The Best Rip-off Ever Written
Patrice Runner was sixteen years outdated, in Montreal within the Eighties, when he got here throughout a collection of ads in magazines and newspapers that enchanted him. It was the language of the advertisements, the spare use of phrases and the emotionality of straightforward phrases, that drew him in. Some advertisements supplied new merchandise and devices, like microscopes and wristwatches; some supplied providers or guides on weight reduction, reminiscence enchancment, and velocity studying. Others marketed one thing much less tangible and extra alluring—the promise of nice riches or a future foretold.
“The wisest man I ever knew,” one significantly memorable advert learn, “instructed me one thing I by no means forgot: ‘Most individuals are too busy incomes a residing to make any cash.’” The advert, which started showing in newspapers throughout North America in 1973, was written by self-help creator Joe Karbo, who vowed to share his secret—no schooling, capital, luck, expertise, youth, or expertise required—to fabulous wealth. All he requested was for folks to mail in $10 and so they’d obtain his e book and his secret. “What does it require? Perception.” The advert was titled “The Lazy Man’s Method to Riches,” and it helped promote almost 3 million copies of Karbo’s e book.
This energy of provocative copywriting enthralled Runner, who, in time, turned an adolescent fascination right into a profession and a multi-million-dollar enterprise. Now fifty-seven, Runner spent most of his life on the helm of a number of prolific mail-order companies based out of Montreal. By means of advertisements in print media and unsolicited junk mail, he bought self-help guides, weight-loss schemes, and, most infamously, the providers of a world-famous psychic named Maria Duval. “In the event you’ve bought a particular bottle of bubbly that you just’ve been saving for celebrating nice information, then now’s the time to open it,” learn one nine-page letter that his enterprise mailed to 1000’s of individuals. Beneath a headshot of Duval, it famous she had “greater than 40 years of correct and verifiable predictions.” The letter promised “sweeping modifications and enhancements in your life” in “precisely 27 days.” The recipients have been urged to answer and enclose a cheque or cash order for $50 to obtain a “mysterious talisman with the ability to draw LUCK and MONEY” in addition to a “Information to My New Life” that included profitable lottery numbers.
Greater than one million folks in Canada and the USA have been captivated sufficient to mail cash in change for varied psychic providers. Some folks, although, finally started to query whether or not they have been really corresponding with a legendary psychic and felt that they had been cheated. In 2020, after being pursued by legislation enforcement for years, Runner was arrested in Spain and extradited to the US on eighteen counts, together with mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit cash laundering, for orchestrating one of many largest mail-order scams in North American historical past.
In early 2022, I wrote a letter to Runner in jail, asking if he would think about being interviewed. Whereas the so-called Maria Duval letter scheme had attracted intensive media protection, Runner had by no means spoken to a reporter. “I bought your letter yesterday night. First I used to be shocked after which moved by it,” Runner mentioned to me over the cellphone from a detention centre in Brooklyn, New York. “I used to be intrigued by the truth that it was handwritten. Was it finished on goal to intrigue me? As a result of it’s uncommon at present to obtain, particularly from knowledgeable, a letter that’s handwritten with no letterhead. . . . You’re a great copywriter.” Over the next yr, I interviewed Runner dozens of instances—in individual on the jail, by way of electronic mail, and over the cellphone—within the lead-up to his trial.
Runner instructed me that whereas he all the time examined the boundaries of enterprise, he by no means crossed a authorized line. “Possibly it’s not ethical, possibly it’s bullshit,” he as soon as mentioned. “Nevertheless it doesn’t imply it’s fraud.”
One day in 1977, in Saint-Tropez, a city on the French Riviera, the spouse of an area dentist drove off and disappeared. Search events, police, and helicopters scoured the coast however to no avail. Maria Duval, then an novice psychic, learn in regards to the case in newspaper articles and supplied to assist. She requested for the lacking girl’s birthdate, a current photograph of her, and a map of the realm. She positioned the photograph on prime of the map and let a pendulum swing backwards and forwards till it hovered over one space. When that space was searched, the lacking girl was discovered within the precise spot Duval had predicted. The story helped catapult her popularity throughout Europe and past. Lore has it that she helped find as much as nineteen lacking individuals, predicted election outcomes, and helped folks obtain wealth by means of her stock-market predictions. From Italy to Brazil, tabloids touted her clairvoyant skills, with one Swedish outlet claiming that “politicians and businessmen stand in her queue to know extra about their future.” She additionally allegedly tracked down a misplaced canine belonging to French actress Brigitte Bardot.
