The Biggest Scam of All: Psychic Snail Mail?
Today MyChargeBack brings you one of the most shocking real-life scam stories we’ve ever seen. The identities of the criminals and their victims, the sums of money involved, and how it was all done would make for a great movie … if anyone would believe it!
Last I checked it’s the 21st century, right? The big scams are all online, right? Forex and other investment scams, romance scams, phishing, and dozens more steal billions of dollars every year, almost always through the internet. But over the last few years law enforcement has slowly been unraveling one of the most amazing ongoing scams of all time, and believe it or not, it was almost entirely conceived and perpetrated with what one might call outmoded technology.
Maria Duval
Maria Duval is the stage name of a real person. She’s an Italian-born woman who’d been living in the South of France for decades. Although today she is elderly and suffers from dementia, in the 1960s and ‘70s she was locally famous — and even somewhat well known internationally — as a supposedly real psychic. With an insatiable need to be the center of attention, Maria constantly inserted herself wherever the action was, occasionally rubbing shoulders with celebrities, politicians, and journalists.
By the 1990s, Duval was forced to come to terms with her rapidly dwindling brand. Accepting that her best years were behind her was a bitter pill to swallow, not to mention her declining earning potential. So when a mysterious “marketing team” approached her with an offer to licence the use of her name and likeness, she agreed. How eager or reluctant she was, as well as how much she knew or didn’t know about her partners’ intentions, would remain open questions for years.
The Scam
It started off small. Just a direct mail marketing campaign for astrology charts. But the scammers had much bigger plans, and they soon put them in motion. The idea was to create an aggressive marketing campaign based on ostensibly (but fake) personal letters from Maria Duvall promising all sorts of miracles in exchange for a small fee.
It was ingenious. The recipients were typically elderly, mentally challenged, or otherwise vulnerable populations whose names and addresses were bought and sold as “suckers lists” among fraudsters. No email, no social media, not even fax. Actual pieces of paper (often with coffee stains or creases to make them seem more personal and genuine) were folded and mailed to the victims’ homes.
Each letter was basically a business transaction. The victim needed to send in a modest payment, usually around $40, and receive a blessing, “personalized” reading, or a cheap mass-produced trinket purported to contain magic power. Healing, wealth, love. You could have it all.
The Damage
One Canadian woman describes her mother, suffering from Alzheimer’s, being bombarded by an endless stream of letters from Maria Duval. Unable to say “no,” she responded to each and every one with a payment of $59. Even after her financial affairs were taken over by her daughter, she continued to scrape together spare change to send to her “psychic savior.”
Other victims describe how when they were finally broke and told “Maria” that they had no more to send, the letters quickly became dark and threatening. All sorts of disasters would fall on their heads if the money failed to keep coming. Innocent victims were regularly losing thousands — even tens of thousands — of dollars each, $40 or $50 at a time. They really were under a spell, but not of the paranormal or miraculous type. It was just old fashioned psychological manipulation.
The elaborate scam went on for close to 20 years and victimized people in North America, Europe, and around the world. Shockingly, it is estimated to have netted the criminal organization in excess of $200 million.
Caught
The United States government finally put an end to the Maria Duval scam in 2016, and in March 2019 two of the principals were convicted of a raft of fraud charges. Their boss is currently fighting extradition from Spain.
But the scam is bigger than them, and is apparently continuing in other parts of the world, including Russia. Even in the 21st century, we have thieves stealing vast sums of money the old fashioned way.
If you’re the victim of something like this, you still may be able to recover your funds. Contact MyChargeBack, the world’s leading fund recovery service, which has recovered over $13 million on behalf of consumers all over the world.