Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, career, what's up?
Speaker 3: Listen? You know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, oh okay. You know the expression w w
Speaker 2: obd wwobd. What would Olivia Benson do? Right? Yes, So
Speaker 2: your girl Olivia Benson aka Mariska hargatea.
Speaker 3: On lawn order s su for those which.
Speaker 2: Isn't mean yes. So she was in the in the
Speaker 2: park in New York, in a park in New York,
Speaker 2: not Central Park, just in a park, and she was
Speaker 2: shooting part of the twenty fifth season, the historic twenty
Speaker 2: fifth season. Yeah, and this little girl approached her and
Speaker 2: asked her for help because she recognized that she was
Speaker 2: a cop, and so she literally helped a citizen as
Speaker 2: Olivia Benson. And since she was able to help her
Speaker 2: find her mother, see, they were in like I guess
Speaker 2: Fort Tryon Park trying anyway, So the girl goes over
Speaker 2: and she has to, like like Bariska Hartday, has to
Speaker 2: halt production and then takes about twenty minutes. But they
Speaker 2: helped the child locate her mother, and so she does
Speaker 2: like full Olivia Benson and there's like photos of them
Speaker 2: like getting together. It's like, oh see, my god. Oh
Speaker 2: yeah right, and you're just like, is this real? Yeah,
Speaker 2: so there you go, and.
Speaker 3: Uh I am silent screaming in especially heinous right now.
Speaker 2: So there you go.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought that was a little ridiculous when reality becomes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well she's she's a very well known for you, captain.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but totally. But it's also like, you know,
Speaker 2: she's a what nine time Woman of the Year award winner.
Speaker 3: Well, you know I have I have those reading glasses
Speaker 3: that we call the Olivia Benson.
Speaker 2: Yes, your cheaters, you're Olivia Benson.
Speaker 3: It's a god bless her.
Speaker 2: What's ridiculous for you, Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: Another thing that's ridiculous using your psychic powers for greed
Speaker 3: when you could use them for silliness, Like I was.
Speaker 3: This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
Speaker 3: and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free in
Speaker 3: one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Saren. Yes, Oh sorry me.
Speaker 3: I thought you were going to give me a like
Speaker 3: ooh buddy or whatever You're going to say, Oh, well,
Speaker 3: you know I have you damn right.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'd like to surprise you. So you're like,
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to come in hot. No, Okay,
Speaker 2: well you damn right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there it is. You know. I've written a couple
Speaker 3: of books, yes, and I got them published. Yes, and
Speaker 3: I am slash was working on a new one and
Speaker 3: I stepped away from it for a few reasons.
Speaker 2: Yes, why did you?
Speaker 3: I'm totally disillusioned by the publishing industry.
Speaker 2: That's it's a crock.
Speaker 3: I let my agent go a while back, and I
Speaker 3: don't feel like hustling another one. Yeah, and I feel
Speaker 3: like there's just not a place for me. And publishing
Speaker 3: is just so dysfunctional.
Speaker 2: It's pretty wild right now. I hear a lot of
Speaker 2: the sad stories.
Speaker 3: I have enough dysfunctional mess I don't need more.
Speaker 2: You don't need that ADJECTI.
Speaker 3: Another reason I stepped away is because the book is
Speaker 3: kind of heavy, just physically physically heavy psych I always
Speaker 3: ask people starting creative projects if it's something they want
Speaker 3: to live in for however long it'll take.
Speaker 2: You've asked me that. Yeah, I appreciate, it's never answered
Speaker 2: the question. I consider.
Speaker 3: I think that this one was kind of messing with me,
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 2: You didn't ask yourself.
Speaker 3: No, I didn't you know? And so I love the idea,
Speaker 3: but with the world the way it is and where
Speaker 3: I am in my life, I just want to have
Speaker 3: fun and laughs.
Speaker 2: Sarin, I get it. I told get it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's what I get to do here. So
Speaker 3: you have fun, laugh, dance. You cut the tether on
Speaker 3: that way and said, let's totally float baby. So you're
Speaker 3: probably thinking cool story, bro or man, this is a Wendy's.
Speaker 2: I have a point. I was actually thinking cool Wendy's, ma'am.
Speaker 3: And I was reading up on this lady. I'm going
Speaker 3: to tell you about there are tons of parallels to
Speaker 3: a character in my book. It's uncanny, Like you've read
Speaker 3: parts of the book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, written chapters, and you'll.
Speaker 3: See you'll see where this all comes together. And like
Speaker 3: the whole thing was kind of freaking me out as
Speaker 3: I'm reading it, and I'm not sure, Like I looked
Speaker 3: up and I am sure that I've never heard of
Speaker 3: her before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, process of just the news.
Speaker 3: No, And there are strong elements that tie her story
Speaker 3: to part of my book. And I'm wondering is that
Speaker 3: a sign? And does this mean I should try finishing
Speaker 3: the thing. Does it mean that I'm psychic.
Speaker 2: I think so, because the lady I'm going.
Speaker 3: To tell you about, Maria Duval, is a psychic.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, yeah.
Speaker 3: Is this some sort of cosmic connection.
Speaker 2: We're going to say, a finger reaching out of the ether, Yes, to.
Speaker 3: Tickle me ether. So Maria Duval she was born Maria
Speaker 3: Carolina Gamba in nineteen thirty seven in Milan, in Italy.
Speaker 2: That's a place to be born. Yeah, Milan.
Speaker 3: Have ever been. Yeah, it's very Germany.
Speaker 2: Very It feels very much like a financial town, all
Speaker 2: the stuff that you think of. Yeah, it's all about
Speaker 2: you know. Anyway, I'd like it a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Maria. She got married a bunch of times, and
Speaker 3: so Duval was the name of her second husband. She
Speaker 3: kind of stuck with that one. So she moved to
Speaker 3: France with her family when she was young and according
Speaker 3: to her, special powers run in her family of course,
Speaker 3: and ever since she was a little girl, she's had
Speaker 3: clairvoyant visions and she didn't think that was special. She thought, well,
Speaker 3: that's what we all have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the same thing.
Speaker 3: This is what she said on her website quote, in
Speaker 3: my family, we have possessed spiritual gifts for generations. The
Speaker 3: Golden flex that you see in my eyes form quote
Speaker 3: the sign in the Middle Ages, I would have been
Speaker 3: burnt at the stake.
Speaker 2: Really, I've never heard golden flex was a sign of
Speaker 2: a witch before. I Maybe I just don't get around
Speaker 2: in the right well.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Maybe it's a French Italian thing.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of things I don't know.
Speaker 3: So, you know, same more so for me. According to
Speaker 3: oh No, So anyway, her uncle, yes, father Camillo Vasally,
Speaker 3: He was a priest in Ravenna, small city in northern Italy,
Speaker 3: and so according to her Maria, he performed miracles and
Speaker 3: the town considered him a saint, a little lesser, lesser
Speaker 3: known saint. Yeah. And when he was on his deathbed
Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty three, he called Maria to.
