Short answer. The Code does make it punishable. Article 318 reaches any person who, for profit or gain, interprets dreams, makes forecasts, tells fortunes, or takes advantage of the credulity of the public in any other similar manner. The element that matters is doing it for profit or gain.
What the law says
Any person who, for profit or gain, shall interpret dreams, make forecasts, tell fortunes, or take advantage of the credulity of the public in any other similar manner
Revised Penal Code, Article 318 — Other Deceits. Read the full provision →
A separate paragraph with its own elements
Article 318 has two halves and they work differently. The second is directed at any person who, for profit or gain, shall interpret dreams, make forecasts, tell fortunes, or take advantage of the credulity of the public in any other similar manner. Note what it does not say. It does not require that a particular client was defrauded, that anyone suffered loss, or that the practitioner knew the practice to be false. The conduct described, done for profit or gain, is what the paragraph addresses.
"For profit or gain" carries most of the weight
The qualifier is not decorative. It is what separates the paragraph from the enormous range of ordinary conduct — advice, belief, custom, entertainment — that involves saying something about the future. The Code is aimed at the commercial exploitation of credulity, which is why the words the credulity of the public appear at all. Whether a given arrangement is within it will turn on how the activity is held out and paid for, and that is a question of fact rather than something settled by what the practice is called.
The other half of the article
The first paragraph is a residual deceit provision, reaching a person who defrauds or damages another by any other deceit not mentioned in the preceding articles of that Chapter. It exists to catch fraudulent conduct that does not fit the enumerated forms of swindling, and unlike the second paragraph it does require that another person was defrauded or damaged. So a complaint about a fortune teller who took a specific sum by a specific lie may engage the first paragraph rather than, or as well as, the second.
If you are the one who paid
What is useful is the ordinary evidence of a transaction: receipts or transfer records, the advertisement or page through which the service was offered, the messages arranging it, and a note of what was actually promised in exchange for the money. If you were induced to hand over a large sum on the strength of specific representations, say so plainly to a lawyer, because that account may engage provisions on swindling that are considerably graver than this article and are approached differently from the outset.
Related provisions
- Revised Penal Code, Article 318 — Other Deceits
- Revised Penal Code, Article 315 — Swindling (Estafa)