Patrice Runner was sentenced on Monday, April 15, 2024, to 10 years in prison in the Eastern District of New York. The court record shows a mail fraud operation that took more than $175 million from over 1.3 million Americans.
Runner, 57, holds Canadian and French citizenship and previously lived in Montreal. A federal jury convicted him in June 2023 on 14 charges: conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, eight counts of mail fraud, four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
What the letters said
According to the Justice Department, Runner ran the scheme with co-conspirators from 1994 through November 2014. Millions of Americans received letters that appeared to come from well-known “psychics”, either Maria Duval or Patrick Guerin. Neither of the two had any part in sending them, the department said.
The letters promised great wealth and happiness with the psychic’s help, in exchange for a fee. Many said the psychic had seen a vision specifically about the recipient. Nearly identical copies went to tens of thousands of people every week.
A victim who took the bait got dozens more letters, each offering personalized services or products for further payment. “Some victims made dozens of payments in response to the fraudulent letters, losing thousands of dollars,” the Justice Department wrote. It said the scheme preyed on people who were elderly and vulnerable.
Names came from a criminal circle that rented and traded mailing lists for fraud. The day-to-day mailing work ran out of Montreal. To hide his role, the department said, Runner used shell companies registered in Canada and Hong Kong, and while avoiding the law he lived in Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Costa Rica and Spain. He was arrested in Ibiza in 2020 and extradited from Spain to the United States in December of that year. Four co-conspirators had already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud, among them Maria Thanos and Philip Lett, both of Montreal.
In his own words
Runner told The Walrus in 2023 that he had never done anything illegal. Maybe it was not moral, he said, “but it doesn’t mean it’s fraud.” Speaking from a New York detention centre, he put the most lucrative years between 2005 and 2010 and said he once made US$23 million in a single year.
“I used to live like a rock star,” Runner said. “I was not cautious enough. I thought the mail-order business would be forever.”
Chris Nielsen of the US Postal Inspection Service’s Philadelphia Division saw it differently. “Patrice Runner’s extravagant lifestyle, born on the backs of millions of older and vulnerable Americans, has come to an end,” he said, calling the sentence “the appropriate punishment for someone who routinely preyed on vulnerable and elderly Americans.”
The appeal
Runner appealed, and in July 2025 a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit upheld the conviction in a 30-page order. “No more was needed for the jury to find fraudulent intent,” the panel wrote.
The court found the personalized-looking notes were mass-produced. “There was no psychic who had read the customers’ letters (or cashed their checks),” it said. The business that did the work was Runner’s Montreal firm, Direct Marketing Concepts. Another mailing offered a 5-million-year-old “Vibratory Crystal” for $45, promising positive energy and luck at games of chance. The court noted the crystals came from a bulk goods store and were shipped from China.
Public defender Allegra Glashausser argued that customers got what they paid for: hope, entertainment and a sense of mystery. “The government only points to the lack of psychic magic as what they didn’t receive,” she told the court on March 5. The panel was not persuaded. It held that jurors needed only to find that Runner intentionally lied for money, even if some customers were satisfied. Prosecutors say most of those customers were elderly, low-income recipients, many of them with dementia.
Sources
- Canadian con artist sentenced to 10 years for $175M psychic mail fraud in U.S. | Globalnews.ca
- Canadian Man Sentenced for Operating $175 Million Psychic Mass-Mailing Fraud Scheme | ArentFox Schiff
- Second Circuit keeps supernatural Canadian con man behind bars for $175 million scheme
