- 9 months ago
French psychic Maria Duval seems to have it all-fame, wealth, and adoration. She gains international recognition for helping find more than a dozen missing people, predicting lottery numbers, and advising politicians and celebrities. But her insatiable desire for more riches leads her to a fateful business partnership with entrepreneur and copywriter Patrice Runner. It was a perfect match as Runner, like Duval, wanted a lifestyle full of luxury and excitement. The Psychic Swindle unravels the intricate mail-order psychic scam that duped millions of people worldwide over 20 years. The scam in North America was led by entrepreneur and copywriter, Patrice Runner, who used the name and likeness of legendary French Psychic Maria Duval. Through meticulous investigations, exclusive archive, and intimate interviews, the film exposes how this exploitation of human hopes and fears resulted in one of the largest psychic scams in history, culminating in a global manhunt and a high-profile criminal trial. The Psychic Swindle is based on the article, The Greatest Scam Ever Written, written by Rachel Browne for The Walrus. The Psychic Swindle was produced with the participation of the Canada Media Fund.
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00:00my mother loved handwritten letters she was desperate need you help i discovered the maria
00:13letters she was sending money in the mail when i took her checkbook away she started
00:18stuffing real money into the envelopes who is maria duval
00:24why is she getting rich off of these people
00:29this is a scam with 1.4 million victims this was the biggest male fraud in history behind the lens
00:39of a psychic he felt the work that he was doing was genuinely helping people to the tune of 225
00:47million dollars 40 at a time my mother fell victim to this horrible scam have you ever heard of
00:54patrice runner
00:55hi patrice can you hear me okay
01:09oh
01:12i'm rachel brown and i'm an investigative journalist i came across a press release from the united
01:41states department of justice and i saw that a canadian man had been arrested and extradited
01:46the united states from spain as someone who's interested in crime in systems of belief and just
01:53the harshness of the american justice system i was immediately hooked i'd also seen a photo of patrice
02:00runner in the daily mail and it's this man with sunglasses on top of his head with the spiky hair
02:06sitting on a beach in ibiza and i just knew that there was more to the story
02:10i have been following this case for a while this call is from a federal prison
02:17i was the first journalist to interview patrice runner and we just started talking over email
02:22and over the phone and i also went to visit him a few times in prison
02:26i shouldn't even be here actually i knew that whatever patrice was being accused of doing
02:33he had the ability to evade law enforcement for almost 20 years
02:39i'm pretty enthusiastic that you contacted me so that i have someone who's gonna present
02:45another perspective my perspective yeah i have a lot of stuff to share a lot
02:52my name is chris bennett i'm a full-time psychic medium and tarot reader
03:04so this reading is for patrice runner and we'll just see where he may find himself after jail
03:11so this card is for patrice's recent past present and the potential future a psychic is somebody who
03:19can read into a person's life so it is possible to deliver psychic messages through the mail would
03:24i do it absolutely not most people come to me looking for guidance on love or to help them
03:32overcome something you want to connect with that person who's a conduit for something much greater
03:37than yourself to feel like you're speaking with a real friend when i was 15 years old
03:42deon warwick had that song that's what friends are for and it was integrated into the psychic friends
03:50network to get people to feel connected thank you thank you so very much it was really great to be
03:56hosting this brand new edition of psychic friends network in the 90s psychics were sensationalized
04:01they were in your face they were loud they were usually late at night if you've never had a
04:07reading from a real psychic try us right now for free or during daytime tv please welcome sylvia brown
04:13to the show
04:14and they were showcased in a way that was made to be exciting you go girl people were hungry for
04:23spiritual advice and answers to life's big questions ads for psychic services were everywhere they were on
04:30the radio tv newspaper seems when i have major things in my life that i want to do i always
04:35consult the psychic so while the psychic industry is booming in north america it's also having a moment
04:42in europe too
04:44and then we see that neptune is very well positioned with the sun
04:48maria duval was seen on television providing astrology readings or using tarot cards i believe
04:55she was a real psychic and a true clairvoyant
04:58maria duval is this small town psychic in the south of france who was really well known in europe
05:10a few years ago we didn't have seen all this before we didn't have seen all this before we were
05:16We haven't looked at all this.
05:18It's been a year ago.
05:20Maria Duval is the most famous in Paris.