Rumours swirled that she is perhaps a fabrication, a caricature used to con folks into believing.
Over time, two European businessmen acknowledged the industrial potential of Duval’s famous person popularity. By the early Nineties, Jacques Mailland and Jean-Claude Reuille had develop into famend within the mail-order trade in Europe and past. Reuille reportedly ran a Swiss firm referred to as Infogest, which managed the worldwide distribution of direct-mail letters that used Duval’s picture and fame to promote personalised psychic-services and trinkets with purported magical properties. Mailland was a French copywriter and businessman who allegedly wrote the advert copy of a lot of the letters, making it seem as if Duval had written it herself. He was additionally an adviser to Duval and helped propel her to stardom, with some information stories later referring to him as her “private secretary.” (Mailland reportedly died in a motorbike accident in 2015; Reuille didn’t reply to requests for remark however has beforehand denied having any enterprise relationship with Duval.)
It was within the early Nineties that Runner says he first heard the names Mailland and Reuille—and the identify Maria Duval. Just a few years earlier than, Runner had dropped out of the College of Ottawa to show himself copywriting and had launched his personal mail-order enterprise, primarily based out of Montreal, that bought gadgets together with sun shades and cameras. In June 1994, Runner, who additionally holds French citizenship, travelled to Europe along with his then girlfriend within the hope of assembly Duval and buying a licensing contract for North America. He says he discovered her quantity within the white pages of a cellphone sales space. Duval, to his delight, invited the couple to her villa within the small village of Callas. Runner’s then girlfriend recollects that Duval performed a psychic studying on them and knew particulars about their lives that the girl couldn’t probably have identified, together with that she had misplaced her father at age six. “I used to be fairly skeptical at the moment,” Runner’s ex-girlfriend instructed me. “She actually satisfied me that she had a sixth sense.”
By the top of that yr, Runner says, he inked an settlement with Duval that allowed him to make use of her likeness for direct-mailing operations in North America. (Runner has by no means been in a position to produce that settlement.) Beneath an organization that turned Infogest Direct Advertising and marketing, he positioned print advertisements throughout Canada and the US for her psychic providers. He says he paid Duval royalties value about 5 % of revenues, amounting to a number of hundred thousand {dollars} per yr. Cash started flowing in as he discovered success writing the letter copy himself. “With writing,” Runner instructed me, “you may get the eye of somebody, and on the finish, after a couple of minutes, the individual sends a cheque, to get a product, to an tackle or firm they’ve by no means heard of.”
Runner’s enterprise exploded. Along with advertisements, Infogest Direct Advertising and marketing started sending letters to folks’s mailboxes that mixed copy written by Runner and diversifications of content material produced by his European counterparts. They’d a typical format: typed letters or photocopies of handwritten ones offered as written by Maria Duval herself, requesting cost for astrological readings, fortune telling, or lottery numbers. Some correspondence directed recipients to buy supposedly supernatural objects, whereas others urged them to make use of offered inexperienced envelopes to mail private gadgets—household pictures, palm prints, locks of hair—in opposition to a promise that the psychic would use them to conduct personalised rituals. “As soon as this envelope has been sealed, it could be opened ONLY by me,” learn one letter that included Duval’s photocopied signature.
Individuals who responded typically obtained lottery numbers or fortunes within the mail; typically they obtained objects or crystals. However additionally they obtained extra letters—typically over 100 in only a few months—asking for extra money. Within the twenty years between 1994 and 2014, Runner’s enterprise introduced in additional than $175 million (US) from almost one million and a half folks throughout Canada and the US.
Many who responded to the Maria Duval advertisements and letters, in North America and Europe, match a common profile: they have been typically older and typically economically susceptible. They have been believers—in astrology, in psychics, in fortune telling—who longed for transformation, salvation, fortune. In December 1998, a seventeen-year-old lady named Clare Ellis drowned in a river in England. In line with the Night Chronicle, a Maria Duval letter was present in her pocket. Ellis’s mom instructed the newspaper that within the weeks main as much as the dying, her daughter had been corresponding with Duval, from whom she had additionally bought charms and pendants. Her mom claimed that Ellis’s behaviour had develop into erratic, which she was satisfied was linked to her daughter’s communications with Duval. “These items simply shouldn’t be allowed,” the mother told the media. “We even bought letters from this girl for months after Clare had died.”
