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Fortune teller or taker: Boardwalk astrologer got $200,000 and lawsuit

Boardwalk astrologer got $200,000 and lawsuit

By Amy S. Rosenberg
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

ATLANTIC CITY - He was a prosperous businessman from Horsham who says he gave everything he had to a Boardwalk fortune teller who promised to "keep evil spirits and curses from plaguing his life."

But Sole Mio Balaam Nicola, 90, says she was just a five-and-dime store astrologer - a fixture at the old Boardwalk Woolworth's for 34 years - who tried to help a troubled man who found her name in the Yellow Pages.

The man, David Piscitelli, sued, saying he was the victim of a "gypsy scam" from 1978 to 1991 that prompted him to turn over about $200,000, leave his wife, sell his real-estate business, and move to Brigantine to avoid snake attacks and other evil curses.

She says Piscitelli had, in fact, become a willing partner in and financial supporter of the pyramid-shaped Temple of Hope and Knowledge, a house of worship she founded on the White Horse Pike in Galloway Township.

This week, a day before the trial was supposed to start, the businessman and the fortune teller settled, with the terms sealed by a gag order, available only to the parties involved and perhaps by appointment with a true clairvoyant.

Yesterday afternoon, a tearful Nicola sat amid the rugs and draped walls of her Georgian-style brick home in Egg Harbor City and predicted a bleak future for Piscitelli.

"He was born under a bad sign," she said. "I was trying to make somebody something, and he turned out to be nothing. I was trying to make something good out of something bad. But it didn't work."

She denied ever demanding cash to remove curses from Piscitelli's family members, forcing him to turn over his wedding ring, depositing a beheaded bat at his home, or throwing his Christmas presents into the bay, as he claims.

"That was one lie after another," she said. "I got paid by Woolworth's. He must have been watching television, reading Dracula and Frankenstein."

Nicola said she feared that the settlement of the lawsuit would mean that Piscitelli would take control of the temple and sell the land. "It's a tragedy, the biggest tragedy," she said. "I won't let it die."

Her Web site describes the temple as a "four-sided pyramid for self-healing . . . the only house in the United States that truly lives up to the original Ten Commandments."

Neither Nicola's lawyer, Lou Barbone of Atlantic City, nor Piscitelli's lawyer, Vincent Simone of Wildwood, would comment on the settlement. Piscitelli, whose age was unavailable, could not be reached for comment. Barbone had argued in court that Piscitelli's payments to the temple were like tithings to a church, with no guarantee of salvation.

The lawsuit, filed three years ago in Superior Court in Atlantic County, details the unraveling of the life of a young man who sought help for his marital problems in 1978 from Nicola, whose phone book ad offered "the golden words of truth and the key to truth and happiness."

Nicola told him immediately that "he was cursed and surrounded by a black aura." The lawsuit says Nicola instructed him to hand her $400 under her desk for the purchase of candles that, when burned, would remove his curse.

At their first meeting, the lawsuit states, Nicola told him she could "invoke her meditative and spiritual powers in order to restore his marriage to its former bliss."

Two weeks later, Nicola told him that during three hours of daily kneeling, she had discovered that the curse on Piscitelli was "greater than originally thought," that his dead father was not at peace, and that his widowed mother was cursed, the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit details a series of cash payments, loans and contributions to the temple that Piscitelli says Nicola demanded so that he would "avoid evil curses." The temple was also named as a defendant.

Soon, Piscitelli was meeting with Nicola on Saturday evenings, Sundays and Mondays. The lawsuit says she told him of connections in past lives and warned him to transfer his financial assets. He says she coerced him to pay for a trip to Italy, pay her household bills, and purchase a hair salon at Harrah's for her for $85,000.

Nicola recalled yesterday that she simply was trying to help the man cope with a bad marriage, and that they grew very close over the years. "We talked about his marriage day and night," she said. "I was going to let him marry one of my daughters and make him president of the temple."

She said she was proud of her years as the Woolworth's astrologer, in which she also sold pamphlets containing the Ten Commandments, the first three of which are the foundation of her religious beliefs.

"It was my living," she said. "It was everything. It was not a problem for people to find out what their lucky stars were. Doctors, lawyers, everybody came. I never had to lie. I made a lot of friends out there. They wanted to see what their destinies were. They knew they were not here just to buy Cadillacs."