05:22It's been asked everywhere.
05:26I'm Anton Palfroy, the son of Maria Duval.
05:30We say in the family that she inherited her talents of medium
05:34by an uncle who was a priest.
05:36And then things were developed when she found people who were lost.
05:42Maria Duval.
05:44Radiesthésiste de renom,
05:46vient d'arriver Ă Paris.
05:48Le but de son voyage,
05:50rechercher une jeune fille dispare.
05:52From the 70's into the 80's and into the 90's,
05:54the mythology around her is that she found upwards of 19 missing people.
06:00Je prends la photo dans mes mains
06:02et ensuite, avec le pendule,
06:04je me mets en disponibilité,
06:08en disponibilité,
06:10et je cherche la photo Ă la main et sur une carte.
06:16Donc Maria Duval, c'est une femme qui pouvait paraßtre mystérieuse.
06:20Je m'appelle SolĂšne Palfroy et je suis la petite fille de Maria Duval.
06:24Je pense qu'elle a été vraiment reconnue parce qu'elle a réussi à allier tout le travail qu'elle a réalisé sur l'astrologie
06:32avec un don de médiumité qui lui a permis d'acquérir vraiment une intuition trÚs trÚs forte.
06:38She had developed a brand, a reputation,
06:42for predicting election outcomes,
06:44lucky lottery numbers.
06:46And she started being seen as someone who could be a psychic to powerful people.
06:52Ma mĂšre, elle avait fait le thĂšme des conseillers, des adjoints.
06:55Il y a eu beaucoup de politiques qui sont venues la consulter.
06:58Et trÚs vite, elle a eu beaucoup de succÚs et elle s'est fait connaßtre comme ça.
07:02In the 1990s, Maria Duval had licensed her name to companies trading on her likeness,
07:10distributing letters across Europe that offered astrological readings by post.
07:15Readings Maria insisted in a video from the 1990s could be done via mail order.
07:21TrÚs fréquemment, on me demande comment ça se passe par correspondance.
07:25J'ai une trĂšs grande habitude, je sais lire Ă travers ce qu'on dit.
07:31With the readings, she would send psychic forecasts
07:35and mystical trinkets from the elusive Maria Duval.
07:44Our parents, they had a lot of very eccentric friends.
07:47We always heard about one of dad's friends who was a psychic
07:50and he told us all sorts of stories about things that she had done.
07:54We always wanted to do a reading,
07:56but Maria didn't do readings for kids.
07:59My name is Dylan and I am Patrice Runner's son.
08:03My parents lived in Montreal for 20 years.
08:06My brother and I were born in Montreal and we moved to the west coast of Canada
08:12when we were very young.
08:13The Maria Duval stuff, my memory has always been that they had a good relationship
08:18and he always spoke of her very fondly.
08:22The last time we saw Maria Duval, we were somewhere in the south of France.
08:27During the early 90s, I knew Maria Duval was a huge success.
08:35Because I saw the yachts running again and again in France.
08:38In June 94, while I was on holiday base on the French Riviera,
08:44and just like they thought of the blue, I called her up.
08:48And she said, come to see me tomorrow. She gave me her address.
08:52In this second office, she received people a little bit particular
08:58to come and do consultations.
09:02That's it.
09:04I was not very familiar at that time with all that is a very cool world.
09:12She said, it's like a Hollywood star.
09:14So, she loved the celebrity, she loved to be seen.
09:17And then she showed me her press book, and I was pretty impressed by that.
09:22I said, wow, that's pretty astonishing.
09:25I think that's where she saw the potential of my mother.
09:28And sometimes, you know, as we say,
09:30we make proposals that you can't refuse.
09:32We're charged with the CZ growth contract with Maria,
09:36and we'll set the deal together.
09:38By the fall, Patrice is the license holder
09:41for Maria Duval in North America.
09:43I offered to Maria 5% of the next 30 minutes.
09:46Maria didn't make much with me during the first two years.
09:49She had a volume cost about $100,000.
09:51She was paid, I believe, monthly.
09:54It wasn't great, great sums that she touched her.
09:56In Miami, she was traveling first class
09:59and going to the best hotels.
10:01They said that the majority of her official revenues
10:04were diverted somewhere else.
10:07She said, well, it's right,
10:09now I'll be able to rest a little bit.
