Sylvia Browne:
Browne made many public pronouncements which were subsequently proven false. Among the more notable incidents were the following:
- In 2002, Browne informed the parents of 11-year-old Shawn Hornbeck, who had disappeared earlier that year, that he had been kidnapped by a dark-skinned Hispanic man with dreadlocks and was now deceased.[17][18] Hornbeck was found alive in 2007; his kidnapper was Caucasian and short-haired.[19]
- In June 2008, the UK television network ITV2 was sanctioned by Ofcom for re-airing the episode of The Montel Williams Show featuring Browne's original prediction.[20][21]
- In November 2004, Browne told the mother of kidnapping victim Amanda Berry, who had disappeared nineteen months earlier: "She's not alive, honey." Browne also claimed that Berry was "in water", and that she had had a vision of Berry's jacket in the garbage with "DNA on it".[22] Berry's mother died two years later believing her daughter had been killed. Berry was found alive in May 2013.[23][24]
- On Larry King Live in 2003, Browne predicted she would die at age 88. She died in 2013, at age 77.[25][26]
In 2010, the Skeptical Inquirer published a detailed three-year study by Ryan Shaffer and Agatha Jadwiszczok that examined Browne's predictions about missing persons and murder cases. Despite her repeated claims to be more than 85% correct, the study reported that "Browne has not even been mostly correct in a single case." The study compared Browne's televised statements about 115 cases with newspaper reports and found that in the 25 cases where the actual outcome was known, she was completely wrong in every one. In the rest, where the final outcome was unknown, her predictions could not be substantiated.
Browne pleaded no contest to securities fraud and was indicted on grand larceny in Santa Clara County on May 26, 1992.[54]
She couldn't even get her own death age right. Some psychic.