Posed as a psychic, scammed the elderly with a letter of 4.4 billion TL
Patrice Runner, who lives in the US, is charged with a mail fraud targeting vulnerable people, in which she earned more than 4.4 billion TL ($175 million).
The US Department of Justice said Runner was found guilty of defrauding millions of people during his decades-long mass mailing scheme.
The 57-year-old fake psychic with dual citizenship of Canada and France has sent millions of letters to people pretending to be from psychic Maria Duval. Letters sent between 1994 and 2014, it promised buyers luck and happiness in exchange for money.
It turned out that the psychic María Duval had nothing to do with the facts…
CUSTOMIZED DETAILS IN LETTERS…
In a letter sent in 2014, the letter promised that life would “get better” for the recipient, but demanded a fee of 959 TL ($37.50).
Designed to appear personalized using handwritten descriptions and personal details about the recipient, the letters were actually mass-produced and sent to thousands of people each week.
Runner was part of a team that exchanged mailing lists with other scammers, and the letters were typically aimed at elderly dementia patients and people with financial problems.
Those who fell for the scam would pay the initial fee before being bombarded with more “personalized” letters supposedly from Duval, offering more service and guidance for more money.
While some victims were reported to have lost thousands of dollars,Investigators discovered that Duval was a real person who worked as a psychic but was not involved in the scam.
Instead of contacting an oracle, victims would receive mail from scammers posing as a Montreal-based company called Infogest Direct Marketing. Runner acted as ringleader throughout the plan’s 20-year history and oversaw the day-to-day operation.
He covered his tracks by using dozens of front companies and living a nomadic lifestyle that included spells in Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Costa Rica and Spain.
The letters were printed and mailed serially with Duval’s signature…
20 YEARS FOR EACH LETTER
He was extradited from Spain in December 2020 and found guilty by a federal jury in the Eastern District of New York on 14 counts of mail fraud and related crimes. Runner faces 20 years in prison for each letter.
The mail fraud scheme ended in 2016 when Infogest Direct Marketing and its employees were prohibited from using the US Postal Service to send material “on behalf of any medium, psychic or astrologer.”
“For more than 20 years, Patrice Runner has orchestrated a predatory scheme targeting older Americans by sending personalized letters to millions of victims purporting to come from a world-renowned psychic,” said Chris Nielsen of the Philadelphia division of the Service for Postal Inspection.