By the early 2000s, numerous folks world wide have been going public about how they felt that they had been scammed by receiving a Duval letter. One on-line discussion board referred to as Astrocat Postal Rip-off Warning Web page had a message board devoted to Duval’s letters. “[I] am additionally indignant about this fraud she bought me for about 240.00,” one individual wrote. “[I] mailed the merchandise again and by no means have gotten refunded my cash.” One other: “I spent near 135.00 earlier than I caught on. your [sic] fortunate should you get something however extra letters requesting extra money. . . . I want we may put her out of enterprise.”
Within the US, one eighty-four-year-old girl, who had taken care of her sick husband for over 9 years, misplaced cash enjoying the lottery with numbers gleaned from a Duval letter, in response to courtroom paperwork obtained by The Walrus. One man sought solace within the correspondence after having separated from his spouse and being the sufferer of successful and run. He mailed a number of funds, believing that Duval was performing rituals to assist him. He included his cellphone quantity in his correspondence, however Duval by no means wrote again and by no means referred to as.
Duval remained mysterious and elusive till Belgian investigative reporter Jan Vanlangendonck, working for Radio 1, tracked her down after listeners reported being scammed. In 2007, he turned one of many first journalists to interview Duval in regards to the letters. At a resort in Paris, he confronted her about accusations that she was exploiting susceptible folks. “I’m certainly responding to folks’s emotions, and my letters are certainly despatched in bulk,” she instructed him. “However what’s improper with that? What I do is authorized.” This was seemingly the final time she mentioned something publicly for over a decade. Some later speculated that she was unaware of the diploma to which enterprise schemes working underneath her identify had exploded world wide. It’s attainable she had regarded the opposite means, or possibly she was the one being taken benefit of. Runner’s ex-girlfriend, who says she was in contact with Duval as not too long ago as 2012, says that Duval appeared happy together with her varied enterprise preparations. Duval has by no means been charged with a criminal offense in North America. (Maria Duval and her representatives couldn’t be reached regardless of a number of requests for remark.)
Regardless that varied legislation enforcement businesses and media have been circling the Duval operation, a whole bunch of 1000’s of individuals saved receiving letters and paying for providers. “Essentially the most profitable years of the Duval letter enterprise have been from 2005 to 2010,” Runner as soon as instructed me, reaching $23 million (US) in a single yr.
When Patrice Runner was round eleven, within the late Nineteen Seventies, his mom, a author, started looping him in on the household’s monetary struggles, he recollects. Runner’s father had left a couple of years earlier, sending month-to-month sums as little one help. Ideas of a profession have been a good distance off, however Runner says he remembers feeling that every one he needed was to “get wealthy” so he wouldn’t battle like his mom. He says he as soon as requested a pal, “Have you learnt a easy option to develop into a millionaire?” When the pal mentioned he didn’t, Runner replied: “It’s straightforward. Discover a option to solely make $1 a million instances.” At nineteen, Runner began his first mail-order enterprise, with $80, promoting weight-loss booklets and how-to books on a variety of matters.
Years later, propelled by the Duval letters, Runner achieved the monetary success he had lengthy craved. However the enterprise itself was lean, with solely a small variety of workers in Montreal, together with Mary Thanos as director of operations, Daniel Sousse as buyer relationships supervisor, and Philip Lett as director of promoting. “They have been loyal and reliable,” Runner instructed me. “I used to be actually reliant on them.” (Sousse didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark; The Walrus was unable to achieve Thanos and Lett by the point of publication.)
