Millions Scammed
"I'm already thinking what I would do with all this money,"
one victim wrote in a letter response to psychic Marie Duval. "My wife would not
have to work anymore and would drive a newer car.” The letter continued. “We could
install air conditioning in our house." At the bottom of the letter, the victim wrote, "I forgot! A good amount of this
money would go to the bank." This is an example of the response that someone
would write after receiving a letter from Marie Duval. Her name and face was at the front and
center of probably the biggest scam involving the most people ever. This psychic scam has scammed
money from millions of people around the world. Investigators found out that
this scam has made more than $200 million dollars from victims in
just the US and Canada alone. Just who was the real mastermind behind this
massive scam? Did the psychic Marie Duval even exist? Just how did
this scam run for decades? A Simple Letter
A typical unsuspecting victim would receive a letter in the
mail. To them, it looked like a personal, handwritten letter. What a lot of
people that replied would have in common was desperation. Most of the time, they’re
elderly people suffering from debilitating illnesses. Sometimes they’re people in debt
struggling to get their life back together. The scam is as simple as it gets. Millions of
people would receive letters that made a bold claim. It promised them that a French psychic
named Marie Duval had the secrets to turn their lives around. And all they need to do is send
in money, often around $40 bucks, for her help. Of course, most people just threw away the
letters. But for those people who were vulnerable, it was a different story. The massive
success is because of the letters’ ability to take advantage of emotionally and
financially vulnerable people. To them, the letter looks like it was specifically
written to them, and them alone. Purchased Lists
The scammers zeroed in on potential victims by buying lists of
targeted demographics from data brokers that sell this information. The list contained many
personal details, such as names, addresses, birthdates. And scammers can easily deduce
other likely personal details from this data. Sometimes they also place ads in
newspapers disguised as a research study, and promise participants that they could end up
winning money in a sweepstake. They’ll ask readers very specific personal questions, such as for
their time of birth or their favorite tv shows. And because the scammers would turn around and
use this information on the very person they’re surveying in the letters they send, it’ll look
as if a real psychic HAS written them a letter. This is what was brilliant about the
scam. Having that information increased the amount of correspondence. These letters would
sometimes appear to be from well-known psychics. Marie Duval is the most popular psychic used.
Patrick Guerin was another psychic who was supposedly writing the personalized letter. But
of course, the scammers were just sending nearly identical letters with personal details swapped
out to tens of thousands of people each week. Repeated Letters
So when one of their victims would actually reply to one letter, the scammer would send even more letters asking
for more money. The money was supposed to be for supposedly “unique and supernatural objects” and
“personalized astrological services and studies”. But obviously the objects were just
cheap, mass produced plastic ornaments. People were at least still getting SOMEthing
for their money sometimes in this scam. As for the astrological studies, they were
just completely ignored. In some replies, Marie would go ahead and introduce her
psychic friend Patrick, who would then send his own letters offering even more
good fortune and seeking even more money. And a lot of letters would then ask
for more personal information along with the payments of course.
And some targeted people would even get requests such as photos of
themselves or even locks of hair. According to a deep investigation by CNN, tens of thousands of letters were sent out
per month. It adds up to millions of letters per year in the U.S. alone. Some of the letters
included such things as fake coffee cup stains and little notes written on the side
to make them look more realistic! The Search for Marie Duval
So who WAS Marie Duval? Was she actually a real person? Some people
speculated that she was a made up person, while other people were adamant that she was
completely real and enjoying her retirement in the South of France. Other people were absolutely
convinced she was the mastermind of the scam. Was she actually part of the giant scam? Even
the U.S. government hasn't been able to track her down. Government officials typically
struggle with international cases because they don’t have jurisdiction outside
their borders, rendering them powerless. The International Consumer Protection and
Enforcement Network described Duval as a quote, "probably fictitious" character. Organization
officials led an effort to shut down her ads and letters in nine countries. No one
seemed to know where Marie Duval was. However, a couple of journalists claimed to
have actually interviewed her. An Australian radio station supposedly interviewed Duval back
in early 2000. They didn’t ask any questions with the scam accusations that surrounded her.
