[00:00:29] Michelle: Welcome back to AARP’sThe Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Michelle Kosinski.
It involves an alleged psychic and her personalized letters through the mail.
They’re episodes 15 and 16 combined hosted by Will Johnson.
I hope you enjoy them.
This is quite a scam and quite a story.
[00:01:28] Will: Welcome back to AARP -The Perfect Scam.
I’m your host Will Johnson.
I’m here with the AARP Fraud Watch connection Ambassador, Frank Abagnale.
Frank, good to see you again.
[00:01:36] Frank: Yeah, good to be back.
We’ll get into it shortly.
So we’ll tell you all about that, but truly a phenomenal story.
In the meantime, before we get into that, I have a question.
Is this something that’s real?
That’s the thing here.
I’m going to separate either with my money or I’m going to give out information.
[00:03:30] Will: Maybe just doing this show I got too wrapped up in it.
(chuckling)
[00:03:35] Will: Something like that.
All right, Frank, today’s show is about a very well-known, decades long psychic scam.
You don’t strike me as the key in of person who would go to a psychic.
Maybe I’m wrong.
[00:03:45] Frank Abagnale: No, I’m not.
[00:03:46] Will: It’s not your kind of thing.
[00:03:48] Frank Abagnale: No.
[00:03:48] Will: No, okay.
[00:03:49] Frank Abagnale: No horoscopes, none of that.
[00:03:50] Will: All right.
Well let’s get into today’s episode, the story of Maria Duval.
[00:04:04] Melanie Hicken: Thank you for having us.
How does a mail order psychic scam generally work?
So, it could have their birthday, it could have their hometown city.
Maria Duval knows that I live in Kansas.
She knows where I was born.
She even knows the time I was born.
I mean the information that these scammers can get is amazing.
Any evidence they can find on the mastermind behind the scam.
[00:08:29] Blake Ellis: This was one of the most fascinating interviews we had.
It was so interesting to hear from someone who had actually written some of these Maria Duval letters.
They come across the story of Doreen and sit down with her daughter, Chrissie, in Arizona.
The 57-year-old mother of three and grandmother of four, tells us about her mother, Doreen.
But we didn’t know how bad.
I asked Mom who this Maria Duval is.
She either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me.
[00:11:29] Will: Frustrated and angry, Chrissie starts doing her own research about Maria Duval.
She finds stories of victims who had experienced financial collapse because of the scam.
[00:11:39] Chrissie: I came across some desperate people and always the same story.
Give me a refund.
Or I’ve spent this money, and nothing has happened.
Or you’ve, you’ve cleaned my parent out of you know, their whole life savings.
[00:12:23] Clayton Gerber: People trust what they receive in the mail.
It says right here that my money’s right here.
“No, I won’t believe it.”
[00:13:09] Clayton Gerber: They, it came to the Postal Service’s attention years ago.
We actually have a, a Regulations in File Administrative Action.
[00:14:05] Clayton Gerber: Sure.
They just changed their PO boxes and, and keep going.
[00:14:16] Will: So, in your line of work, that must be frustrating but expected.
[00:14:19] Clayton Gerber: Very expected.
Um, it’s, it’s good sport.
[00:14:22] Will: The case seemed to drop off the radar after that initial investigation in 2006.
He’s like, Maria Duval, who is this?
[00:14:51] Will: High rates of return for the bank?
For a, a bonafide vendor, their rate of return is very, very low.
Fraudsters have a very high rate of return.
They actually claim that’s what make them a legitimate business.
We always pay returns.
We provide the best customer service.
They pay returns so that they don’t get complaints to law enforcement.
That is a phenomenal mailer order business.
Or did you have a pretty good idea that this was run by somebody not named Maria Duval?
We’re not attacking any belief someone has about psychic ability.
[00:17:38] Clayton Gerber: Um, we talked to uh many.
I, I didn’t have to do that.
Talking to victims is an, is an emotional task.
Um, many guys on my team, some of my uh support folks talked to many victims.
All of the little trinkets and mass produced junk was on a bookshelf, all in one spot.
But he was writing $40 checks like crazy to Maria Duval, and that really affected my investigator.
[00:18:47] Will: Meanwhile, Melanie and Blake are still on the hunt.
They follow the trail of post office boxes where the scammers are apparently picking up the letters and payments.
One of these return addresses and PO boxes is in Sparks, Nevada.
[00:19:27] Will: That’s thanks to Clayton Gerber and his team of postal inspectors.
They were controlling the North American scheme.
So we started collecting those victim envelopes.
These envelopes cannot go in the mail stream.
If they show up with a truck, give us a call.
[00:20:31] Will: And you were present at the serving of that warrant?
[00:20:33] Clayton Gerber: Yes.
[00:20:34] Will: What was that like?