10:12I'll take a little time for myself.
10:15I've sold my name.
10:16She was very happy because she told me
10:19a society who is serious, who wants to do things well.
10:22Patrice truly believed in her psychic powers.
10:25When you're a kid, you see your parents
10:27as they're just our parents.
10:29And then as you grow older,
10:30you start to think about, like,
10:32what was their childhood like?
10:34I come from a family of writers.
10:37My mother was a writer, so...
10:39Oh, she was?
10:40What did your father do for work?
10:42He's an economist.
10:44My parents divorced when I was six years old.
10:53Our father cast off for Africa,
10:55abandoning his four young children.
10:58I had to grow up with a mother disinterested
11:00in work and money.
11:02Living only on the meager alimony our father paid.
11:05Our mother was on the verge of financial collapse.
11:09I promised myself that when I grow up,
11:12I'll be rich.
11:14Patrice's childhood really informed his obsession
11:17and anxiety around money,
11:19just as junk mail exploded in the 80s.
11:22And the police.
11:23Since I was 15 years old,
11:25I was fascinated by reading mail order advertisement.
11:29And because my mother was a writer,
11:31I found this way it's written.
11:33It's, like, very powerful.
11:35That person sending a check.
11:37It's very pleased to have no idea what it is.
11:41Back in the 80s and 90s,
11:43mail order was a huge way
11:44that people did their shopping.
11:46You received a sales catalog from a company
11:48and you could place an order by phone or mail,
11:51and then the item was sent directly to your mailbox or house.
12:03Patrice Runner had three to five employees
12:06in an office building in downtown Montreal.
12:09With the Maria Duval mail order business,
12:11Patrice's company InfoJest
12:13would place advertisements in newspapers
12:15and magazines across North America,
12:17asking people to send in money
12:20in exchange for astrological readings
12:22and psychic services.
12:23In 1994,
12:25he launched the test
12:26and was sorry that it was successful.
12:29The first letter Patrice wrote
12:30had very convincing language,
12:32and it was signed by Maria.
12:34So the recipient believed it really was from Maria.
12:38In this letter, you're going to discover
12:41why you've never had or had so little luck in your life.
12:47Thousands of letters from Maria Duval
12:49began flooding mailboxes across Canada
12:51and across the United States,
12:53courtesy of Patrice Runner.
12:55But it didn't take any money during the first two years
12:58because all the profits and even more
13:00were constantly reinvested to grow the company cash flow.
13:04The first thing I want to do for you
13:06is to do everything I can
13:08to have you win the sum of $25,000 immediately.
13:13They would tout Maria's credentials,
13:15so all the mythology would help convince the recipient
13:18that this was a very impressive person.
13:21There is a series of very important dates in your life
13:25that you must not miss for any reason
13:28if you truly wish for your life to change.
13:31Hi, Maria.
13:32I truly want your help to change me and my way of life.
13:36I truly believe in you and the things you have told me.
13:39People who engage with the letters
13:41would become bombarded with dozens of letters
13:45asking them to send in money for more personalized services
13:50and items with promises that Maria Duval herself
13:54would be writing back.
13:56Inside the envelope I have enclosed with my letter,
14:00there is a very special talisman
14:02which I wanted to offer you.
14:04Normally, I would never do this sort of thing.
14:08What a pleasant surprise to hear from you again
14:11with not one but two special offers.
14:14Maybe they would get a trinket,
14:17like some sort of charm or talisman as they're called
14:20that would bring them good luck, health, wealth, happiness.
14:24I do want to be more comfortable and no more money worries.
14:28Thank you for helping me and being my friend.
14:31Each letter could be 10 to 12 pages long
14:35and this really establishes a relationship with Maria
14:38and a feeling that the recipient knows her.
14:40There were also questionnaires and coupons
14:42for them to interact with.
14:44So it was this pretty smart way of capturing an audience.
14:50So don't delay for even a minute and complete the special coupon
14:56that you are going to find on the next page.
14:59And return it to me as soon as possible.
15:04And so you will be assured of not missing a single one of the positive events
15:09that await you and that I've just described to you.
15:12Act now.
15:13Your devoted friend, Maria Trudeau.
15:16The letters were all signed from Maria Duvall,
15:19but they were actually written by Patrice Runner.
