I know of one real mekubal in NY. He’s the real deal. How do I know this? Because he doesn’t advertise what he does anywhere. He doesn’t ask for a penny from anyone. He lives with next to nothing, yet he’s the happiest person I know. But the thing that convinces me the most is that whenever I’ve asked him for advice, it was never some crazy response. Everything he told me had a source. He would quote Shas, Rishonim, Acharonim, and many different sifrei Kaballah. None of the solutions seemed like some crazy voodoo thing. It was just things you’d know should be done, but you might not think of it. For example, he once told me to have more concentration on certain parts of davening. Yes, we should all be concentrating intently while davening, but how many of us really are? So I was told to concentrate on one specific piece. Guess what? It helped with what I had asked about. I didn’t have to eat or drink anything crazy. I didn’t have to wear anything extra. I just needed to concentrate while speaking with Hashem. That’s the Torah way!
A real mekubal is someone who does it properly. It says Kaballah shouldn’t be learned until you’ve spent years learning everything else. A real mekubal should be extremely well-versed in Tanach, Shas, and Rishonim. Unfortunately, many of them aren’t.