Miss Cleo sadly passed away on July 26, 2016, but unfortunately her name is still involved in some drama with The Psychic Readers Network, which is the same company she caught a lot of flack about (regrading her alleged fake Jamaican accent) 20+ years ago. And now PRN has filed a lawsuit after they say Miss Cleo and a makeup company she endorsed in 2015, pulled a jack move on them. See details below:
Via TMZ: Miss Cleo’s famous image and accent got jacked by a makeup company before her death … according to her old pals at the Psychic Readers Network. The PRN filed a lawsuit against Benefit Cosmetics for hawking makeup products with the help of Youree Harris, who played Cleo. According to docs, Harris was hired in March 2015, and Benefit created a Cleo doppelganger for its promos. PRN says Harris not only acted just like Miss Cleo in the spots, but one of them was titled “Flawless Friends Network” … an obvious rip-off, they say. Harris died in July, which was right around the same time Psychic Readers says it found out about Benefit’s Miss Cleo-esque campaign. Ironically, it took more than a year for a network of psychics to figure this out. Still, they want Benefit Cosmetics to kill all the ads and fork over the money they made off the “Cleo” campaign.
You gotta love the irony in this though – PRN is suing because they feel that a cosmetics company tried to pull a fast one on them with the very image and likeness PRN created and made millions off of by pulling a fast one on the public in the 90’s. But hey, since PRN did create the Miss Cleo brand, they may have some legs to stand on in court, because it’s not about the moral compass of it all, it’s just about who has first right of usage in this deception case.
The beloved Miss Cleo is resting in peace now and if she were here, she’d probably be looking at Psychic Readers Network with her famous side eye…
Rest on Youree Dell Harris…you’re no longer with us, but you will never be forgotten.
******IN CASE YOU MISSED IT******
AFTER RACKING UP $1BILLION IN SALES, PSYCHIC READERS NETWORK WAS SUED AND SUED OTHERS
– This isn’t the first time Miss Cleo’s name was brought up in lawsuits involving Psychic Readers Network, in case you missed our previous article on that, here are the details:
After folks found out that Miss Cleo was NOT Jamaican bred, the lawsuits piled up against The Psychic Readers Network, with the most significant one coming from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which filed a lawsuit against Cleo and The Psychic Readers Network for ” deceptive advertising, billing, and collection practices.” PRN had racked up over $1 BILLION in sales from the Miss Cleo psychic hotline in the 90’s, but when a Florida lawsuit blew her cover and revealed that she was born in Los Angeles to American parents and was not a ‘Jamaican mystic’ as the PRN infomercials claimed, they had to settle with the FTC for $500 MILLION.
– In 2015 the Psychic Readers Network also sued General Mills for the same reason they are currently suing Benefits Cosmetics:
PRN claimed that General Mills used the Miss Cleo likeness after Youree Harris starred in a 2014 French Toast cereal commercial. Not sure of the outcome of that lawsuit, but after the suit was filed, the ads disappeared from Youtube.