15:22The question comes down to, were these letters false advertising or fraud?
15:28You will have to be more than a text.
15:39My name is Clayton Gerber.
15:41I am a retired United States postal inspector.
15:43Postal inspectors investigate crimes like drugs in the mail,
15:47bombs in the mail, white powders in the mail.
15:49mail and then one of our biggest areas of investigation is white collar fraud using the
15:55mail to trick people to deceive people to continue a fraud scheme so we're in downtown washington dc
16:02we're heading to my former postal service office which is where the property from patrice runners
16:10held 30 of these carts is probably the largest quantity we have for a single case so we have
16:20i think six carts here that are just return envelopes from victims patrice wrote these letters
16:27there's a printing shop in montreal the printing house has the labor of printing stuffing putting
16:32stamps on the envelopes and then you need list brokers that provide names of consumers he was
16:37targeting and they drive a truckload of envelopes across the border good albany new york and
16:42introduce it to the united states post office they do it once a week
16:48if you got a letter from maria in your mailbox to you and you alone you had no idea there was this guy
16:56patrice runner who's pulling the strings clicking the keys it was just a massive mail merge operation
17:02to suck money out of you so this is an example of some of the trinkets the magic talismans they
17:10would come in some sort of little velveteen bag red bags black bags gold bags so this is some sort of
17:19a i don't know little wheel it's like a christmas story your secret decoder i'm sure that the story
17:26that patrice came up with he's with some of these symbols and this would be some sort of magical talisman
17:32mr runner through maria deval was promising good fortune was going to come your way or she could
17:38foresee that something bad was going to happen to you and have you do some ritual event that would
17:44prevent that bad fortune from coming i think this is uh some sort of spice blend or some sort of oh god
17:53some sort of incense smells terrible and it makes a mess it's magical see it's magical it's the most
18:00sacred holy candle of sacred holy candles i'm not a religious person at all but i've spent so many
18:07hours in my life reading on cosmology quantum physics and biochemistry that i see god everywhere
18:14as our world is so incredibly complex he'd used every imaginable religion judaism and christianity and
18:23hinduism and buddhism he'd co-opt every single one of their rituals their artifacts mislabel them misbrand
18:30so patrice's story is that maria personally went to india and collected this statue of the goddess
18:55locked me to send to you and you alone but what you got was some mass-produced piece of junk from
19:03china and sometimes they didn't peel the made from china label off of them patrice was very good at
19:08this he was very good at writing copy my dear barbara i'm really sorry to spring this on you without
19:14notice but yesterday morning i felt a force that was very clear so i took very urgent action upon your
19:20case he focused on the illusion he focused on the story it's like curling up with a good book
19:28it would trigger you know an emotional response in people
19:31my name is christine stevens i'm connected to the whole maria deval thing via my mother doreen robinson
19:49who fell victim to this really horrible scam
19:53so this is this is my mom doraine way back in the 80s mom always wore red lipstick she was a very good
20:04seamstress my mother was a very independent creative woman she managed the family finances she was manager
20:15h and r block tax for a number of years so yeah she would even do our income tax for us seeing my mom
20:24decline at first it wasn't really noticeable then it got concerning she forgot how to drive she forgot to
20:32pay bills i took her to the doctor they did a dementia test and she's trying to dissect a circle into four
20:43i believe and she's looking to me for the answer and i couldn't keep the answer it was very sad
20:50i first discovered the maria deval letters and i thought nothing of it until i was looking into my
20:58mom's finances and i found checks that had been made out always for 49 either to maria deval or destiny
21:09research center when i asked mom what are you buying for 49 each time she got very defensive
21:21worst of all she got secretive i came across a little velveteen pouch and inside the pouch was
21:28something kind of heavy and i shook it out to my hand so mom what's this she grabbed this trinket
21:36held it to her chest and she said it's very special and then she popped it back in tied it up and she
21:44put it in her jewel box but it's just a a coaster i suppose absolute garbage that i wouldn't pay 25
21:53cents in a bubble machine for i could not fathom how much of a draw were these maria deval letters my
22:06mom spent 49 a pop sometimes sending checks three times a day because she'd forget that she wrote a
22:15check and then when i took her checkbook away she started stuffing real money into the envelopes
22:23it was almost addictive what people had was companionship and for them that 40 was just
22:30sort of the token cost and the cycle repeated as long as you were going to play
