Q: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Gina Marks, a self-proclaimed psychic, was sentenced to six years in prison for scamming clients out of $340,000. News4's Shomari Stone reports. (Published Friday, Sept. 21, 2018) 
  
 A Maryland woman who said she was a psychic and scammed customers out of $340,000 to cure them of "curses" has been sentenced to six years in prison. 
  
 Gina Marie Marks, who identified herself as Natalie Miller in her meetings with clients, stole from five people who sought her help over the course of more than two years. 
  
 Marks pleaded guilty to felony theft in February. 
  
 "I'm not a monster. I'm a good person," Marks said in court Friday. 
  
 Maryland 'Psychic' Pleads Guilty to $340K Scam 
  
 News4's Mark Segraves has the story of a Maryland woman who worked as a psychic and scammed clients ouf out thousands. (Published Friday, Feb. 9, 2018) 
  
 The judge said her actions were premeditated and she preyed on vulnerable people. 
  
 Marks was also ordered to pay restitution to the victims totaling about $300,000. 
  
 "This is really an important sentence that balances both restitution to the victims and protecting society," said Ramon Korionoff, spokesperson for the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office. 
  
 In February, Marks said her services are legitimate and she really is a psychic. 
  
 “People are racist from gypsies,” Marks said from beneath a black, puffy coat. “They’re racist on my culture. We do have power. We’re not allowed to talk about it.” 
  
 Police first learned of Marks’ tactics in May 2016, after a 26-year-old Chinese immigrant learned that her boyfriend was married to another woman. Seeking guidance, the woman saw an online ad for “Readings by Natalie.” 
  
 'Psychic' Swindles Maryland Woman Out of $82,000 
  
 A Maryland woman who sought the help of a psychic to find love instead was swindled out of tens of thousands of dollars. Meagan Fitzgerald reports. (Published Monday, Sept. 11, 2017) 
  
 When the woman contacted Marks, she told her she would be able to cast love spells. But she said she would need large amounts of cash to do it. 
  
 Marks had the woman meet her at stores, where Marks used the woman's credit card. 
  
 The customer got suspicious after Marks had received more than $80,000 from her in cash and purchases. The woman asked for her money back and called the police and a private investigator. 
  
 On four other occasions, Marks told clients she had the ability to reverse curses. In June 2014, one victim paid Marks and said she was told she would get her money back once the curse was broken. 
  
 She never got back the $2,654 she paid. 
  
 As Marks received cash and shopping trips with her clients’ credit cards, she posted pictures to social media of herself with expensive clothes, jewelry and purses. 
  
 Eventually, the private investigator hired by one customer was able to track down Marks at Miami International Airport. She was arrested before she was able to flee the country. ||||| Psychic adviser Gina Marks and the sign outside her home in Bethesda, Md. The photo has been altered to remove a phone number. (Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office) 
  
 After dating her for nine years, her boyfriend suddenly broke things off and moved on to someone else. The approaching holiday season only made her feel worse about the breakup. 
  
 “I felt very alone and very afraid,” the 26-year-old would later tell police, explaining what drove her to try a psychic. “I was desperately searching for answers.” 
  
 She went to “Readings by Natalie,” operating from a home in Bethesda, Md. “I poured out my heart to her,” the woman said. 
  
 For $100, Natalie performed a Tarot Card reading followed by a plan to bring the boyfriend back into her new client’s life. “I was on cloud nine,” the client remembered. 
  
 Delivering jolts of confidence, backed by what seemed to be a genuine concern for people going through heartache and stress, was the keystone of a $341,000 scam involving five victims in Montgomery County. 
  
 The purported psychic — real name, Gina Marie Marks, 45, who has pleaded guilty to five theft schemes — had spoken to her victims about generational curses, black magic and love spells. She coaxed them into bizarre rituals involving candles, clear dyes that turned red when applied to skin, rose petals, magnets and lying atop a massage table with necklaces hung over them to gauge energy levels. 
  
  
  
 Police say swindler Gina Marie Marks, who professed to be a psychic, convinced victims to buy her designer handbags like the ones she is carrying. (Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office) 
  
 The fraud used a classic ruse in fortune-teller scams: Getting clients to believe that cash was crucial to fixing their problems. 
  
 Victims were persuaded to withdraw large amounts and place them inside black pillowcases or under mattresses. The “energy” in their bodies would then migrate to the bills, they were told, according to court records. Marks’s next step: convincing her clients to give her the cash so she could place it before an altar at her church to help her break evil curses before the money was returned. The more cash they lent to the altar, she would say as the weeks went by, the more commitment the clients were displaying to what Marks called her “spirit guides.” 
  
 Marks also employed up-to-date techniques. Phone “spoofing” enabled her to make calls that appeared to be coming from a different phone number than the one she was using. Using that ruse, prosecutors said, Marks was able to tell a client her ex-boyfriend would call at a precise time — warning the client she was not to answer it — and the client would indeed see the ex’s phone number pop up on her phone screen at the exact predicted time. 
  
 “It just seems like that’s the worst of the worst, when you prey on people when they were down,” Circuit Judge John Maloney told Marks at the conclusion of the case on Friday, when he sentenced her to six years in prison. “That is just outrageous.” 
  
 Nationwide, consulting with fortune tellers and psychics is fairly common. Nearly 1 in 7 Americans say they have done so, according to a 2009 study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. 
  