Speaker 2: Him and it was there a distance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, He's like, you know, we're like people, what we beat? Maria,
Speaker 3: Come here, I'm dying. And so Maria goes like, yeah,
Speaker 3: what's up? And he transfers the gift to her. That
Speaker 3: was what it sounded like. Oh completely, So he told her,
Speaker 3: I know you have the power already because of your eyes,
Speaker 3: your eyeball gol. Yeah, and so I'm going to give
Speaker 3: you my powers on top of double down, and you
Speaker 3: have to use these powers for good, to help and
Speaker 3: comfort others.
Speaker 2: You're super powered up.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Then he was like, here have this talisman.
Speaker 2: Like fireball Mario.
Speaker 3: Now, when I was young and reading books and anytime
Speaker 3: they'd like present someone with a talisman, I thought that
Speaker 3: was the coolest thing ever.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, completely was like, I want a tal man.
Speaker 2: I've waited my whole life for someone like this talisman.
Speaker 2: It is very important.
Speaker 3: I'm going to use it on some sort of quest anyway.
Speaker 3: Her talisman was a gold pendulum on a chain, and
Speaker 3: she would later use it to do stuff like find people.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so like divining past.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she didn't become a professional psychic right away.
Speaker 2: She wore a hypnotist with the pendula. Yeah, like he
Speaker 2: was looking into my eyes.
Speaker 3: For a while, So she's not a psychic off the bat.
Speaker 3: She worked as a scout at a couple of art
Speaker 3: galleries in Paris.
Speaker 2: Was an art scout.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, like a cub scout, but an art scout.
Speaker 2: She wore the outfit shelpist.
Speaker 3: She would gather badges, she looks for lost artists. Sometimes
Speaker 3: she'd help artists find new stronger names. More in line
Speaker 3: with the Kabbalah that would bring them a better chance
Speaker 3: at success. Okay, I don't know what that means. She
Speaker 3: worked at a large bank, Like your.
Speaker 2: Name is Pablo Fancy and how about Picasso.
Speaker 3: Exactly, So she's worked. She worked at a bank, not
Speaker 3: as a teller, but she helped narrow down candidates for
Speaker 3: executive positions using quote, graphological, morphological, and astrological texts.
Speaker 2: So she looks at their handwriting, looks at their face,
Speaker 2: and then she looks.
Speaker 3: At the resumes, and she's like good bad good good bad,
Speaker 3: like puts them into piles. She also said that she
Speaker 3: worked with many other heads of industry, helping them set
Speaker 3: up their companies. And she said that she can't make
Speaker 3: problems disappear, but she can identify them and like point
Speaker 3: people that you know what's wrong.
Speaker 2: Your foot's broken, exactly, Doc.
Speaker 3: That's in the corporate world. It's a huge problem, broken foot.
Speaker 3: So she'd also help businesses set dates to make important
Speaker 3: decisions or like for movies to premiere. So this is
Speaker 3: like we're getting in Nancy Reagan territory.
Speaker 2: They're like, give me a special date.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: At history different figure out why the thing had happened on.
Speaker 3: Is how she explains right or the times of such.
Speaker 3: She said, people are really surprised when you have to
Speaker 3: time a film release to coincide with the full moon,
Speaker 3: because when there's a full moon, people are much more
Speaker 3: likely to go out than during other lunar phases.
Speaker 2: Of course, they can see more at night, especure heart attacks. Whatever.
Speaker 3: She wasn't just doing this. She had another job as
Speaker 3: a She owned a pool and sauna cleaning business. You know,
Speaker 3: it's adjacent.
Speaker 2: She's not actually cleaning the sauna's issue.
Speaker 3: I think she probably hired.
Speaker 2: She had like a bunch of like boys and like
Speaker 2: cut off shorts clean but still she's like.
Speaker 3: We will only clean under you know, mercury.
Speaker 2: But she gets a call, she's like, oh, I gotta
Speaker 2: go divine the mood.
Speaker 3: She owned clothing stores in the south of France, in
Speaker 3: and around the town of Callous, and she like Maria Callis. Yes,
Speaker 3: it was at one of the stores that she started
Speaker 3: giving psychic readings, where she's like, Okay, I'm not just
Speaker 3: going to manipulate industry.
Speaker 2: I'm a personal person.
Speaker 3: I'm going to manipulate people. And she started getting attention
Speaker 3: just locally at first, for seven years she worked at
Speaker 3: three different radio stations doing astrological charts for listeners. Yes,
Speaker 3: she's like, call her here on the air.
Speaker 2: I always going to be a ventriloquist on the radio.
Speaker 2: That was the whole thing. There were a lot of
Speaker 2: ventriloquists on the radio, like how great is that?
Speaker 3: It's just like two people exactly, but it's.
Speaker 2: Like the whole thing and you're now matching someone having
Speaker 2: the puppet.
Speaker 3: There astrologery like the magic of radio.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but then astrologers like the same thing. They're like,
Speaker 2: you know, they're just sitting there and like their pajamas,
Speaker 2: but they're actually like before the crystal ball. Yeah, they
Speaker 2: don't have to do it, don't have to pay for
Speaker 2: smoke bombs.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: And so she also she had a segment on French
Speaker 3: TV called Bibi Bonu where she'd give horoscopes to babies
Speaker 3: on their first birthdays.
Speaker 2: She's about to say it, Wait a minute.
Speaker 3: She's a little bit of this, a little bit of this.
Speaker 3: By the seventies, she was showing up in the paper
Speaker 3: and nice for her psychic work.
Speaker 2: She was she was in French vogue.
Speaker 3: OK. So she said at first she didn't want to
Speaker 3: change people. She just wanted to help people. But eventually
Speaker 3: she became a professional. So she studied for ten years
Speaker 3: at an esoteric school and she ten years, yeah, ten years,
Speaker 3: and she joined quoting various movements, including Druidic movements.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, but.
Speaker 3: That didn't work out because she don't like the robes. No,
Speaker 3: she was like, I'm Italian and so I'm more inclined
Speaker 3: towards Greco Latin modalities. Oh of course, She's like, it's
Speaker 3: too white for me.
Speaker 2: And so much walking in a circle got a chanting.
Speaker 2: I like, more like laying about in smoke exactly, more
Speaker 2: fruit involved in my ceremonies.
Speaker 3: So she said. She later established the French Institute for
Speaker 3: Parapsychological Research to foster that, and she was also the president,
Speaker 3: also a member, also a member, and it was sometimes
Speaker 3: called the Callous Parapsychology Institute. Okay, there's this book called
Speaker 3: A Deal with the Devil about Maria Tufall, and it
Speaker 3: came out in twenty eighteen and in it, authors Blake
Speaker 3: Ellis and Melanie Hicken, they write, quote, she claims that
Speaker 3: she has provided guidance to Hollywood stars who pay seven
Speaker 3: hundred dollars for a session, and several American presidents and
Speaker 3: many other political leaders. In fact, she says many of
Speaker 3: the world's richest and most famous celebrities never make a
Speaker 3: decision without consulting her first, and that she is the
Speaker 3: only psychic ever to have been granted an audience with
Speaker 3: the Pope.