22:36largely these were people in their 70s and 80s a lot of them were struggling with health issues things
22:42like alzheimer's and dementia patrice absolutely positively wanted older victims we have email
22:49after email where he's telling his employees no no i want a list of old people dear maria fifty
22:56dollars isn't a lot of money but when you don't have it it is a lot of older people can't afford to
23:04pay a 40 payment every month to somebody like maria deval and pay your rent and pay your utilities and
23:11pay for your medication i need you to understand i can't keep this up if i do i'll be living on the
23:17street so i truly hope this works look patrice had no brake pedal he had no hesitation to victimize
23:27people this is his life's work how much and how fast and how much more money can i make
23:39this is me we were caught in a rainstorm i think this is where we're living in costa rica
23:44they were the only people at least i knew at the time as a kid that were working from home which
23:56was great for us i mean if money is no object you can do these sorts of things i guess
24:02and just communicate by email but the most common email that his employees were getting is i need more
24:07money so as time went on people started receiving these green envelopes in the mail that requested
24:20that they fill them with personal items like hair photographs that would be sent directly to maria
24:26herself and she's going to look at them personally to deepen and make her psychic services that much more
24:32personal patrice had to constantly escalate these letters and the representations and the rituals to
24:40get you to pay more money sometimes the letters would threaten things like bad luck is going to wreak
24:45havoc on your life they would put a deadline on it and it was a way to frighten people into responding
24:52and giving money if you wrote in and paid by check and your check bounced you got a collection letter
24:57and a whole mechanism that would send collection letters and a fictitious court filing as if they
25:03were going to sue you in court when did you first move to europe i moved to europe in 2007
25:27a small village in switzerland our parents split around 2011
25:35and by 2015 he was remarried i broke up with my first wife
25:42and i made this in the year after three nights you're gonna want
25:46of course the problem but then in the same yeah the same village so
25:50with our second family we were like no mate living in half time in switzerland and half time in paris
25:57he was living like a king he gets to be an absentee owner his bills got paid first with an unlimited
26:04funding stream millions of people would make payments pretty soon it's four or five years
26:09later and you've made 150 payments some point in time they'd either run out of money or they
26:15wouldn't believe it or the good fortune wouldn't come their way and they would eventually get tired of
26:19this and become dissatisfied that prompted a lot of people who felt like they'd been defrauded by these
26:26letters especially in the early 2000s to go online and see if there were other people out there like
26:31them these online forums started popping up where people would air out their grievances about the duval
26:39letters and that they believed that they had been scammed hundreds upon hundreds of people started
26:44connecting on these online chat rooms and forums to talk about these letters what is going on here
26:52initially i had gone to the police and the police had told me pretty much uh sorry buyer beware
26:59police are not going to investigate a 40 crime you go into the police station there is no one who's
27:04going to run out turn their lights and sirens and go try to solve this crime
27:12i started banging away on the computer and looking things up and there's all these other victims out
27:20there the exact same complaints i want my 49 refunded i didn't get my lucky lottery numbers all over the
27:33world and that's only the ones that do complain this is four this is big who is maria duval why is she
27:43getting rich off of these people who is she
27:46so really the last time that maria was seen in public giving media appearances was to a belgian
28:01reporter who conducted an interview in paris where she talks about her satisfied customers and how long
28:09she's been a psychic because of the many complaints about the maria duval letters investigative reporters
28:33traveled to callas france to look for maria duval and they got to interview maria herself and maria
28:40claimed to be innocent the most important thing for me is to know that everything i did with love
28:52there was this nagging story line that maria received some compensation and payment early on
29:15maybe it stopped maybe it continued that she maybe saw these solicitations and so postal inspectors
29:22flew over and executed a search warrant of her house from 2001 maria got the worldwide deal
29:28300 000 euros per year does all kind of jewelry perks she was very well paid she made of money
29:35there was no piles of trinkets there were no letters from tens of thousands of people she was
29:54there she however was suffering from some degree of cognitive decline her son had to kind of step in
30:02and tell the police and make it known as well that she was suffering from dementia
30:21i managed a team of postal inspectors that investigated white collar fraud cases in the