Some workers had confirmed their loyalty years earlier than, when one other of Runner’s mail-order enterprise ventures was shut down by US legislation enforcement. A person named Ronald Waldman remembers opening the New York Publish to compensate for sports activities one morning in 1997 and being struck by a splashy commercial for Svelt-Patch, a pores and skin patch that presupposed to soften away physique fats. On the time, Waldman occurred to be a lawyer with the US Federal Commerce Fee, which enforces anti-trust legislation and upholds shopper safety. As a part of the FTC’s Operation Waistline, he had been tasked with investigating corporations making doubtful weight-loss claims, in an period of questionable oils and dietary supplements and pushy advertisements by firms resembling Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers. “I knew immediately that the [Svelt-Patch] claims have been so patently egregious on the floor,” Waldman, who’s now retired, instructed me. He found the Svelt-Patch advertisements have been showing in no less than forty-three publications, together with TV Information, Cosmopolitan, and the Boston Globe. He and his colleagues shortly traced the merchandise to Canada, to a Quebec-based firm that additionally did enterprise as United Analysis Heart, Inc. Runner was the corporate’s president.
The FTC gave the corporate an opportunity to supply scientific proof to again its weight-loss claims. When Runner and the corporate failed to come back again with ample proof, they have been ordered to pay the FTC $375,000 (US) for use, partially, as redress for individuals who had purchased the patches. “Patrice Runner was an enormous identify that I used to be acutely aware of after the investigation,” Waldman instructed me. “My expertise is that individuals concerned in fraud and critical misleading advertising and marketing practices, they hardly ever discover God, if you realize what I imply.”
Journalists on the Globe and Mail and at W5, Canada’s longest-running investigative tv program, instructed Reinhold they, too, have been trying into the advertisements. The W5 episode “The Food plan Path” aired in January 2002 and adopted host and reporter Wei Chen as she spoke with individuals who had fallen prey to the advertisements. W5 examined the Plant Macerat complement and decided it wasn’t rather more than a diuretic that would result in dehydration. The reporters traced Plant Macerat to an workplace constructing in Montreal occupied by an organization referred to as PhytoPharma. W5 uncovered that Plant Macerat was manufactured in Florida and the advertisements have been dealt with by a New Jersey firm, with funds ending up in an Irish financial institution. PhytoPharma itself was registered in Panama, however, Chen famous, it may all be traced again to an organization in Montreal: Infogest Direct Advertising and marketing.
Over time, Runner and his household moved world wide. He and his then girlfriend and two youngsters moved from Montreal to the mountain resort city of Whistler, British Columbia, the place they spent the winter excessive snowboarding. They went heli-skiing in New Zealand and bungee leaping world wide, a pursuit of what Runner described as “an attraction to excessive sports activities.” In addition they moved to Costa Rica after which to a small village in Switzerland, the place his youngsters attended an elite worldwide boarding college that price almost $100,000 per yr in tuition. All of the whereas, as ventures like Svelt-Patch and Plant Macerat have been halted, Infogest Direct Advertising and marketing was bringing in tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from folks responding to the advertisements providing psychic providers.
In 2014, the corporate turned the topic of a US civil investigation into its Duval letter operation. The US Division of Justice despatched a discover of a lawsuit and a short lived restraining order to, amongst others, Thanos, Lett, and Sousse—in addition to Duval herself—to halt the operation because it was “predatory” and “fraudulent.” Runner, nevertheless, was not named. He claims that, up till this level, he had been unaware that the envelopes of private results that recipients believed they have been sending to Duval for personalised psychic readings have been, actually, not being despatched to her in France—and so they hadn’t been for years. In line with courtroom paperwork, in 2014, a US postal inspector uncovered that the private letters, locks of hair, palm prints, household pictures, and unopened inexperienced envelopes addressed to Duval had been despatched to a receiving firm in New York and thrown into dumpsters.
Runner continued to maneuver round—to Paris after which, in 2015, to Ibiza, Spain, with a brand new spouse and their youngsters. Runner instructed me that every one the strikes to completely different international locations had “nothing to do with the enterprise” however that every was pushed by circumstances involving his youngsters—trying to find one of the best faculties, one of the best climate for his or her favoured actions—and the truth that he may work remotely. The US authorities believed in any other case, portraying the fixed strikes as makes an attempt to evade detection and a technique to assist funnel cash into shell corporations from what had develop into his most constantly profitable enterprise: the Maria Duval letters.