Speaker 2: Okay, you know, like if you're on social media right, like,
Speaker 2: and you follow some of the people I follow, you're
Speaker 2: going to get things of like yo, I got like, okay,
Speaker 2: my people are sitting now they're going they're doing a
Speaker 2: humiliation ritual on this side the celebrity. Right, It'll be like,
Speaker 2: you know, some young black celebrity has to be humiliated,
Speaker 2: so now they can join the illuminati. Oh right, I've
Speaker 2: seen claims and I'm like, come on, now, you really
Speaker 2: come on people. But at the same time, then you
Speaker 2: go on this side. When we were investigating, it's always
Speaker 2: like the President came to me, I met with the Pope,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, okay, So a lot of people believe
Speaker 2: in these occult things, so like, oh yeah, I think
Speaker 2: that some of these people when they come out there
Speaker 2: with the it's a humiliation ritual and see where they're trying.
Speaker 2: I'm like some of them have to be right, and
Speaker 2: just the numbers exactly. I'm not saying which ones, but
Speaker 2: because of how much we're hearing from the other end
Speaker 2: of the well, presidents came here and decided when should
Speaker 2: I start the war?
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly, So a humiliation ritual for a.
Speaker 2: Young to join the illuminati or whatever. I'm not necessarily backing,
Speaker 2: but one.
Speaker 3: With the pope. CNN did an investigation into her with
Speaker 3: these authors, and they later revealed that, according to a friend,
Speaker 3: Maria had technically met with the Pope and shook his hand,
Speaker 3: but she was like part of a crowd. Oh so,
Speaker 3: and there was not like a personal audience.
Speaker 2: Ah yeah, so met the pope. I read the same
Speaker 2: as the Pope.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. She shook his hand, she reached out over
Speaker 3: a bunch of other people high five during So about
Speaker 3: that talisman and the missing person and.
Speaker 2: The missing you were wondering, I just checked my notes.
Speaker 3: Thank you for asking.
Speaker 2: You haven't circled back.
Speaker 3: I'm about to circle back.
Speaker 2: Put a pin in it.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of variations on this story, but
Speaker 3: here suggest around nineteen seventy seven, the wife of a
Speaker 3: young dentist disappeared. It is not important to know that
Speaker 3: he was a dentist. Yeah, but this is this is
Speaker 3: in the south of France. She took off her car
Speaker 3: on like a Tuesday afternoon and no one had seen
Speaker 3: her after that, and then hikers found her car the
Speaker 3: next morning abandoned. She was nowhere to be found. And
Speaker 3: this is pre cell phone, mind you, so they couldn't
Speaker 3: try and call or like look for her.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The authorities sent out search parties, two helicopters, the fire
Speaker 3: brigade end quote the best police dog in the region,
Speaker 3: called Droll four. Researcher Marissa pointed out that no information
Speaker 3: is available about the presumed police dogs Droll one, two
Speaker 3: and three where they also amazing was one a bad apple?
Speaker 3: Where was there a mister or missus droll? Keep in
Speaker 3: mind that in French droll means funny. It can also
Speaker 3: mean odd in some idioms, so like is it's a
Speaker 3: funny old word or present I had I have an
Speaker 3: odd premonition and I'm probably not saying those right, and
Speaker 3: that's maybe a little I'm understanding them. You've got it
Speaker 3: because I translated the language work. It's the language of ridiculousness.
Speaker 3: So who was droll for a weird little When you
Speaker 3: Google image search droll for dog, you get lots of
Speaker 3: weird AI cat pictures and then they're like leggings with
Speaker 3: cats printed in the eyes are on the crotch. I
Speaker 3: don't know, just do it image search for ivy for
Speaker 3: dog and then you get all this weird Anyway, Maria
Speaker 3: she saw the story about the missing woman in the
Speaker 3: paper and she offered to help. And she asked for
Speaker 3: the woman's date of birth, a recent photo, and a
Speaker 3: map of the area. And she put the photo on
Speaker 3: the map and then held the gold pendulum over the map,
Speaker 3: and the pendulum it starts to swing as they do,
Speaker 3: and it starts to spin over a certain region, and
Speaker 3: the cops they're skeptical, this kind of seems like a
Speaker 3: waste of time and hokum at that. So they called
Speaker 3: back the rescue helicopter. They're like, you know what, we
Speaker 3: give up.
Speaker 2: It's a pendulum that's sending you out there.
Speaker 3: And they're like, maybe she disappeared on purpose and taken
Speaker 3: herself out of the game, so to speak. So the husband, though,
Speaker 3: is like, no more helicopter, helicopter, and so he hires
Speaker 3: a private helicopter and says search over where the pendulum
Speaker 3: was spinning, and so he believed in her. He knew
Speaker 3: his wife was still out there waiting to be found.
Speaker 2: And she was what.
Speaker 3: She was, hurt and unconscious. She hadn't eaten or had
Speaker 3: anything to drink or even move for three days and
Speaker 3: nights and she was discovered and Marie, I said, the
Speaker 3: pendulum worked because quote, everything in the universe vibrates and
Speaker 3: sends out different waves. To find something or someone that
Speaker 3: has gone missing, the vibrations which hold a connection with
Speaker 3: the subject or the person must be investigated and determined.
Speaker 3: That is what I did with the help of the
Speaker 3: star sign and the photo of the woman. Then I
Speaker 3: simply gave the information to my hanging lamp and asked
Speaker 3: for the source of these vibrations to be pointed out
Speaker 3: on the map.
Speaker 2: You know, it's easy to the CIA. I have it.
Speaker 2: They have a whole program that is taken from the
Speaker 2: one guy's other program. He's like around to hear anyway,
Speaker 2: the CIA, they have a whole thing. I've been reading
Speaker 2: a bunch about how to psychically trained according to the CIA,
Speaker 2: and is all this exact same stuff. Let's do it.
Speaker 3: Let's start us. Let's do a seminar.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, I'm down.
Speaker 3: So we'll host a seminar and we don't know how
Speaker 3: to do it. Oh we're gonna host you yeah, yea, yeah,
Speaker 3: we're okay. No, no, no, We're going to put on so
Speaker 3: much easier. I know it'll be a ridiculous grind. So
Speaker 3: the story of this incredible vibration went viral by seventy
Speaker 3: standards all over France. People heard about it and they
Speaker 3: felt that Maria was the real deal, like a psychic hero.
Speaker 3: It said that in total she helped find nineteen people
Speaker 3: over the years. Yeah, and plus some cats and a donkey,
Speaker 3: the missing donkey. Oh and she said she found Brigitte
Speaker 3: Bardeau's missing dog. Okay, And the only problem is that
Speaker 3: Bardew later told CNN that her dog was found dead
Speaker 3: drowned in a pool and that Duval had nothing to
Speaker 3: do with any of it, which is a bummer detail.
Speaker 2: Wait, so she lied about finding Bridget Bardew's dog. When
Speaker 2: someone went to question that, Bridget Bardow is like, well,
Speaker 2: if I got a story for you, Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 2: she had nothing.
Speaker 3: But this is horrible and I'm an animal lover and
Speaker 3: somehow I let my dog drown Wow. So Maria said
Speaker 3: that she was involved in quote, one of the biggest
Speaker 3: criminal cases the world has ever known. Let's take a break.
Speaker 3: When we come back, I'll tell you about the biggest
Speaker 3: criminal case the world has ever known.
Speaker 2: Zaren yo. Hey, so we were talking about Maria Duval.
Speaker 2: I was thinking about bridge Bordo's dog.
Speaker 3: But there's that too. Let's give a moment of yeah. Okay,
Speaker 3: we gave him over the rainbow. Yeah, the rambow bridge.
