 2013), which debuted at #2 on the New York Times best seller list, "You Can't Make This Stuff Up" Life Changing Lessons from Heaven (Atria Books, 2014) I'm very excited for you all to read my new book NY Times bestseller "Good Grief" Heal Your Soul, Honor Your Loved Ones, and Learn to Live again (Atria Books 2017). Considering I started this work with just a business card and word of mouth, I pinch myself when I think about what a crazy ride it's been for a typical Long Island mom!

Clients, fans, and the media always ask me to describe how I receive information, and it's hard to put into words because I see, hear, and feel things differently than we do in the physical world. Spirit mostly speaks to me through a sixth sense-a kind of feeling and knowing. When I get information, it feels like very strong intuition, or recall. Spirit also uses a vocabulary of signs and symbols that they show me during a reading; over time, I assigned words, phrases, and meanings to certain images I was shown, and then through trial and error, Spirit helped me add new ones until we created an entire vocabulary for us to work with. I translate my signs and what I feel as best I can, and then deliver the messages, but it's the client's job to interpret how the meaning is significant. It's like piecing together a puzzle, and can sometimes sound like guesswork, but Spirit speaks "another language," at another speed, and in another dimension. My job's not easy lol!

I'm grateful for an ability that's brought countless people comfort and joy, helped many believe in an afterlife, led others to trust that their loved ones are safe and at peace, and shown them that those souls are guiding, encouraging, and loving them from the Other Side. My wish for everyone I meet is that Spirit gives them a message that brings them the most peace at that moment.

If you're interested in a reading, please know that I was booked for two years before the show first aired, and in addition to that I had a very extended waiting list. The people that have emailed, written in or filled out the online form have been added to that list. Unfortunately being on this list does not guarantee an appointment. The people featured on Long Island Medium are selected from all of the lists. Factors include location, availability, and who feels comfortable being on television are taken into consideration.Because it's just impossible to schedule so far out.I am so incredibly honored and grateful for all of your love and support! I am truly blessed by all of you! Thank you for all your patience and understanding <3

XOXO THERESA

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I'm the Long Island Medium (maybe you've heard of my reality show?), a New York Times best-selling author, and an incredibly busy mom, wife, and all-around family gal. I was born and raised on Long Island in Hicksville, NY and have been married to my husband Larry for 28 years.

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In this article it talks about how Theresa is under investigation for fraud due to many of her clients claiming to be unhappy with her reading. He goes on to say how it is speculated that she investigates her clients before hand to give a more impressive reading. One point that stood out to me is that she seems to win over her clients more with her big hair and comedy routine then with the readings themselves. This reminded me of the red flag appeal to authority because it seems to me that people almost want to have a good reading with Theresa just because of her fame, they feel she is the best person to help them speak with lost loved ones.

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"Long Island Medium" star Theresa Caputo is reportedly under investigation for fraud and many of her so-called clients are dissatisfied with their readings and claim Caputo has no real "gift" but plenty of sources helping her pull off a scam.

"Theresa is like a vulture preying on the most vulnerable," private investigator Ron Tebo told Radar Online. "I think it's despicable."

Tebo runs a fraud complaint website, SciFake.com, and has been reportedly speaking with several of Caputo's clients, all of whom say that they were disappointed or let down by their reading.

He has accused Caputo of having people investigate her clients before meeting with them in order to provide a more accurate reading, or simply going with the age-old trick of asking a very vague question in order to get a client to spill everything.

"She schmoozes with the audience and wins them over with her big hair, designer shoes and comedy. When they trust her, she goes in for the kill. She'll ask the group a question like, 'Who lost an older male relative to heart problems?' It's the oldest trick in the medium's book," Tebo explained.

Former fans have left him messages of complaints against Caputo.

"I was a Theresa Caputo believer and watched every one of her shows," a former fan wrote. "My young daughter died this summer and I needed to believe in something. After tonight, I am no longer a believer. There were many grieving people there, hoping for closure or a sign from their loved ones and 2,490 people left defeated and deflated."

Caputo lives in New York and is a certified medium with the Forever-Family Foundation. Right now, there is a three-year waiting list for personal readings with Caputo, showing her popularity with the public. However, ever since her show began airing, there have been those who state that Caputo is a fraud and is causing more harm than good to those who are grieving or in some form of pain.

