The gullible shall rise again. Last week the Federal Trade Commission announced it had come to a settlement agreement with Miss Cleo, confirming to both the ignorant and the blissful that our government will save the most naíve in our society from the trickery of telephone fortunetellers.

The FTC alleged that Miss Cleo and her parent companies, Access Resources Services and Psychic Readers Network, falsely promised free psychic readings and participated in deceitful billing practices. Though admitting no guilt, Miss Cleo’s parent companies agreed to forgive $500 million in outstanding charges made by their customers.

But what were they doing with half a billion dollars of unpaid invoices sitting in receivables in the first place? Miss Cleo had thousands of deadbeats who clearly believe she has supernatural powers, yet Miss Cleo couldn’t come up with a recording to threaten past-due callers with a voodoo curse.

But cash flows aside, the FTC alleged 6 million callers were duped by Miss Cleo, and you have to wonder what those callers were thinking when they picked up the phone.

The FTC claims Miss Cleo callers were often urged to call a toll number without informing them that only their first three minutes would be free. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Cleo callers usually used up their free minutes telling the Miss Cleos-in-training their birth date, their maiden name and their favorite Spice Girl.

Somehow the psychics managed to keep callers on the line for up to an hour at $4.99 a minute. A naíve freshman attempting to keep a long-distance high school sweetheart may be able to talk on the phone for hours at a time, but I can’t imagine a woman with an annoyingly inaccurate Jamaican accent has anything to say that could keep even the biggest loser on the phone for an hour or more.

Despite America’s short attention span, Miss Cleo managed to survive, even thrive. But success draws attention, and the FTC had an eye on Cleo’s operation. Apparently growing tired of issues like steel prices and Microsoft’s latest licensing schemes, the FTC found some fun with Miss Cleo.

“You don’t need a crystal ball to know that the FTC will continue to stop unfair and deceptive trade practices,” was the prophecy from Howard Beales, the head of the FTC’s consumer-protection division when Miss Cleo was first charged.

“I’m no psychic, but I can see this: If you make deceptive claims, there will be an FTC action in your future,” triumphed Beales after he successfully brought down Miss Cleo.

Beales has not only saved thousands of idiots from learning their lesson, but he has solidified his position as the most humorous prosecutor in Washington. Move over, Jerry Seinfeld. Miss Cleo’s settlement may provide some much-needed humor at an agency where the water-cooler conversation usually starts, “Three tariffs walk into a bar …,” but Miss Cleo didn’t inflict the real damage done to callers; Beales did.

I have never called Miss Cleo, Phone Sex Central or The Backstreet Boys, but I can imagine that if I did and I received an enormous phone bill for doing so, I would have learned my lesson and put down the receiver. One month into my new cell-phone calling plan I was hit with some $0.40-per-minute calls (one-tenth Miss Cleo’s rate) that taught me to let my voicemail do the talking.

The FTC may have called Miss Cleo out for mischief and deception, but there should be no doubt that Cleo’s callers will simply throw their money at a more savvy telemarketer who has a better respect for the nuances of consumer law and a more clever shtick than the L.A. woman with a phony Jamaican accent.

The government saved the gullible class in this country a lot of money last week, but these people have much larger issues than their unpaid phone bills. The feds continue to fly like a bird, like a plane, saving every gullible soul possible from the treacheries of the shrewd. But every time the more vulnerable of this world are saved by our paternalistic government the potential lesson they could have learned from their stupidity is lost.

P.T. Barnum was once fabled saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” but there seems to be a swindler born every minute as well. The FTC may have saved a few suckers $500 million, but something tells me the suckers of the world will find something else to lose their money on. What is the Powerball jackpot up to anyway?

A.J. Hughes ([email protected]) is a software developer and UW graduate.