Speaker 3: All right, So Maria Duval she said that she was
Speaker 3: involved in one of the biggest criminal cases the world
Speaker 3: has ever known. Yes, that's the Raoul Vallenberg case.
Speaker 2: Oh wait a minute, Raoul Wallenberg. Uh huh okay Vallenburg sure, yes,
Speaker 2: I'm saying it wrong.
Speaker 3: Swedish architect, Yes, and a diplomat who saved thousands of
Speaker 3: Jews in German occupied Hungary during the Holocaust.
Speaker 2: How is she involved, Well, let's give me.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you a little bit more about him.
Speaker 3: He was Sweden's Special envoy in Budapest between July and
Speaker 3: December of nineteen forty four, and in that time he
Speaker 3: issued protective passports sheltered Jews and buildings, which he declared
Speaker 3: Swedish territory. So January seventeenth, nineteen forty five, during the
Speaker 3: siege of Budapest by the Red arm Me agents captured
Speaker 3: Vollenberg and accused him of espionage, and then he disappeared.
Speaker 3: Nineteen fifty seven, twelve years after he went missing, Soviet
Speaker 3: authorities said he died of a heart attack two years
Speaker 3: after he had been last seen, and that he'd been
Speaker 3: locked up in Lubyanka, the secret police's prison in Moscow.
Speaker 2: He died of weak art.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's so sad. The family didn't believe this.
Speaker 2: Yes, no, really, and there.
Speaker 3: Had been reports and whisperings that Vallenberg had been seen
Speaker 3: in Soviet prisons and mental institutions in subsequent years. So
Speaker 3: they reached out to Maria and they asked if he
Speaker 3: was still in the Russian prison or maybe had he escaped.
Speaker 3: She was like, let me think on it. She gets
Speaker 3: the pendulum. She's like, he had a heart attack, he died.
Speaker 3: When they said he did, she said that he had
Speaker 3: it because he'd been tortured. So she adds in a
Speaker 3: little bit of extra juice. Sorry, And during her consultations
Speaker 3: for this and others, she generally used tarot cards.
Speaker 2: She does, like remote viewing via tarot card I.
Speaker 3: Think, so, yeah, there's a lot of stuff she doesn't like.
Speaker 3: Other things she'd do, she'd ask people to hit a
Speaker 3: bell three times, you know, shuttles and then splash inc
Speaker 3: thirteen times, of course, and then she'd interpret the answers
Speaker 3: out of that, and so like, if she was having
Speaker 3: a really hard time with a vision, she'd use a
Speaker 3: crystal ball, And apparently those are really hard work and
Speaker 3: they take a lot of concentration, so she wasn't into that.
Speaker 3: So you know, she's established herself. She had this personal secretary,
Speaker 3: Francois bar and Francoise later became the mayor of the
Speaker 3: small French town that Maria lived in, Callous, and she
Speaker 3: vouched for Maria's abilities. She said she'd seen it all
Speaker 3: in action. She said that there was a motorcyclist who'd
Speaker 3: been in an accident and couldn't walk very well, and
Speaker 3: that Maria apparently used her power of radiothesia, which is
Speaker 3: sensitiveness held to enable a person with the aid of
Speaker 3: a divining rod or pendulum to detect things. You know
Speaker 3: who said that Webster's Dictionary, oh defines radiothesia, so basically
Speaker 3: divining rods. So she used that on the motorcycle boy.
Speaker 2: Feeling through the form of radiant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like she's just like she's holding like two sticks.
Speaker 3: She spent an hour with the guy just swinging the
Speaker 3: old pendulum over him. When she was done, he walked
Speaker 3: away normally amazing, incredible, that a miracle, some would Barr
Speaker 3: also said there was another woman who would always call
Speaker 3: Maria asking for good lotto numbers, and that woman was
Speaker 3: not me. Uh So Maria would tell her to be
Speaker 3: careful with her money and take out a low interest
Speaker 3: loan to pay off her debt, which is more debt
Speaker 3: to pay off debt. But okay, sure that doesn't make
Speaker 3: sense to be anyway. I guess consolidate her debt is
Speaker 3: what she's saying.
Speaker 2: I'm the one to talk about.
Speaker 3: Woman didn't want to hear all that. Yeah, and she
Speaker 3: wanted the lotto numbers. She's like, that's great and all.
Speaker 2: But what of the lives? What's the winning numbers?
Speaker 3: And she she kept calling and Maria just started ignoring her.
Speaker 3: Keep calling me alone, Becky. And so she said people
Speaker 3: who wanted an instant fixed were just a waste of
Speaker 3: her time.
Speaker 2: She wanted nothing to do with them.
Speaker 3: People asked her to predict their deaths, and that was
Speaker 3: apparently something she could do. Yeah, but no, you thought
Speaker 3: about it, No do you?
Speaker 2: I don't. It turns on the day you ask me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't want to know.
Speaker 2: Because I don't mind knowing something. But some days I'd
Speaker 2: be like, oh, I don't want to know. Other days
Speaker 2: I'd be like, oh, definitely, I may relieve the pressure.
Speaker 3: I feel like. It's also for the like I don't
Speaker 3: want like a ring camera at my front door.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a little different.
Speaker 3: Okay, because like around here, if someone brings into your house,
Speaker 3: you can give the cops the footage. It doesn't do anything.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean anything. But if a psychic tells you
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily.
Speaker 3: But it's also like, but if I saw someone prowling
Speaker 3: around my yard but nothing happened, I don't want to know.
Speaker 3: I rather live in bliss.
Speaker 2: You like that the bliss. I'm full of bliss there.
Speaker 3: So she would never she would never do that tell
Speaker 3: people she knew, Yeah, she would, she would never tell
Speaker 3: anyone the answer. She did do a couple exorcisms, but
Speaker 3: only a few of them because, like she said, they
Speaker 3: were super super difficult, and it was a very special thing.
Speaker 2: You also have to worry about that the imagine taking
Speaker 2: on some dark alga.
Speaker 3: She said. One of them left burn marks on her knees,
Speaker 3: but there was no fire.
Speaker 2: Just from the friction of like praying so hard, Saren.
Speaker 3: It was really spooky. Neighbors, Oh, was that what you
Speaker 3: were doing?
Speaker 2: Maria? So uh, I'm not going to say.
Speaker 3: Sometime in the mid eighties she sold her name. But
Speaker 3: what you mean, It's like around nineteen eighty five a
Speaker 3: trademark for the commercial use of the name Maria Duval
Speaker 3: was issued in France.
Speaker 2: She passed it on like Gallagher.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's like Menudo. It's unclear or unknown if
Speaker 3: Maria took this out herself or if it was because
Speaker 3: of her early dealings with the businessmen who would later
Speaker 3: run her empire. And later there were other similar trademarks
Speaker 3: taken out all over the world. So who are those businessmen?
Speaker 2: Who are those businessmen?
Speaker 3: Thank you for asking? Jacques Mail and Jean Claude Reel
Speaker 3: for real, And so they reached out to her about
Speaker 3: using her name for a mailing campaign for their business.
