Con artists hack your brain ... with your permission

When we have fewer emotional challenges, preoccupations and mental clutter we’re more actively aware of our surroundings. Our sharpened minds will be attuned to sights, sounds and other sensory input that can alert us to con artists’ attempts to hijack our emotions, our valuables and our dreams. Here’s practical information that you can give to your management, colleagues, families and friends.

Romance novelist Jude Deveraux has authored 43 New York Times bestsellers, sold more than 60 million copies of her books and enjoyed her fortune from the sales. But in the early 1990s, Deveraux sought help for a turbulent marriage and pregnancy difficulties at a New York psychic parlor where she met a woman who called herself Joyce Michael.

Over the next 17 years, Deveraux would trust Michael as a confidant, friend and someone who could supposedly help solve her problems, including her grief following the tragic death of her 8-year-old son in 2005. But Michael was none of those things. (See Author Jude Deveraux Was Suicidal After Losing $20 Million to Fortune Telling Con, by Christina Ng, ABC News, Aug. 24, 2011.)