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'Long Island Medium' Theresa Caputo Under Investigation for Fraud

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"Long Island Medium" star Theresa Caputo is reportedly under investigation for fraud and many of her so-called clients are dissatisfied with their readings and claim Caputo has no real "gift" but plenty of sources helping her pull off a scam.

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This is an article written by a reporter who had attended one of Theresa's shows with an open mind. She said that Theresa's encounters with audience members was very vague to say the least. She noted that if the person Theresa was reading didn't appear to be connecting with what she was saying she would say that it means something else until they connected. This reminds me of the red flag "red herring" because she seems to throw out very generic statements then if someone doesn't seem to connect she covers it up by saying that it can mean something else until she feels as if the person can connect personally.

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Long Island News from the Long Island Press

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After my father died suddenly five years ago, I found myself sitting in the upstairs alcove of a high ranch in Kings Park that was decorated in gaudy crucifixes and adorable cherubs. Across from me sat the medium a friend had sworn by. A medium who had told my husband the day before that she'd been visited by my father and that he wanted to talk to me.

She wasn't the first psychic medium I'd been to. And most certainly wasn't the last. She described my father as a veteran (he was), who liked to cook (he did). She gave details about how he died, and described how he'd lived. The message she said he wished to relay to me resonated, quite deeply, but it was what she said to me as we were talking about my budding writing career that turned me into a believer.

"She gets it from me," the medium told me my father had said. As a joke.

A wiseass even in the afterlife? That was what cemented the unbelievable truth to me that my dead father was right there in the room with me.

And so it was with an open mind that I attended Theresa Caputo Live! The Experience at the NYCB Theatre at Westbury on December 17. The packed house was rife with nervous laughter and quiet murmurs as the audience filed in an hour before she came onto Westbury's iconic round stage, set with a high table draped in white cloth, holding lit white candles and a white floral bouquet.

Caputo finally walked out in sky-high sparkly Christian Louboutins and a flouncy dress to thunderous applause. She briefed the audience about what to expect, counseling us to please accept anything we could connect to our lives as messages to us from our departed loved ones from "beyond the physical world." She said she couldn't stress it enough, and she was true to her word, as she continuously reminded the audience throughout the next two and a half hours to interpret her words as direct messages, especially if she failed to address each of us individually.

"It's so nice to be home," the Hicksville mom told the Westbury audience. "Everybody understands my accent!"

The audience laughed in recognition as she enunciated words like "feather' and "father" as "feath-ah" and "fath-ah."

Caputo announced that she wasn't out to prove anything to anybody or to make anyone believe in mediums, echoing a sentiment she'd expressed when I'd interviewed her over the phone a few days earlier. She explained that she was there to validate for us all the feelings that, essentially, there was more to life than life. If we'd thought that maybe we'd seen the shadow of someone who'd died in the halls of our homes, we had. If we could have sworn we heard the voice of our dead mothers, or had been visited in our dreams by loved ones who'd passed, we weren't crazy.

"It's real," she reiterated, over and over, throughout the "experience."

And then she was ready to get started. A team with microphones and video cameras flanked her every move, anticipating to whom she would speak, and transmitting their faces on screens to the whole audience so that we could all watch the magic up-close. She approached a section in the front of the stage, asking, "Who connects with a brother figure?"

Two people immediately raised their hands. She told them that the fact that she was channeling the souls of their brothers meant that those souls were at peace.

"Do you understand that?" she asked, an oft-repeated refrain throughout the night.

They nodded.

Caputo moved on to a man who said he had lost his wife to Alzheimer's disease. She told him that she saw the woman jumping up and down, symbolizing that she was free in the afterlife, no longer bedridden.

"She doesn't have Alzheimer's anymore, do you understand?"

The man nodded.

Caputo asked a well-dressed woman wearing a pink button-down blouse how she could connect with the color mauve. She told the audience that she was seeing a woman in a mauve-colored suit or jacket. The woman nodded, saying that her mother had been an executive secretary. She was sure, she said, that she must have had a mauve suit at some point. But she wasn't sure.

It didn't seem certain that the mother's fashion sense matched that of her daughter.

Caputo moved on, peppering the audience with questions like, "Why am I connecting with a mother figure over here?" and "How does the number three connect?"

Hands shot up all over the theater and Caputo made busy work climbing the steep aisle ramps in her stiletto heels. Her husband Larry, easy to spot as a frequent co-star on her show Long Island Medium, lurked along the edges of the crowd, moving around.