Speaker 3: And you know, she's super well known as a psychic
Speaker 3: in France, Yeah, market her powers, and according to her
Speaker 3: son Antoine, she was dazzled by these guys and the offer,
Speaker 3: and she didn't really read the contract. She was like, perfect,
Speaker 3: I'll do it. And she said, you know, for the
Speaker 3: first decade that we worked together, things were fine.
Speaker 2: That's good in business, ten years.
Speaker 3: Ten years, but greed always rears its ugly head, and
Speaker 3: that's when things got bad. At first, the business only
Speaker 3: sold astrology charts, but later their business model changed to letters,
Speaker 3: and so the contract was structured in a way that
Speaker 3: she couldn't get out of it. So she's really the
Speaker 3: con men's first victim. As part of her contract, she
Speaker 3: had to do press and touring, and this was so
Speaker 3: people could see that she was a real person, and
Speaker 3: it took her all over Europe and beyond and beyond.
Speaker 3: In two thousand and eight, she spoke in Moscow at
Speaker 3: the Central House of Journalists where she forecasted the future
Speaker 3: of Russia. And apparently as part of this, seven hundred
Speaker 3: thousand apple trees were planted near Moscow and all named
Speaker 3: Maria duval I. Have no idea why or what.
Speaker 2: That means, what it, what does.
Speaker 3: It have to do with it? That's a lot of trees.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of apple apples.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So anyway, Maria Duvall letters, as you can probably guess,
Speaker 3: they evolved into a scam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm guessing.
Speaker 3: The letter scam is considered one of the world's longest
Speaker 3: running cons. Her letter scam in particular is considered one
Speaker 3: of the longest running cons in the whole wide world.
Speaker 3: It's taken place all over this this beautiful globe, including US, Canada, Denmark,
Speaker 3: and Russia, Norway, New Zealand, Finland, Japan, Australia. I could
Speaker 3: go on.
Speaker 2: Worldwide sattle down.
Speaker 3: In the beginning, they started with like newspaper ads and
Speaker 3: they wouldn't mention Maria Duvall. Well, they were supposed to
Speaker 3: be research studies and they would ask readers to send
Speaker 3: in personal details like their zodiac sign, the time of
Speaker 3: their birth, their marital status, in exchange to win a
Speaker 3: lot of money. And you remember how it feels like,
Speaker 3: you know, in the eighties, there would always be those
Speaker 3: mailers to your house with like fill out this consumer question.
Speaker 3: So they didn't even bother sending them. They just put
Speaker 3: it as an ad in the paper, tell us about you,
Speaker 3: and people like okay, sure, and so the conment took
Speaker 3: this information and they used it to create profiles, and
Speaker 3: then they crossed referenced it with information purchased from data
Speaker 3: brokers and two other kinds of lists. They had a
Speaker 3: look alike list, which a list of new names and
Speaker 3: addresses of people who look in demographics wise like the
Speaker 3: current customer base.
Speaker 2: And it's similar to what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, doppelganger list.
Speaker 2: This guy looks like you got it, see kid, it's great.
Speaker 2: It looks like deb Winger.
Speaker 3: And then there was a shop a like list, so
Speaker 3: people who bought similar things as the victims. So they
Speaker 3: were just like building these huge profiles. Then the next
Speaker 3: part of the scam starts. The victim they get letters
Speaker 3: from a French psychic named Maria Duval just out of nowhere,
Speaker 3: Clayton Gerber of the US Postal Inspection Services quote. These
Speaker 3: would be printed via mail merge, so your name would
Speaker 3: appear throughout. These were multi page letters, six or eight
Speaker 3: or ten pages long. They would have graphics like they
Speaker 3: have changes in font and they would have marginal notes
Speaker 3: to make it look like if your eyesight wasn't great,
Speaker 3: it would look like somebody had written a handwritten note
Speaker 3: on the side of it. They they appeared to be
Speaker 3: very personalized, like the letter was written directly to you,
Speaker 3: like this was a friend writing to you. And many
Speaker 3: people wrote back, yeah, I like that if your eyesight
Speaker 3: isn't great. So it's like if I opened it up
Speaker 3: and I'd be like, oh yeah, oh look they wrote.
Speaker 2: Me a note, all these little notes on the side.
Speaker 3: Some of the letters even had a fake coffee cup
Speaker 3: stain on the paper to make it look more authentic.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And I guess a lot of people who got the
Speaker 3: letters didn't remember filling out the original questionnaire.
Speaker 2: Time past I'm sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and well while they run all the list.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you wouldn't think that you'd be.
Speaker 3: And so there was all this personal information and the
Speaker 3: personalized letters. They seemed like proof of Maria's abilities. So,
Speaker 3: for example, she'd say, you are mainly under the influence
Speaker 3: of venus in addition to being born on May twenty second,
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty seven, in Kansas City at twelve pm. I
Speaker 3: can already see some aspects of your personality. So if
Speaker 3: you're just getting this, what you think is just a
Speaker 3: cold letter, like that's crazy.
Speaker 2: But she already knows that you like you know broken
Speaker 2: for cheese. She's like mentioning it by Tiede. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Here are some more excerpts. Quote two internationally renowned mediums
Speaker 3: have predicted what your future holds. The news is fantastic.
Speaker 3: Note these four things that are very important to you.
Speaker 3: April second, twenty fourteen, Winnings problems solved, Like are you
Speaker 3: kidding me? To celebrate your new life, we have prepared
Speaker 3: a mysterious and extraordinary gift, a powerful talisman who can
Speaker 3: attract money and chance. It's the same talisman that Patrick
Speaker 3: Gren wears with him at all times. He never shared it,
Speaker 3: but in your case, he didn't. Hesitates Patrick Gwren is
Speaker 3: another cycle.
Speaker 2: Sure, like a you're a Geller type whatever.
Speaker 3: And then quote if you've got a special bottle of
Speaker 3: Bubbly that you've been saving for celebrating great news, then
Speaker 3: now's the time to open it.
Speaker 2: I feel so bad for the people who fall victim
Speaker 2: to this.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: It's easier for me to always deal with people who
Speaker 2: fall victim to a con man because they actively want
Speaker 2: to try to like get over on somebody else. Like
Speaker 2: I like, I don't mind those so much because it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you tried to get greedy. He thought you could be
Speaker 2: on the inside. You thought you could be on the
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, somebody turned it on. You're like,
Speaker 2: oh no, and you can't even go to the cops.
Speaker 3: Right of counterfeit money machines exactly.
Speaker 2: But like putting a fake ring on and notes on
Speaker 2: the side, so people with poor eyesight are confused. I
Speaker 2: now know who they're trying to hit. It's mostly old people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like and old people who have some
Speaker 2: belief in the world, Like, come on on the way out,
Speaker 2: you're going to kick them a couple of times and
Speaker 2: take those all.
Speaker 3: Horrible anyway, There's this Canadian magazine, The Walrus. They wrote
Speaker 3: quote some correspondence directed recipients to purchase supposedly supernatural objects,
Speaker 3: while others urged them to use provided green envelopes to
Speaker 3: mail personal items, family photographs, palm prints, locks of hair
Speaker 3: against a promise that the psychic would use them to
Speaker 3: conduct personalized rituals. Once this envelope has been sealed, it
Speaker 3: may be only opened by me. Read one letter that
Speaker 3: included Duval's photocopied signature. So sometimes the money request would
Speaker 3: come only after they responded. Maria would offer more help,
Speaker 3: but if they pay, And according to the Postal inspector
Speaker 3: Gerber quote, the ask was always for twenty thirty forty dollars.