In the meantime, journalists at CNN had begun digging into the Duval letters after receiving complaints from recipients. These included a Canadian girl named Chrissie Stevens, whose mom, Doreen, who suffered from Alzheimer’s earlier than she died, had mailed 1000’s of {dollars} to somebody she thought was Duval. “She was shocked, dismayed, and ashamed when she realized her stupidity and the monetary injury she’d brought on herself,” Stevens told CNN in 2016. The journalists managed to trace down Duval in individual and interviewed her and her son, Antoine Palfroy, at her villa in Callas. Duval had dementia, so Palfroy answered a lot of the questions. He claimed that his mom by no means wrote any of the letters as a part of the enterprise operations and that she was usually hamstrung by the rigidity of the contracts she signed. If she ever defended the letters, it was as a result of she was contractually obligated to take action. “She’s extra of a sufferer than an lively agent in all of this,” Palfroy instructed CNN. “All paths result in Maria Duval, the identify, not the individual. Between the identify and the individual, they’re various things. Maria Duval is my mom . . . bodily it’s her, however commercially it’s not.” The journalists additionally revealed Duval’s actual identify as Maria Carolina Gamba, born in Milan, Italy, in 1937, and in addition uncovered contradictions in a variety of Duval’s supernatural claims to fame, together with a denial from Brigitte Bardot’s consultant that Duval had something to do with discovering the actress’s lacking canine.
In June 2016, Runner’s workers at Infogest Direct Advertising and marketing, together with Thanos, Sousse, and Lett, signed a consent decree—an settlement with out an act of contrition or legal responsibility—with the US authorities that barred them from utilizing the US mail system to distribute advertisements, solicitations, or promotional supplies on behalf of any psychics, clairvoyants, or astrologers—or any advertisements that purport to extend the recipient’s odds of profitable a lottery. The consent decree was additionally signed by Duval herself. Regardless of all of the renewed media consideration and scrutiny, although, Runner once more prevented being named publicly. Two years later, Thanos and Lett pleaded responsible to fraud prices. Behind the scenes, US officers have been homing in on Runner.
By the top of 2018, the US federal authorities had solidified a case in opposition to him, indicting him on eighteen counts. Two years later, in December 2020, after extradition negotiations, Runner was handcuffed in Ibiza and flown from Madrid to New York, to a detention centre in Brooklyn.
The indictment made a number of claims: for round twenty years, Infogest Direct Advertising and marketing ran a direct-mail operation to rip-off victims who have been “aged and susceptible”; Runner was the corporate’s president in control of workers who ran the each day operations, together with monitoring the letters and receiving funds; Runner and his associates used shell corporations world wide, together with one named Future Analysis Heart, in addition to non-public mailboxes in a variety of US states. From these mailboxes, the correspondence from letter recipients was despatched to a “caging service,” an organization that receives and handles return mail and funds on behalf of direct-mail corporations. Runner’s firm used one such caging service, in New York, the place workers sorted the incoming mail and eliminated the funds. The cash was then dispersed by way of wire transfers into accounts managed by Runner and his associates at banks world wide, together with in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
“It’s a crime once you deceive them about their beliefs and take their cash.”
All through our conversations over the previous yr, Runner maintained that neither he nor his companies ever crossed a authorized line. Many individuals, his perspective projected, need to imagine in one thing magical—be it the ability of a weight-loss drug or the ability of a psychic. And inherent in that perception is a measure of accepted deceit. If that wasn’t the case, Runner insisted, folks would have requested for his or her a refund. He as soon as pointed to the truth that the Duval letters supplied a lifetime assure. (“So, you’ve bought completely nothing to lose by placing your religion in us,” learn one letter from 2013.) “Our clients purchased a product, and in the event that they weren’t glad, they bought a refund,” Runner instructed me. In line with courtroom paperwork obtained by The Walrus, Runner’s defence famous that no less than 96 % of the individuals who despatched cash to Infogest Direct Advertising and marketing didn’t ask for a refund. “And most of them purchased many times,” he instructed me.
Earlier than the trial, Runner testified that he couldn’t afford to rent a lawyer and was granted a public defender. “I used to stay like a rock star,” he as soon as instructed me. “I used to be not cautious sufficient. I believed the mail-order enterprise could be eternally.”
United States of America v. Patrice Runner started on June 5, 2023, on the Jap District of New York courtroom in Central Islip. Thanos and Lett testified, as did a number of individuals who felt that they had been scammed by the letters. The jury heard arguments that centred on a couple of key questions: Was this a case of purchaser beware involving a reliable enterprise? Or was this case as an alternative the definition of fraud that preyed on susceptible folks?