Caputo made quite a few direct hits, like when she asked a man, "Did you mother work in fashion?" to which he replied, "She was a seamstress."

"Perfect!" was Caputo's reply when it seemed she made an exact match. It was her version of "Bingo!"

Clearly emboldened, Caputo continued, making some more specific claims, like, "I have a young woman who is telling me she was shot by her boyfriend or spouse."

Three audience members stood to claim that soul as their own, which perhaps says more about the issue of rampant gun violence than it does about psychic ability.

Caputo stood on the round stage, looking up into the audience. She walked over to a section she hadn't been in yet and started talking to a young woman who was sitting beside her mother. The woman had lost her uncle and had come for some closure.

"Why do I feel like he drowned?" she asked, clutching her chest. She relayed that she felt fluid rising in her chest, and that this was the spirit communicating how he'd died.

The niece shook her head no. That wasn't her uncle.

Caputo insisted, refusing to move, saying that the spirit was instructing her that the person he wanted to connect with was there. She questioned the surrounding people, asking again about a drowning.

Then she announced that she wanted to speak with the mother of a young child who had drowned in a backyard pool during a party.

The audience gasped in both horror and delight. This is what we had come to see.

Yet no one seemed to fit the bill. A woman said that she lost someone who had drowned in river runoff, in about seven feet of water, and she wondered how, as the deceased stood about 6-foot-4. Caputo shook her head. That wasn't who she was looking for.

She approached the woman with the dead uncle again.

"My uncle had a boat?" she offered.

That wasn't it.

"He built pools," the woman said, pointing to her mother. "He built her pool."

That wasn't it, either. Finally the mother told Caputo and the audience that when he had died (of pancreatic cancer), his lungs had filled up with fluid.

"Perfect!" Caputo declared.

The doubt that had started to creep into my mind early on in the show now made a full-court press. I wasn't buying it, any of it.

Caputo threw out more questions to the audience, asking specific questions that, when they weren't met with nods of agreement, became described as merely symbols of other, more general things.

For example, she asked a grieving mother who had lost her grown son, "Why do I feel like you are holding him when he died?"

When the woman shrugged, Caputo quickly covered by saying that that means he believes that she was always there for him.

"Do you smell him?" Caputo questioned another.

When there was no response, she immediately clarified that this meant that it seemed as if that person was still there, even though he had passed some time ago.

Caputo told a woman who was mourning her mother that she was seeing "red spots all over her body." But the woman stated that her mother had had ALS. When Caputo said, "I don't know," the woman clarified, "Lou Gehrig's disease."

Caputo nodded. A debilitating disease all over the body. Perfect, she said.

Caputo told a woman who seemed quite obviously gay that her father approved of her lifestyle, did she understand?

We all understood.

She seemed annoyed when a woman answered the question about a "father-figure" with the fact that he was her uncle.

"It's your uncle. That's a father-figure," Caputo dismissed. "Same thing."

She approached a mother and son and began to talk with them about the man's brother. She hit on a few questions, like when she asked if he wore a religious medallion in honor of the brother and the man produced it right there, from under his shirt. Then she asked what the number three meant to him, and he responded that he had a 3-year-old daughter.

"I Googled that!" she wise-cracked to the crowd in self-congratulation, a wink and a nod to allegations that she and her staff research details about audience members in anticipation of her shows, only to produce them later as part of the psychic act.

As the session wound down, Caputo continued in the same vein, joking with the audience, her signature Lawn Guyland-ese carrying over NYCB Theatre. The people seated around us, and up onscreen, dotted their red-rimmed eyes with tissues fished out of pocketbooks, while still others exited the theater before the performance ended. The reviews, it seemed, were mixed.

After the show, Caputo announced that two lucky audience members had been randomly chosen to meet her backstage. I had been lucky enough to have been given meet-and-greet passes as well, so I waited along with perhaps 20 or so other people after the show ended for the chance to meet Caputo in person.

She emerged from backstage, her outfit changed from the dress to a black jumpsuit, the Louboutins mercifully gone. She chatted with small groups as her staff brought them to her, one by one.

When it was our turn to meet her, I introduced myself as a reporter from the Press, and reminded her that we had spoken a few days before.