Speaker 3: In return, you might get some sort of tiny trinket,
Speaker 3: some sort of little talisman, some sort of newsletter. You
Speaker 3: always got another solicitation. You always got another letter that
Speaker 3: was a personalized plea asking for more money. And then
Speaker 3: there was an escalation of some sixty seventy eighty different letters.
Speaker 3: It was a progression. You paid on letter one, you
Speaker 3: got letter two, you paid on letter two, you got
Speaker 3: letter three. And it was always an ask for money.
Speaker 2: Confuse, are we talking about American political parties? This is
Speaker 2: like the emails you get from Oh my God, always
Speaker 2: maybe at trinket.
Speaker 3: Here's a bumper sticker. So those talisman trinkets cheap plastic
Speaker 3: trinkets mass produced in China. Or it was a quote
Speaker 3: vibratory crystal that they described as quote they are wrenched
Speaker 3: from the mountains by volcanic eruptions and erosion, falling into
Speaker 3: rivers where they are sought for their beauty and their powers.
Speaker 3: The crystal is a living stone that has a heart,
Speaker 3: a sort of atomic battery with the power to harness
Speaker 3: and redirect energy. This pure energy can channel your thoughts
Speaker 3: and then change the course of events. As soon as
Speaker 3: you wear your vibratory crystal, your mind instantly sharpens and
Speaker 3: you feel your energy level surge. Nothing can stand in
Speaker 3: your way. You are going to find it easy to
Speaker 3: harness that strength to get whatever you want from life
Speaker 3: and resolve all your problems.
Speaker 2: Of course, I mean, just put the crystal, the vibratory crystal.
Speaker 2: Maybe they're getting like I'm sure these crystals from like
Speaker 2: Kazakhstan for like you know, a one ton for five
Speaker 2: francs or whatever and then just handing them out. But like,
Speaker 2: other than the fact that there are a lot of
Speaker 2: people who can point out stuff about like oh crystals
Speaker 2: and rocks and that will do some things, you know,
Speaker 2: Like but I like how this stuff is always like
Speaker 2: it's going to do everything. It's gonna it's gonna fix
Speaker 2: your whole life. Might just totally. It could just make
Speaker 2: you feel little better, it might orient some energies or whatever. Nope,
Speaker 2: they're like, no, this one's going to file your totally.
Speaker 3: So between nineteen ninety four and twenty fourteen, the scam
Speaker 3: earned more than one hundred and seventy five million US
Speaker 3: dollars from the US and Canada and uh.
Speaker 2: Over the crazy such a small ass.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some got up to like thousands of thousands that
Speaker 3: they were handing over. Others had her on their an
Speaker 3: old Christmas card.
Speaker 2: It's got to be so many people who follow evict
Speaker 2: him to this to get to those numbers.
Speaker 3: Oh, completely, And so let's learn about these two con
Speaker 3: men please. Jean Claude Reel was a Swiss businessman and
Speaker 3: Jacques Mallard French marketing genius so real he had experienced
Speaker 3: in the mail order world. He sold like painkiller bracelets
Speaker 3: and a device that instantly ages wine shoe and steps
Speaker 3: that help you lose weight and so earlier in.
Speaker 2: His bracelet makes your hair grow back.
Speaker 3: He had been into like UFO stuff earlier in his life. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then he also owned a company called Infojest, the
Speaker 3: mail or her company. Yeah, infojest, but with a g
Speaker 3: okay jest. Yeah, and so they that was the company
Speaker 3: behind the scam Infojest. When CNN tracked him down in
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen, Reel told the journalists that while he had
Speaker 3: once owned Infojest, he hadn't been involved in many many
Speaker 3: years he retired in two thousand and six. Total lies,
Speaker 3: not true all And he said he kind of only
Speaker 3: knew Maria casually at that time. Mayon, the marketing guy,
Speaker 3: you know, he's the one who kind of just connected
Speaker 3: the dots.
Speaker 2: He's friends.
Speaker 3: She knew about Maria and France and like, you know,
Speaker 3: connected it all over.
Speaker 2: So I've heard of her. I knew people that might
Speaker 2: want to know her.
Speaker 3: So they have this Infojess that's in the in North America.
Speaker 3: But then they had like a Swiss subsidiary. They had
Speaker 3: them all over the world. They're doing this in other countries,
Speaker 3: other languages. But here's like, here's an example for North America.
Speaker 3: Infojest Direct Marketing wrote and designed the letters, and then
Speaker 3: a Canadian company, a different company, printed and addressed them
Speaker 3: and then shipped them to a company in Albany, New York,
Speaker 3: where they were mailed out in bulk, and then any
Speaker 3: responses were sent to commercial mailboxes owned by a Hong
Speaker 3: Kong based company called Destiny Research Center, and then those
Speaker 3: were gathered and sent to another company, Data Marketing Group
Speaker 3: on Long Island.
Speaker 2: Back to America. Uh huh interesting.
Speaker 3: Long Island zaren Yes, Long Island. Yeah, In Long Island. Yes,
Speaker 3: I want you to picture picture Long Island. It's your
Speaker 3: first day on the job at Data Marketing Group in
Speaker 3: Deer Park, New York. You used to work at the
Speaker 3: coals at the shopping center down the street, but a
Speaker 3: friend clued you in on this gig. You'll be working
Speaker 3: in the mailroom, processing letters sent in from customers. That's
Speaker 3: what they told you. You're in a five story building
Speaker 3: that houses the First National Bank of Long Island. On
Speaker 3: the ground floor for blocks on either side of you
Speaker 3: or single level office park type places, HVAC companies, etc.
Speaker 3: You're being walked around the offices by a guy named Franco.
Speaker 3: He wears a big bluetooth earpiece and absolutely stinks of cologne.
Speaker 3: He's showing you the cubicles where people type lazily or
Speaker 3: talk on the phone. You can't hear what they're saying.
Speaker 3: You pass a room with two long tables. A bunch
Speaker 3: of women sit along the tables, some scanning checks in
Speaker 3: the machine, others running currency through speed counters. They all
Speaker 3: wear the same blue polo shirts and latex clubs. No
Speaker 3: one looks up as you poke your heavyloone. Franco tells
Speaker 3: you that This is the cash room. They process all
Speaker 3: of the payments received. He tells you they run about
Speaker 3: five hundred thousand dollars every two weeks. You whistle, that's
Speaker 3: a lot of money. You ask Franco what people are
Speaker 3: buying services? He tells you. As you walk down the
Speaker 3: gray carpeted hallway, its short nap showing where from years
Speaker 3: of office workers trudging back and forth. You ask Franco
Speaker 3: exactly what she'll be doing. Let's watch and you can learn,
Speaker 3: he says. He takes you to a large room with
Speaker 3: us mail bins stacked along a wall, tons of them.