30:26course of our investigations practically 10 years earlier we had already looked at this scheme
30:32tried to shut it down that administrative action named patrice runner as an operator
30:38what happened is patrice formed a new business then he fires up and he's back up and running in fact
30:44the volume of mailing increased these are the victim payment envelopes most of the payment envelopes would
30:50go to a caging service the caging service is the company that would collect all these payment
30:55envelopes in the mail they would slice them open they'd pull the cash out they'd do the data entry
30:59they'd record your payment payment checks would get sent to vancouver canada for processing and then
31:06the money would get distributed to patrice's employees at info jest and to patrice wherever
31:10he was around the globe so we see where the mail's going we find out it's going to this caging service on
31:20long island and we go out there in the middle of the night we pull the trash this whole box is items
31:26collected from the dumpster on one night 7 000 envelopes so that was one week's worth of trash
31:33the trash told everything i mean this is a mass mailing case is a paper driven case
31:38here's a quantity of the green envelopes so each one of these envelopes has hair in it patrice is sending
31:46out letters saying hi maria i'm going to open this envelope and i'm going to touch your hair and i'm
31:50going to have a premonition about you and i'm going to send you the results of that she wasn't doing
31:55the things that were being represented in the letters if that's what they had done we wouldn't
31:59have had an investigation that's the moment the u.s postal inspection service realizes this is fraud
32:07and not involved in any fraud there's no intention of fraud and i think the only fraud there in that
32:12case is a fraud from the doj department of justice it's a big scam against me they trace the operation
32:19back to montreal back to info jest we executed search warrants we collected evidence that's when we see
32:28the patrice's player in the background calling the shots running the show
32:32so for around 15 years on and off various law enforcement agencies in the u.s had patrice in
32:41their sights but he was never brought to justice patrice was globe trotting and he was living in
32:47various places all around the world it was kind of this cat and mouse catch me if you can situation going on
33:02it was too long to start and uh i i can't cannot see here we said yeah but spain
33:14postal inspectors filed an injunction against the montreal-based company that they could not operate
33:21we reached out to the employees in montreal they were no longer getting their big paychecks and they
33:26agreed to plead guilty there was no way out for them patrice's associates turn on patrice
33:33and they indicted patrice on 18 counts of mail fraud money laundering wire fraud all sorts of
33:42financial crimes in the united states
33:44we shut this scheme down in 2014 and that's when we froze those
34:13banking accounts by 2020 he was virtually penniless we learned he was in ibiza so we sent notice
34:19through interpol it's called a red notice saying we have criminal charges against this person please
34:24arrest him for us he had broken up with his wife and he was living in a hotel i suffer from a borderline
34:41personality disorder following my separation for my spouse smoking 80 cigarettes a day one after the
34:48other consuming large quantities of ketamine to anesthetize my emotional distress thanksgiving
34:552020 i get a call saying spain has picked up mr runner they have ordered him extradited the height of
35:03covid there's no vaccine clayton goes over himself gets patrice on a plane brings him back
35:10from the moment we arrested him he didn't want to talk to us
35:12i was put in a unit with uh half of the unit where 10 members there was the blood and the crypt and
35:32stabbing all the time people get killed it was pretty traumatic experience as a canadian person
35:41the metropolitan detention center in brooklyn or mdc as it's called was a massive departure from the
35:48kind of high life the luxury life that he'd been living for many many years he was being subjected to
35:54harsh conditions and he was having a really hard time accepting it with everything they can to make
36:01my life difficult and to keep me detained uh for as long as possible to break me mentally i can tell you
36:10that we're going to throw at trial it really came down to a question of whether or not we have a right
36:21to buy into things that have inherent deceit in them things like psychic services things like
36:28wwe we buy tickets to things like disney world and we know that mickey mouse is not actually mickey
36:36mouse both sides agree that deceit in and of itself in this case is not a crime but the argument
36:43is over whether or not this is a type of fraud how did you feel about the witnesses that this trial
36:50the worst of the worst you can find you know that is it she said that all the products were
36:57plastic trinkets that was two cents the same you find in a bubble gum machine she said that you could
37:03sweat that cheap and what did you buy your 24 of them patrice's defense is like everybody got what
37:10they expected the problem is every single person we put on the stand said i expected good fortune