Instead, Duval spent the roughly 15-minute interview simply talking up using her supposed
psychic abilities in an effort to help people. CNN reported that Belgian journalist
Jan Vanlangendonck interviewed a woman claiming to be Marie Duval asking some
more demanding questions. According to him, she admitted that she didn't sign the
letters herself but defended the business. Letter Operation
Who was it that was actually sending the letters? There’s
no way the scam was the work of just one person with the massive volume of letters
involved. Back in 2014, the US government had enough. They were tired of Americans getting
scammed by some psychic named Marie Duval. The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit
against her looking to stop the mail operations. They also named Patrick Guerin
in the lawsuit. Investigators found that the letters originated from a small Canadian
company called Infogest Direct Marketing. Shell Companies
What Infogest would do was send large batches of letters all over
the US and Canada before they actually individually mailed out letters to
their targets. This was an obvious attempt to evade authorities who had
tried to shut down the letters before. For example, this was the path for one
particular batch of letters. Infogest would first contract out a company to print
the letters. The letters then were shipped across the Canadian border by the same hired
company to Albany, New York. And that’s where the letters were mailed out individually in batches
of as many as 50,000 thousand letters at a time. When people would write a reply, the responses
were sent to a US or Canadian address. However, the addresses were just to commercial mailboxes run by a Hong Kong-based company
called Destiny Research Center. At the mailbox locations, the response
letters were bundled and sent to a completely different company called Data
Marketing Group in Long Island, New York. This company was in charge of
processing payments. And they directed ANOTHER company to send out the cheap ornaments
that people sent payments for. As you can tell, there were plenty of companies used to run the
operation! However, most likely these companies were probably just shell companies that were
all owned by the same group of individuals. While the payments were small, with the sheer
number of people, the total amount of money added up to millions of dollars. Data
Marketing Group allegedly processed as much as $500,000 thousand dollars every two weeks! What about the personal responses and
personal items people would send? According to the department of justice, the company
simply just threw it away. And the people that sent responses were then marked off in a
database to be sent new letters again asking for more money. The creators of this scam
were looking for repeat lifetime victims! Cease and Desist
In late 2014, the Department of Justice shut down the ability
to send letters by both Data Marketing Group and Infogest Direct Marketing. After
6 long years, the US Government was finally able to extradite a Canadian man
named Patrice Runner from Spain in 2020. Runner was charged by the Department of
Justice with 18 counts of mail and wire fraud, conspiracy to commit mail and wire
fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. They accused him of
being the mastermind of a decades-long psychic mail fraud scheme from 1994
all the way until November 2014. The US government was able to locate and charge
two of Runner’s co-conspirators Maria Thanos and Philip Lett in 2018. They pleaded guilty in
June of 2018 of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Runner was able to use a series of shell companies
to hide his personal involvement in the scam. He was actually indicted earlier in October 2018,
and he was arrested in Ibiza in April of 2019. The government was able to return more
than $200,000 thousand dollars worth of cash and money order payments sent
in by nearly 6,000 victims. These were the recovered envelopes with funds that
had yet to be processed by the scammers. Of course, the vast majority of victims
haven't received any money back. And even if more money is recovered,
it’ll be extremely difficult to figure out how to distribute the money
properly to the people scammed. But all this doesn’t answer whether
or not Marie Duval was involved. Or if she even is a real person! True Identity
Surprisingly, Marie Duval IS a real person, as found out by
CNN in their investigation behind the scams. And she WAS a renowned psychic.
But is she the real mastermind? Marie Duval’s real name is Maria Carolina
Gamba. Duval was the name she picked up from her second marriage. She was able to build
a growing reputation as a psychic throughout the 1970s and 1980s while doing consultations
and writing horoscopes in newspaper columns. Was Duval actually the mastermind? Supposedly,
according to Marie’s sister, it was in the mid 90s when Marie sold the rights to the
name she had created for herself, “Maria Duval''. She entered into
a contract with a group of people who was supposed to use her name to
promote the sale of astrology charts. And her sister claimed that anything that happened
afterwards, didn’t have anything to do with her. But apparently, the people behind the
operation changed the business model. And that’s when all the letters in her name
began. And the people who were in on the scam, sold off the scam to other scammers. Patrice
Runner wasn’t the original scammer who ran the Marie Duval psychic scheme. And because the
scammers kept on selling off the business, it was one major factor why the scam
was able to keep going for so long. Questionable Involvement
CNN was able to track down Marie Duval’s son. He claimed that his mother was very upset about
the letters, but there was nothing that she could do since she signed away her name. But what
about the times when she defended the letters? He said she had signed non-disclosure agreements
that prevented her from disparaging the business in any way. And she wasn’t able to use her
Marie Duval name to do business anymore. But still, she received royalties and payments
from the scam. And that was the money she had lived on. Filed business records show that she
had been the sole shareholder of a Swiss company called Astroforce. And in 2008, Duval had
received nearly $200,000 thousand dollars when the company dissolved in the same
year. This was concrete clear evidence that she had been directly or at the very
least indirectly involved with the letters. Was Marie Duval actually actively involved
in this giant scam that involved millions of people? Or was she actually a victim
from the real masterminds of the scam, and forced into accepting the dirty money? Here’s what’s next!