Speaker 3: A man stands at a counter that runs down the
Speaker 3: center of the room. A tinny radio plays quietly in
Speaker 3: the corner of the room, kerky classical music, competing with
Speaker 3: Uhammad the air conditioning system. The man pulls letters from
Speaker 3: the mail bin next to him on a cart his
Speaker 3: latex love hands expertly using a small letter opener to
Speaker 3: slice a on the envelope. You watch as he extracts
Speaker 3: a piece of paper, a photo, and a checked He
Speaker 3: scans the letter and tosses it into a hole in
Speaker 3: the counter. He glances at the photo and tosses it
Speaker 3: into that same hole. Then he looks at the check
Speaker 3: and carefully places it into a tray in front of him.
Speaker 3: Stacks the checks filled a tray. He puts the envelope
Speaker 3: into another tray. He opens another letter, this time a
Speaker 3: large Manila enflop. He pulls out sheets and sheets of
Speaker 3: paper with feeble scrawl filling the page and slanted lines.
Speaker 3: He scans the text and tosses it into the hole.
Speaker 3: Then he pulls out what looks to be a lock
Speaker 3: of hair ough Franco mutters. The man at the counter
Speaker 3: looks over at you two and rolls his eyes. Then
Speaker 3: he shrugs and unceremoniously tosses the hair in the hole.
Speaker 3: Then he reaches into the Manilla envelope and pulls out
Speaker 3: a stack of cash, held together with a bunch of
Speaker 3: old crackled rubber bands and yellows and tans and pinks.
Speaker 3: He places the cash into a strong box next to
Speaker 3: the check tray and puts the Manilla envelope in the
Speaker 3: other tray. Franco turns to you and claps you on
Speaker 3: the shoulder. He tells you he thinks you've got it
Speaker 3: figured out. That Philip there will answer any questions you
Speaker 3: may have. He tells you that your lunch break is
Speaker 3: at eleven forty five. Then he turns and walks away
Speaker 3: down the hall. Let's take a break. Yeah, I have
Speaker 3: to split this one up.
Speaker 2: It's a lunch break.
Speaker 3: Lunch break eleven forty five. All right, when we come back,
Speaker 3: we'll get back on the scene. All right, Zarin, we're
Speaker 3: in Long Island.
Speaker 2: I'm still enjoying your stunch break. Yeah, I come back
Speaker 2: for your lunch break.
Speaker 3: Okay. So you head into the mail room with Philip,
Speaker 3: and you stand at the counter opposite of him. The
Speaker 3: two of you introduce yourselves and he tells you to
Speaker 3: wheel a mail bin over on the cart and get started.
Speaker 3: He tells you to put on some gloves from the
Speaker 3: box on the table in the corner, and then he
Speaker 3: tells you to start opening the mail. Pull out the
Speaker 3: letter if there is one, read through it and make
Speaker 3: sure there's no credit card or bank information written on it.
Speaker 3: Then toss it in the hole. Look for any pictures
Speaker 3: or mementos or little gifts, toss those in the hole. Two.
Speaker 3: Then pull out any money, cash, check, money order, whatever,
Speaker 3: and place it in the appropriate tray or box. He
Speaker 3: tells you someone will come by every hour to empty
Speaker 3: the trays. Oh, and there are cameras up in the
Speaker 3: corners by the ceiling, so don't try any funny business.
Speaker 3: Then you got to put the envelope and the envelope tray,
Speaker 3: so you track the names and addresses. You grab your
Speaker 3: first envelope and get to work. You use the little
Speaker 3: tool to slice it open. It holds a short letter
Speaker 3: on a note card, which you read over quickly. It's
Speaker 3: asking someone named Maria for help. They want to know
Speaker 3: if their daughter will ever come home. Apparently she went
Speaker 3: missing when she was six. That was twelve years ago.
Speaker 3: There's a photo too, a gap tooth little girl and pigtail,
Speaker 3: smiles up at the camera, the sun in her eyes.
Speaker 3: I put these in the hole. You ask Philip yep,
Speaker 3: he tells you. You ask him how everything gets filed
Speaker 3: when it's all jumbled in the bin under the hole.
Speaker 3: That's the trash man, he tells you. A guy comes
Speaker 3: by every couple of hours to empty it out, goes
Speaker 3: out to the dumpster. Photos, swatches of clothing, locks of
Speaker 3: hair thrown away. You feel sick. You take the check
Speaker 3: that was in the envelope. Two hundred and fifty dollars
Speaker 3: and place it in the empty tray in front of you.
Speaker 3: You stare at it for a bit, and then you
Speaker 3: turn and walk out of the room. You head straight
Speaker 3: for the elevators and go out to your car and
Speaker 3: drive home. Third one this month, Philip mutters to himself
Speaker 3: as he slices open another envelope of desperation.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, my heart breaks. I just want to
Speaker 2: go fight these frenchmen.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, knuckle up, Come on, Frank.
Speaker 3: Now that I've bummed you out the day at Data marketing,
Speaker 3: processing payments, this is why I can't write that book.
Speaker 3: Would you say it does that?
Speaker 2: When you said that circular hole, I was like, that's
Speaker 2: gonna be the circular file the screenplays go into. I
Speaker 2: know this.
Speaker 3: So remember Maria was in name only, was saying that
Speaker 3: the personal items would help with the readings. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: folks at Data Marketing, just throw them away. Enter Patrice Runner.
Speaker 2: All right, he's Runner.
Speaker 3: He's the main man on this whole info just stuff
Speaker 3: in North America. Oh yeah, So he met up in
Speaker 3: the eighties night you know, late eighties, early nineties with
Speaker 3: Mayo and Real and the Maria Duvalscan was up and
Speaker 3: running in Europe at that point, and he's like, I'm
Speaker 3: from Canada. Let's do North America.
Speaker 2: Got you?
Speaker 3: So he goes out to France wants to meet Maria
Speaker 3: and then get the rights to do North America. And
Speaker 3: she did a reading on him and is then girlfriend.
Speaker 3: They're convinced she's the real deal.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 3: So he does. He's the one who starts the North
Speaker 3: America Maria Duval direct Malee, Okay.
Speaker 2: He's like, I got a big market of suckers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's got the blessing of Mayon and Real
Speaker 3: of course, who were just soaking Europe at this time.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3: So he gives Duval a five percent royalty and I'm
Speaker 3: sure he's kicking up to Mayon and Real, but Duval's
Speaker 3: five percent royalty was several hundred thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 3: That's how much money. And so he you know, he
Speaker 3: does the ads in the newspaper, and he was writing
Speaker 3: his own copy at first, and then he started hiring copywriters.
Speaker 3: Imagine getting that job of writing these letters.
Speaker 2: I mean, yes and no, Like it's one of those
Speaker 2: ones like I totally think it'll be fun, until I
Speaker 2: realized what I was doing and then I absolutely hate it.
Speaker 3: Like he was pulling in like for on the first day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was.
Speaker 3: Pulling in for him, like twenty three million a year,
Speaker 3: and he lived in he had he lived in Whistler,
Speaker 3: Costa Rica, Switzerland, Paris, Ibiza, and he and his family
Speaker 3: traveled all over because like he doesn't have to do anything,
Speaker 3: it's on autopilot. Between twenty six and twenty fourteen, his
Speaker 3: company sent out at least fifty six million Maria Duval letters.
Speaker 2: How are there that many people calling for the.
