Psychic Scam Preyed on Elderly, Raking in $175M Over 20 Years

For 20 years beginning in 1994, a French-Canadian man ran a psychic scam by mail that defrauded people, many of them elderly, out of $175 million. This month, he was convicted by a jury and is headed to jail, the Justice Department says. "For over 20 years, Patrice Runner managed a predatory scheme that targeted older [Americans] by mailing personalized letters to millions of victims purporting to be from a world renown psychic," said Chris Nielsen of the Postal Inspection Service in a news release. "[The] verdict should have come as no surprise to Mr. Runner." 

Authorities alleged that Runner was behind the scam that, from 1994 to 2014, sent about 56 million letters from Canada to the United States. The scheme targeted people in desperate positions and promised them that guidance, talismans, and crystals from a psychic named Maria Duval would turn their lives around—as long as they continued to pay. Some of the people targeted had dementia, the Washington Post reported. Others had recently experienced a financial reversal and were trying to get back on their feet. They received letters from someone claiming to be a European psychic. 

The letters, written in cursive, made vague predictions and included sets of lucky numbers, the Post reported. One from 2014 promised the recipient's life was "going to take a turn for the better"—as long as they sent in $37.50 for an "astral-clairvoyant forecast." The letters were sent from a Montreal-based marketing firm with several decades' history of involvement in questionable schemes, investigators said. Runner ran Infogest Direct Marketing and tried hiding his involvement in the scam while living in Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, France. and Spain, prosecutors said. Money raised from victims was often transferred to overseas bank accounts controlled by Runner. CNN reported that ultimately, the scam ensnared 60 times more victims than Bernie Madoff's infamous Ponzi scheme.

According to court documents, Infogest printed the letters in Canada and drove them to Albany, New York, where they were mailed in batches, sometimes of 50,000 a time, the Post reported. Although the letters "appeared personalized, repeatedly referring to the recipient by name," an indictment said, they were mass-produced with only small variations. According to court documents, personal information that would appear in the letters—including recipients' dates and places of birth—were purchased from data brokers. "You were born under the sign of Taurus … Being born on May 22, 1927 in Kansas City at 12:00," one letter read. "I can already see some aspects of your personality. Like everyone, you have some faults."

With that seemingly personal connection, Runner encouraged recipients to send in payments to Maria Duval—about $40 each time, including personal items such as locks of hair—and continue sending them in, promising happiness, health, and success. And when recipients stopped paying, the letters would turn ominous. "When I wrote to say I didn't have that kind of cash, the letters got even more frightening," one woman told the Sunday Mail. "I was so scared I couldn't eat or sleep, worrying whether I'd be hit by more bad luck."

Maria Duval is a real person. But when authorities searched her home, they found she had nothing to do with the fraud. Similar con games are now known by authorities as "Maria Duval scams." In 2016, CNN interviewed Duval's son, Antoine Palfroy. "He told us his mother lost control of her name, that she entered into an ill-fated business deal," the news outlet reported. "She had once been a local psychic, he explained, who was paid for her consultations and sometimes worked with police to find missing people. That all ended, he said, when European businessmen approached her many years ago and she agreed to sell the rights to her name. At first, the business peddled astrology charts, he recalled. But the business model changed and a new scheme was born: the mass mailing of letters penned in Maria Duval's name." The network secured an interview with Maria Duval herself in 2018 but found her unable to speak cogently, apparently suffering from dementia. 

Runner, a Canadian and French citizen, was arrested by authorities in Ibiza in 2019. He was charged with 18 counts of mail fraud and wire fraud.  On June 16, a jury found him guilty of 14 of those counts. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each count and will be sentenced at a later date, the Justice Department said in a statement.