37:16i didn't expect this piece of junk from china it was your classic bait and switch he wasn't targeting
37:22reasonable consumers he was targeting the elderly and those suffering from some degree of cognitive
37:28decline the verdict in patrice runner's case came down just 10 days after the trial started and he was
37:36found guilty on 14 counts including money laundering and wire fraud and he was found not guilty on four
37:42counts before sentencing patrice writes this letter i don't think his attorneys knew this was happening
37:48and he sent it to the judge this was bizarre it was almost like a copy and paste of a maria duval type
37:57letter it looked very similar it had quotes from all these different authors like dostoeskis and this big
38:04font crime and punishment a novel about remorse and the crimes of a young student that he found justified
38:11before he committed them it was written as if he was trying to sell the judge on this idea that he
38:18should be let off easy that she should take pity on him talking about his childhood his upbringing how
38:26he got to where he is in life how he was going to become a success he said that he has all these great
38:32business ideas that are going to help make the world a better place and we were like why would you possibly
38:39ever write this letter white collar fraud case like this in the united states really wouldn't get
38:44much criminal time patrice had been in prison now for about five years and the judge sentenced him to
38:5010 years in prison so he's got five more i don't know if he recognizes sort of his mistake he can't help
38:57himself he's an inveterate frontster who at his core believes he can talk his way out of everything
39:11my brother sent me a text and the message read 10 years when that came out i was more thinking of like
39:18how old am i going to be when he comes out i am not i'm not a legal expert but i do think 10 years for a
39:24white collar crime is is a lot when i hear about other people violent crimes that get off on like
39:31three or four it's crazy also that he was detained in nbc for over three years
39:38pending trial that is three entire years of somebody's life
39:42you get up and you go outside and you go look at the mountains and you go do any sort of activity
39:55that a free person can do and then you're just hit with the thought of what is he doing right now
40:00we're not trafficking kilos of drugs why the department of justice didn't prosecute the u.s
40:07postal service for conspiracy of fraud it was our largest supplier that made the most money out of
40:12the you know operation interesting paradox no mr runner victimized one out of every 300 men women
40:21and children in north america investigating this walking through the payment processor list brokers
40:29data brokers we have identified scores of other mailers that were doing these same schemes and we
40:35have charged all of them as well we settled with epsilon data management which was one of the data
40:40brokers in this case and they established a fund so that everyone that we could locate we returned their
40:45money to them jose pas dire victime par rapport aux victimes qui ont été créées par rapport à ces
40:56courriers et trÚs entaché de toutes ces de tous ces courriers de tout ce que les gens ont pu faire en
41:02son nom je sais pas grand chose sur patrice runner je me suis dit d'un cĂŽtĂ© tant mieux s'ils arrivent Ă
41:08arrĂȘter des personnes qui sont Ă l'origine de ce systĂšme et aprĂšs d'un autre je me suis dit je pense pas que
41:14ce soit le seul le seul à avoir monté tout ça the goat not the kind of quote like the greatest of
41:22all time scam writer as some have written about me i'm another breed of code i'm a scapegoat i'm the
41:29scapegoat of a two billion dollar a year industry i'm the only one who landed behind bars so this reading
41:36is for patrice runner where he may find himself after jail for patrice's potential near future we have
41:44the reversed three of swords this is about making sense of the past and it seems like he may choose
41:52healing i use my intelligence to take advantage of people who are less able than me and for that
42:00i have remorse so there are three things that anyone can look out for to spot a psychic scammer
42:07first of all they'll offer you guaranteed results no psychic on earth can offer you a guaranteed
42:13result on anything the second is they'll usually speak about curses or negative energy that only
42:19they can remove for a price and third they're going to ask you to continue paying for services
42:27well and truly beyond the original service that you may have booked for those are the three red flags
42:32that you need to look for as a consumer i'm a senior now we used to trust everybody in the neighborhood
42:39you can't do that anymore because people can become victims through no fault of their own now with the
42:48technology that we have it's even more frightening our lives have changed so much in the last four or five
42:58years i hope that he can return to his other kids and be able to be there for them as he was with us
43:08i'm like you i'm a writer too so that's what i do here although all day long i write i read yeah i work
43:15on my new uh on a few projects that i'm going to launch when i'm out of here
43:28so
43:38so
43:47so