 The danger isn’t $50 palm readings. It’s practitioners who use such offerings to scope out marks and sell them false hope. “One of the hallmarks of these scams is progression,” says Bob Nygaard, a nationwide expert on psychic scams and a private investigator based in Florida. 
  
 “It’s not rational,” Nygaard said. “But who is rational when they learn their spouse has been cheating? Who is rational when they’ve just been diagnosed with terminal cancer? And all the scammers need is just one victim a month, or if the victim has money, one a year.” 
  
 Doctors, lawyers and business owners have been sucked into the scams, according to Nygaard. When they come to their senses and know the money isn’t coming back, it’s too late. The psychic is gone. Or the victim is too embarrassed to tell anyone. 
  
 Victim embarrassment, in the Montgomery County case, was reflected in how prosecutors presented their case at the sentencing hearing. Douglas Wink, Montgomery County’s assistant state’s attorney, referred to the victims only by initials. Several victims watched the hearing, but none wanted to come forward and speak. 
  
 The once brokenhearted 26-year-old, who was not in court, earlier had written a statement that said, “while I readily admit that I was gullible at a vulnerable time in my life, being gullible is not a crime.” By contrast, what Marks did to her was a crime, she said. 
  
 By 2015, Marks had moved to Bethesda from Florida and into a home on Fernwood Road where she posted a neatly scripted sign out front above a flower bed: “Psychic Reader and Adviser . . . Walk-Ins Welcome.” 
  
 In her first meeting with Marks, the 26-year-old was told she and her ex-boyfriend were “twin flames.” The next day, according to court records, Marks told her new client she’d need $1,500 for the work required to reunite the two. She persuaded the woman to light candles, cover her body with dye, bathe in oils and recite prayers. 
  
 A short time later, Marks called to ask her to up her financial commitment. 
  
 “Her ‘spirit guides’ needed to be convinced that I was serious about reuniting with my ex,” the woman told police. 
  
 She was asked to withdraw cash from her bank and store it under her mattress next to her ritual items. The money under the mattress eventually totaled $14,800. 
  
 The woman said she would ask questions and express doubts about Marks’s techniques. But then a phone call would arrive, on cue, as promised. Or Marks would turn aggressive — telling her that her doubts were angering the spirit guides. 
  
 After the victim drained her bank accounts, Marks persuaded her to buy designer handbags on credit and bring them to Marks so she could place them at the altar. All of the cash under the mattress eventually came over to Marks as well, the case showed. None came back. When it was all done, according to the victim and prosecutors, Marks had stolen $22,792. 
  
 Other victims fared worse. 
  
 A 28-year-old woman, also upset about a lost relationship, surrendered $83,014 to Marks. She was told she and Marks needed to work with the No. 9, which meant bringing in currency in sets of nine, starting with nine $100 bills and nine $50 bills and trailing to nine nickels, according to the victim. The money was placed on Marks’s altar and never seen again, Wink said. 
  
 Two others lost $78,758 and $153,400. The smallest loss, $2,655, was by a 26-year-old man who had sought answers for why he felt so depressed. He described to police Marks’s reaction when he questioned the fees. 
  
 “She would begin berating me,” the man said. “She would say I was not taking her work seriously and demanding more and more money. I would feel bad and cave to give her more money.” 
  
 Marks’s attorney Peter Fayne had said she was prepared to pay nearly $129,500 of the more than $340,000 due in restitution. He asked Maloney, the judge, to spare his client prison time so she could earn more money to pay more restitution. 
  
 Marks told Maloney she had never intended to hurt anyone and still cared about the victims. She said her actions could be traced to her childhood. 
  
 “When you’re brought up to be a spiritualist, when you’re brought up in these kinds of situations where you go to a candle instead of just letting logic help itself, you get carried away with it,” she said. “And I guess that’s what happened.” 
  
 The judge wasn’t so sure. 
  
 “I feel like I’m being scammed,” Maloney told her, “and I’m not going to put up with this.” |||||
A:
A purported psychic who conned her victims out of $341,000 was sentenced Friday to six years in prison. Gina Marie Marks, 45, operated "Readings by Natalie" out of a home in Bethesda, Md., but the $100 tarot card readings she offered were just the beginning, the Washington Post reports. From there, she convinced clients to withdraw large amounts of cash and hide it in pillowcases or under mattresses so energy from their bodies could travel to the bills; then the clients were to give Marks the cash—the more they gave, the more committed they were to Marks' "spirit guides"—so she could put it on an altar at her church in order to break evil curses placed on the client or carry out spells for the client. If clients emptied their bank accounts, they were told to make pricey purchases like designer handbags, using a credit card, for the same ritual. Though clients were told the money and items would be returned, they never were. Marks was convicted of defrauding five clients for amounts ranging from $2,655 to $153,400 each; she had pleaded guilty to felony theft in February, NBC Washington reports. Victims say if they balked at the amount of money they were told to hand over, Marks would accuse them of not taking the work seriously or warn them that their doubts would anger the spirit guides. She convinced them of her authenticity by using phone spoofing—she would tell a client someone (say, an ex over whom the client was heartbroken) would call on a certain day and time, but warn the client not to answer; phone spoofing allowed Marks to place the call from her own number, but make it appear as if it was coming from the ex's number. Marks, whose lawyer said she is prepared to pay almost $129,500 of the total amount due in restitution, insisted to the judge her work was legitimate and that she cared about her clients. To that, the judge said he felt he was being "scammed."