Fortune teller accused of using psychic services to rob woman at gunpoint in Ruskin: Deputies

RUSKIN, Fla. - Instead of telling fortunes, deputies said 52-year-old Carola Mitchell was using her psychic services as a ploy to rob people of their fortunes, including one woman who was held at gunpoint.

Judith Ramirez could never have predicted what would happen on May 16.

"I hear somebody knock at the door, so I open the door," Ramirez said.

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Booking photo of Carola Mitchell. Courtesy: Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. 

Mitchell was at the door, asking Ramirez and her mother-in-law where to buy Mexican food and if she could come inside for a drink of water before offering up her psychic services.

"She said something about that she could read her hand. I said 'no I'm not interested in that.' Then she started reading my forehead. I was just like ‘okay.’ I just ignored her," Ramirez said.

That's when Ramirez said she went in her room with her baby, leaving Mitchell with her mother-in-law, who opted for a psychic reading. Moments later, deputies said Mitchell pulled out a gun, held it to the mother-in-law's back and demanded money.

"She told her that if she doesn't give [her] the money, she was going to hurt us, my baby and I. And then she's like, ‘okay,’ so she gave her the money," Ramirez said.

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Deputies said she made off with $12,000 in cash. A neighbor's surveillance camera captured Mitchell in her white Nissan Rogue leaving the mobile home park near 3rd Avenue SE and 21st Street SE in Ruskin. Deputies eventually tracked her down.

In Mitchell's arrest affidavit, it said she told deputies she "drives around Hispanic communities and knocks on doors to offer her fortune-telling and spirit services," which deputies said she uses as "a ruse to gain entry into victim’s homes to commit robberies or thefts of cash and jewelry."

"It's really scary, because [my] mother-in-law, when she talks about it, she still cries. The money is gone, but we're happy that we are okay and nothing happened to us," Ramirez said.

Mitchell is now being charged with kidnapping and armed robbery. Investigators are asking anyone who may have been a victim of Mitchell's to call the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

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