“Maybe it’s not moral, maybe it’s bullshit… But it doesn’t mean it’s fraud.” That was Patrice Runner’s defense of his mail-order psychic business, in a 2023 interview with Walrus Magazine.
A New York judge saw it differently. On Monday a judge sentenced Runner, 57, to 10 years in prison for a scam that took $175 million from more than 1.3 million Americans. US authorities had been pursuing him since 2014, and the operation ran for over two decades.
Runner is a dual citizen of Canada and France. According to the BBC, he directed a mail-based scheme that promised wealth and happiness to people who were mostly elderly and vulnerable. He and his associates sent out letters that falsely passed as personal notes from famous psychics Maria Duval and Patrick Guerin. Recipients were told a prosperous future awaited if they paid for an “astral-clairvoyant forecast”.
Paying once changed everything for a victim. Prosecutors said that after the first payment the requests kept coming. Runner and his associates mailed thousands of letters every week.
The US Department of Justice said Runner used shell companies in Canada and Hong Kong to conceal his role while he lived in several countries. A jury found him guilty in June of several charges tied to the scheme, including conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering.
In the same interview, Runner boasted about his writing, speaking from a New York detention centre. He said he could “get the attention of someone, and at the end, after a few minutes, the person sends a cheque, to get a product, to an address or company they’ve never heard of”.
“Patrice Runner’s extravagant lifestyle, borne on the backs of millions of older and vulnerable Americans, has come to an end,” said Chris Nielsen, a US postal inspector in Philadelphia. He called the 10-year term an “appropriate punishment”.