[00:20:46] Clayton Gerber: Yeah.
[00:20:59] Will: Where was that company?
[00:21:00] Clayton Gerber: That company was on Long Island.
[00:21:06] Clayton Gerber: Yes.
[00:21:06] Will: How did work?
How has it worked?
We have not seen a Maria Duval mailing uh in the US.
There are other psychic mailings and we’re, we’re aware of some.
Do you have any idea?
We seized all of those.
Where is Maria Duval?
BREAK
[00:22:37] Will: Welcome back to AARP -The Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Will Johnson.
They believe that this woman is, is a real person.
And that’s just in the US.
[00:23:20] Clayton Gerber: These are victims who need to pay their utilities.
These are victims who need to pay for their medicine.
These are victims that need to get their car fixed.
Does the blonde woman pictured in the letters actually have anything to do with the scam?
Is she still alive?
What were you hoping to learn in France?
What happened when you got there?
[00:25:53] Will: And when you got to the house what, what happened?
[00:25:59] Melanie Hicken: Yeah, it was crazy.
So we’re standing there.
She only got a glimpse of her.
She was a blonde woman, and, and the woman said that Maria wasn’t there.
That she was in Rome, and that all we could do was leave a note for her.
So that note was the closest we got to speaking uh, with Maria herself.
[00:27:03] Blake Ellis: We did.
So we spent a long time trying to track him down.
He had been very elusive from the very beginning.
We had been reaching out to him by email, and trying to call him.
It’s other people that are behind this whole scheme.
Like was there someone she was romantically involved with that convinced her to sign this contract?
So, we, we have lots of theories.
[00:29:31] Melanie Hicken: Yes.
Can you talk about what was going on?
And we’ve really never had an investigation go this dark.
- [00:31:01] Melanie Hicken: Yeah, so it’s funny.
So, do either one of you believe in psychics at this point?
[00:33:26] Melanie Hicken: So, a lot of people ask us that question.
[00:33:28] Will: Sorry.
[00:33:28] Melanie Hicken: We, no, it’s a good one.
I mean we still don’t.
[00:33:34] Melanie Hicken: Yeah.
[00:33:35] Will: That’s your job.
That’s really one of the key things we’ve heard.
They buy a lot of stamps because they’re mailing in all these checks.
So are they buying a lot of stamps?
Are they making a lot of small withdrawals?
attempt to become friends with the bank tellers.
Um, also just mail.
So just that alone um, is a good warning sign.
[00:35:52] Will: Peter Lichtenberg is a professor of Psychology at Wayne State University in Detroit.
As a gerontologist, he works closely with older people and their families.
For adult children of scam victims, his advice is to proceed gently.
I need to take over your finances, cause a lot of times that just backfires.
He’s met with victims and also the perpetrators behind the scam.
The fraudsters will target anybody who will give them money.
This is revenue for them.
This is their job.
So if they can trick a 25-year-old, they’ll trick a 25-year-old.
[00:37:28] Clayton Gerber: That’s a good question.
So I, I think there is a woman out there who is purported to be Maria Duval.
Um, is she to blame?
Um, did she um, start this mass mailing uh scheme?
I don’t think she started it.
Did she allow her name to be used?
The police are going to come eventually.
It must take a toll.
[00:38:45] Clayton Gerber: Um, you, you have to uh enjoy your successes.
The end of the week would go by and I would say, “That’s 7,000 more victims.
We need to move now.”
Putting people in jail is one thing, but stopping victimization is much more impactful.
She remembers her mother’s final years of life, caught in a scam.
[00:40:02] Chrissie: I’m, hmm, sorry… Um, so Maria Duval may or may not be involved.
She may be culpable.
What do you think?
That was just an effort on the behalf of the scammers to uh to do that.
You’re throwing all your money away," but saying, “Hey, what is this?
You know, can we talk about it?”
And people want to be independent and that’s totally understandable.
[00:42:34] Will: That’s a really good point.
[00:44:23] Will: As Frank says, there’s two things uh we can look out for.
When they ask for money or when they ask for information.
[00:44:28] Frank Abagnale: Right, that’s it.
[00:44:33] Frank Abagnale: Thanks, Will.
[00:44:35] Michelle: There is a lot that’s still unclear.
The real Maria Duval is still out there, likely still in the South of France today.
But that’s her story and she’s sticking to it.
How she feels about all this now remains as murky as the operation that made this enormous scam possible.
It’s over now.
END OF TRANSCRIPT
This 2018 episode tells the story of the elusive French psychic Maria Duval.
This is the setup for one of the longest-running scams in U.S. history.
These predatory letters were sent to millions of Americans and raked in over $200 million.
Who is Maria Duval, and is she really the mastermind of this fraud scheme?
