The French government is being called upon to pass regulations on fortune telling as professional soothsayers lament that the practice's explosion in popularity has led to a proliferation of scams and other unsavory business practices. The issue reportedly came about on Monday when the country's delightfully named National Institute of Divinatory Arts met with officials from France's Ministry of Labor to sound the alarm about what they see as a growing problem. Noting that the country boasts a staggering 100,000 self-described psychics of various stripes, the group groused that only a tiny percentage of such individuals are genuinely gifted.

Specifically, the chairman of the organization, Youcef Sissaoui, told French officials that a whopping three-quarters of the country's fortune tellers "have no knowledge and are only trained to defraud people." Conversely, he estimated that a mere two to five percent of practicing psychics were "honest and really competent." As for how one could tell the difference, Sissaoui stressed that a genuine medium should only need to know "the first name and age" of their client. A faux fortune teller, he said, peppers the person with questions so that "it is the customer who provides all the information" that is cleverly turned back around on them as 'divine insight.'

In a testament to the popularity of fortune telling in France, Sissaoui indicated that the practice has become a jaw-dropping $3.5 billion industry in the country, thanks in large part to the increase in online psychics. Hoping to combat the problem of people being scammed by underhanded individuals, he suggested that the Ministry of Labor create a database of so-called soothsayers as a means of preventing fraudulent mediums from operating under different pseudonyms. Sissaoui also proposed a code of ethics for fortune tellers with, presumably, some kind of punishment should they stray from the proverbial psychic straight and narrow.