“The small print of his scheme is perhaps sophisticated, however the fraud itself may be very easy,” prosecutor John Burke instructed the jury. “It’s a fundamental con utilizing a psychic character to reel folks in with lies and take their cash. . . . [Runner] satisfied the victims that Maria Duval cared about them and their issues and that she would use her skills to assist them. Then Mr. Runner took as a lot cash as he probably may from the victims by means of an limitless stream of extra lies and extra fraud.” Burke went on to record many ways in which Runner tried to distance himself from the operation, together with by taking his identify off firm paperwork, creating offshore corporations, and ordering workers to shred paperwork that contained his personal handwriting. The prosecution confirmed proof that the letters have been printed en masse and that the allegedly non secular trinkets have been actually mass-produced objects with “Made in China” stickers eliminated.
At trial, the defence and the prosecution each agreed that Runner and his associates deliberately misled the letter recipients. However Runner’s defence argued that psychic providers are inherently deceptive and subsequently couldn’t be fraud. Runner’s lawyer, James Darrow, instructed the jury that nothing the federal government offered proved that Runner supposed to defraud his clients, nor to hurt them. What it proved was that Runner merely ran a enterprise that “promised an expertise of astrological services and products.” Darrow underscored the perceived distinction between deception, which isn’t a criminal offense, and fraud:
“We pay a magician to expertise magic. He isn’t defrauding us out of our cash when he lies in regards to the magic. Deception, sure. Fraud, no. Sure, he intends to deceive us, to trick us, and he intends to take our cash, positively, however he doesn’t intend to defraud us, to hurt us by doing that. Or we pay Disney to expertise their magic. They’re not defrauding us once they faux that Mickey is actual. Deception, yeah. However fraud, no. Or possibly we pay for WWE tickets or therapeutic crystals or dream catchers or Ouija boards, or possibly we’re one of many hundreds of thousands of People who pay for astrology. In all of that, there might be deception, certain. However we’re not harmed by it. Our cost isn’t loss. It’s not harm. Why? As a result of we bought the expertise that we paid for; we bought that magic present; we bought that faux WWE match; we bought that therapeutic crystal that most likely doesn’t heal; and we bought that astrology.
Darrow countered a number of questions that had come up within the trial. That some “clients,” as he referred to as them, felt cheated as a result of they didn’t obtain what that they had hoped? “That’s simply astrology,” he instructed the jury, “and typically it doesn’t repair life.” That the corporate focused older people? That’s simply “customary advertising and marketing,” he mentioned, to discover a demographic the place the demand for a service lies. And that some correspondence mailed to Duval had been discovered within the rubbish? Darrow in contrast them to letters that youngsters mail to Santa Claus—the postal service has no obligation to maintain these both.
The prosecution concluded with a easy argument: “All of us have beliefs,” lawyer Charles Dunn instructed the jury. “It’s possible you’ll suppose my beliefs are loopy. I may lend a hand about your beliefs. We might imagine different individuals are silly for what they imagine. That’s okay. That’s not a criminal offense. What’s not okay is making the most of folks due to what they imagine. What’s not okay is mendacity to them since you suppose they’re a idiot. And it’s felony, it’s a crime once you deceive them about their beliefs and take their cash.” Dunn rebuffed the notion that Runner and his enterprise have been providing leisure: “What Patrice Runner supplied was faux spirituality. . . . He took benefit of individuals’s non secular beliefs, and he lied to them, and he took their cash.”
After almost every week of trial, the jury agreed, convicting Patrice Runner on eight counts of mail fraud, 4 counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit cash laundering. He was discovered not responsible on 4 counts of mail fraud. He faces a sentence of as much as twenty years in jail on every of the fourteen counts.
Runner has lengthy thought-about the likelihood that he may spend a long time behind bars. Whereas awaiting trial, he had been surrounded by inmates who fervently believed they might be launched after trial, solely to face the alternative. “I don’t pray to get out of right here,” Runner as soon as instructed me earlier than the trial. “It’s discouraging to see folks praying for what they count on to occur, like getting set free of jail, versus what they really find yourself getting.”