"I hope you enjoyed the experience," she told me. "It was a lovely article, I appreciate it very much."

I took the opportunity to ask if she ever came into contact with spirits who were not at peace and that if the souls she encountered were in Heaven, did she ever speak to those who were in the opposing resting place?

"I don't channel those souls," she said, flat-out. "I only channel souls that walk in God's white light."

Then she said to me something oddly curious.

"You know, the first two people that just came? The one girl-it was a mother and daughter-and she said the kid that drowned in the backyard at the pool party? She said, 'That was my son, I just couldn't even speak.'"

"She says, 'I want to thank you because he died many years ago at a pool party.' She left, she's like, 'You have no idea. You changed my life.' It's amazing," continued Caputo.

Amazing coincidence indeed that this particular woman had possessed one of the few backstage passes. Perhaps even more so-and pretty convenient, too, I'd say-that Caputo was able to relay this conversation to a reporter who'd witnessed what had seemed to be a pretty big miss earlier.

Was this an incredible coincidence or merely an attempt at damage control?

For me, this unbelievable experience was simply that: not to be believed. In my humble opinion, Caputo is a damn good performer, and she's got undeniably likeable sass and charisma.

I just don't think she speaks with the dead. Or she didn't the night that I saw her.

But my father probably could have told you that.

Jaime Franchi is the Executive Editor of Morey Publishing. She covers education and contributes news and entertainment pieces for the Long Island Press, along with occasional op-eds when she's in the mood for some hate mail. Her work can also be found on Salon.com, Milieu Magazine, Huffington Post and The New York Times.

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My Not-So-Psychic Experience With 'Long Island Medium' Theresa Caputo

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After my father died suddenly five years ago, I found myself sitting in the upstairs alcove of a high ranch in Kings Park that was decorated in gaudy crucifixes and adorable cherubs. Across from me sat the medium a friend had sworn by.

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This is Theresa doing some more readings this time instead at the Steve Harvey show. Seeing all these publicity appearances that Theresa has been doing is really making me think of the red flag proof of verbosity. I feel that there are so many readings done on television where Theresa has really appeared to communicate with passed loved ones and due to this people automatically believe in her abilities, with little to no substantial evidence.

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Theresa Caputo Bikini Theresa Caputo Full Episodes Theresa Caputo Live Amazing Theresa Caputo Theresa Caputo Evil Long Island Medium Theresa Caputo Reading Theresa Caputo Arms Theresa Caputo Momma's Boy Theresa Caputo 2017 Theresa Caputo Shows 2018 Theresa Caputo Interview Theresa Caputo Scam Theresa Caputo On Ellen Theresa Caputo No Bra

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This is a video of Theresa doing a reading with a handful of selected members from Ellen's Audience. This video definitely tugs on the heart strings which makes me think of emotional connection. Theresa appears  to connect with each person so deeply and really seems as if she actually knew their passed loved ones personally. I feel all these people wanted to hear from their loved ones and anything Theresa said connected with them due to the simple fact they wanted it to not necessarily because what she was saying was true..

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Theresa Caputo Bikini Theresa Caputo Full Episodes Theresa Caputo Live Amazing Theresa Caputo Theresa Caputo Evil Long Island Medium Theresa Caputo Reading Theresa Caputo Arms Theresa Caputo Momma's Boy Theresa Caputo 2017 Theresa Caputo Shows 2018 Theresa Caputo Interview Theresa Caputo Scam Theresa Caputo On Ellen Theresa Caputo No Bra

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In this video it gives us a general understanding of Theresa and her abilities. Watching this I can't help but think how truthful her show really is. Out of all the people she has claimed to help on her show, how many people weren't helped? I am curious to see how many times she has done a reading and been wrong. We are being overwhelmed with positive information about her but I'm curious to discover some not so good experiences people have had with Theresa.

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Theresa Caputo Bikini Theresa Caputo Full Episodes Theresa Caputo Live Amazing Theresa Caputo Theresa Caputo Evil Long Island Medium Theresa Caputo Reading Theresa Caputo Arms Theresa Caputo Momma's Boy Theresa Caputo 2017 Theresa Caputo Shows 2018 Theresa Caputo Interview Theresa Caputo Scam Theresa Caputo On Ellen Theresa Caputo No Bra

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This is a picture of Theresa Caputo, she is usually known from the TV series "Long Island Medium" on TLC.