A federal judge in Brooklyn sentenced Patrice Runner to 10 years in prison on April 19, 2024, for orchestrating a mail fraud scheme that defrauded more than 1.3 million people of $175 million over nearly two decades. Runner, 57, a dual citizen of Canada and France, was convicted in June 2024 on charges including conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering.
The operation, which began in the early 2000s, involved sending letters with handwritten-style addresses to recipients across the United States. Each letter promised luck, health, and wealth, signed by a French psychic named Maria Duval. Recipients were told that “extraordinary celestial forces” had selected them for this fortune.
In reality, the entire enterprise was a machine designed to extract money from vulnerable individuals, most of whom were elderly. At its peak, the scheme dispatched 30,000 letters daily, generating annual revenue exceeding $20 million.
The letters appeared personal but were mass-produced form letters. They requested money in escalating amounts: $40 for an “astral-clairvoyant forecast,” $149 to remove a “negative energy block,” $249 for a “complete clairvoyant life map,” and $500 to “activate lottery numbers.” Victims sent cash, locks of hair, and palm prints, receiving only form letters in return. None of the money reached Maria Duval.
Runner had licensed her name years earlier. Instead, funds flowed to post-office boxes in New York and New Jersey, then through shell companies registered in Cyprus, Hong Kong, and the Seychelles.
Runner operated under the corporate name Infogest Direct Marketing and moved frequently among Toronto, Montreal, Switzerland, and Spain while the letters continued. Court filings detail the devastation left behind. One 78-year-old woman, named in the record, had her savings drained and died before the case was resolved. The scheme exploited hope, targeting elderly people on fixed incomes who sent money they could not afford.
For many victims, the fraud resulted in total financial ruin. The case relied on millions of pieces of paper as evidence.
The scheme ran for nearly 20 years, a period of systematic fraud targeting the most vulnerable. By the time it was shut down, many victims had died, their money gone. The shell companies in Cyprus and the Seychelles had hidden the cash trail, which ends in offshore accounts.
Runner’s 10-year sentence is significant but late. The letters have stopped, but the damage is done.
The victims will not recover their money. The scheme succeeded not through sophistication but through volume and patience: 30,000 letters daily, year after year, exploiting a low bar of belief that a psychic in France could see their future and that sending money would bring happiness.
