Richard Malkin

Father of Charlotte Malkin
Husband of Joyce Malkin
Psychic who Claire visits several times in "Raised by Another"
Abruptly asks Claire and her friend to leave on the first visit, after a disturbing vision.
On her second visit, tells Claire that danger surrounds her baby and she must raise the child herself.
Ultimately convinces Claire to get on Flight 815 to give up her child for adoption to a couple in Los Angeles. He bought her ticket.
Tells Eko, who comes to visit his daughter Charlotte's "miracle", that he is a fraud.

Theories

Malkin is a Dharma Recruiter and put Claire in the flight so they could get to Aaron. This may be further supported in the '?' episode where he claims to be a fraud, and only gathers intelligence on people in order to exploit them.
Knew the plane was going to crash so he put Claire in the flight so she would be able to raise the baby by herself.
Malkin sent her on the flight hoping Aaron would end up being raised by the others. He says "they are good people" to her and makes sure she goes on that particular flight.
Whether he is part of Dharma or really is a psychic, he tried to get Aaron in The Others' hands.
Is actually a psychic, and dissuaded Mr. Eko from pursuing the miracle investigation into his daughter's resurrection to ensure that Eko boarded the plane for Los Angeles.
His daughter is the actual psychic, and the supplier of his "background research."
Malkin is, indeed, psychic. He [or his daughter Charlotte] picks up the vision of the plane crash from Eko and then he tells Claire to board the flight, having seen that she survives the crash.
When Claire came to him for the reading, Malkin, who up to that point had been a fraud, had his first genuine psychic vision.
Genuine psychic who lied to Eko in order to try to get rid of unwanted attention.
If he's truly conning people as he insists, he may be the original Sawyer.

This article/section is a stub
This article/section is short and lacking information. You can help Lostpedia by expanding it.