Speaker 3: He did like ab testing between different versions of the letter,
Speaker 3: so he would like test him out on groups of
Speaker 3: fifty thousand to see which had more people respond according
Speaker 3: to AARP, which you know they were like their bat
Speaker 3: signal went off.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Federal investigators estimate the scam impacted one in three hundred Americans,
Speaker 3: about one point four million victims, and raked in over
Speaker 3: two hundred million dollars, with a similar proportion in Canada.
Speaker 2: That's a lot.
Speaker 3: One in three hundred. US Postal inspectors. They start getting
Speaker 3: complaints around two thousand and six. In two thousand and seven,
Speaker 3: the US Postal Inspectors they filed a cease and desist
Speaker 3: order against Maria Duval, Patrese Runner, and then others, including
Speaker 3: a company called Zodiac Zone.
Speaker 2: That sounds like such nonsense.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: I don't know if runners or if it's a different
Speaker 3: partner in the scam. It just it gets really murky,
Speaker 3: get thrown in there.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: A settlement was negotiated and the individuals named agreed to
Speaker 3: cease operations. Zodiac Zone just changed its name and continued
Speaker 3: to do business as usual.
Speaker 2: Using the same male system.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Everything just now we're like Bodiac Bone.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: And although Patre's Runner was one of the people originally sued,
Speaker 3: his lawyers negotiated to later have his name removed from
Speaker 3: the lawsuit, arguing that he'd already left the business and
Speaker 3: had nothing to do with the scam. That is a
Speaker 3: complete lie, totally involved. The FTC already knew about Runner
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety seven. They reached out to him to
Speaker 3: verify claims in an ad that he was running for
Speaker 3: Svelt Patch. Svelt Patch it was a skin patch that
Speaker 3: was supposed to melt away body fat. What Yeah, and
Speaker 3: if you can believe it, Zarin, he didn't have any
Speaker 3: proof that Svelt Patch would actually help people drop pounds,
Speaker 3: what is not crazy? So his company was ordered to
Speaker 3: pay the FTC three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: mainly to pay back the people who bought the pack.
Speaker 2: Okay, that was go around what he had made. So
Speaker 2: it wasn't like he made seven million and had to
Speaker 2: pay three hundreds. I don't operating costs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know what his full hall was. I'm
Speaker 3: praying that that was.
Speaker 2: Like helping this restitution.
Speaker 3: A few years later, the FEDS tried again, according to
Speaker 3: that book, a Deal with the Devil. In twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: USPIS Inspector Thomas Ninen was looking into a different fraud
Speaker 3: when he saw an alarming number of withdrawal requests were
Speaker 3: being denied for payments to one business in particular with
Speaker 3: an intriguing name, Destiny Research Center, a company registered in
Speaker 3: Hong Kong. So twenty fourteen, the Department of Justice filed
Speaker 3: a lawsuit against Duval and Patrick Gurrin, the other psychic,
Speaker 3: and so the lawsuit temporarily prevented Data Marketing Group. That's
Speaker 3: where you were working for a little bit.
Speaker 2: Of course, how could I forget.
Speaker 3: And info just direct marketing runners company in Montreal, Montreal
Speaker 3: from sending out letters to the US. Three Info Just
Speaker 3: Canada employees were named, but not Runner, who avoided being
Speaker 3: named in the lawsuit.
Speaker 2: Yeah good lawyer.
Speaker 3: Runner said that he didn't know the envelopes filled with
Speaker 3: hair and photos weren't being sent to Duval in France.
Speaker 3: I know harro photos, but that's one hundred percent falls
Speaker 3: he set.
Speaker 2: The whole thing up, is his organization. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Twenty sixteen, the lawsuits settled. None of the eight defendants,
Speaker 3: including Duval and Garren, admitted guilt, but they were all
Speaker 3: barred from sending letters in the United States.
Speaker 2: And none of this was any letters, I guess because
Speaker 2: they're not promising anything.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but there's like hank money involved, I
Speaker 3: don't know. Twenty eighteen, the US Postal Inspector and other
Speaker 3: US government officials came to Maria's house in southern France,
Speaker 3: like that's a junket. But at this point she had
Speaker 3: like really advanced and.
Speaker 2: Mess Yeah, she's like out of it entire I mean
Speaker 2: she's aged.
Speaker 3: So they didn't learn much, but they got a trip
Speaker 3: to the South France courtesy of Uncle Sam.
Speaker 2: I like to see postal carriers out there.
Speaker 3: Exactly. However, you know they're facing potential criminal charges. Some
Speaker 3: Infojest employees helped the US government in charges against Runner,
Speaker 3: maybe Philip in the mail room Runner was charged. Runner
Speaker 3: was charged in absentia in twenty eighteen. In twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: he was located living in a tent on the beach
Speaker 3: in Ibatza.
Speaker 4: What.
Speaker 3: Yeah, his wife had left him and kicked him out.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, and he had no money. This is
Speaker 3: beautifully living. He was arrested and extradited back to the
Speaker 3: US in the fall.
Speaker 2: Of twenty So he wasn't doing like an ayahuasca cleanse.
Speaker 2: He was just beat town broke. He was with bad
Speaker 2: facial hair, hanging out in the tent.
Speaker 3: In June of twenty twenty three, he was found guilty
Speaker 3: of fourteen counts of mail and wire fraud. There it is.
Speaker 3: He faces up to twenty years in prison per count.
Speaker 3: But he's still a waiting sentencing.
Speaker 2: Oh, he going to get it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He has maintained that while what he did may
Speaker 3: not have been moral, it wasn't fraud.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. That's a terrible I know.
Speaker 3: And that magazine The Walrus, they said. In his trial,
Speaker 3: his lawyers argued that quote, psychic services are inherently misleading
Speaker 3: and therefore could not be fraud.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that's actually a very interesting argument. Look,
Speaker 2: everybody knows, they knows, so if you fall for it,
Speaker 2: I mean, come on, but you know.
Speaker 3: And a bit of good news because the uspis settled
Speaker 3: with the data broker for one hundred and twenty seven
Speaker 3: point five million what they were able to pay back
Speaker 3: many of Maria's victims.
Speaker 2: Oh that's the least good. Yeah, there's something there, like
Speaker 2: they get some sense of justice Financially, I'm still hung
Speaker 2: up on the throwing out the pictures and the little
Speaker 2: bits of talismanic juice that these people are sending over there.
Speaker 3: The little bits of hope.
Speaker 2: Yes, I just I hope that the Postal Service is
Speaker 2: able to actually get them all on these charges. And
Speaker 2: I'm not somebody who's like, yeah, throw them away and
Speaker 2: lock them up, throw away the key and all that. No. No,
Speaker 2: but seriously, for these guys, well, I think under the prison, I.
Speaker 3: Don't know where real is. Myom has passed away, but anyway,
Speaker 3: they're horrible, and I hope all bad things happen here.
Speaker 2: We take some money from his I'm not going to
Speaker 2: come out to his family.
Speaker 3: Captain d give me a talk back. God, I went cheat.
Speaker 4: Hey, Elizabeth hay Saren, longtime listener, first time color so
Speaker 4: I just want to say thank you for bringing me
Speaker 4: laughs near like every week. I started listening to these
Speaker 4: by myself, but when you got got to the Cocaine Bear,
Speaker 4: I just had to share it with my dad. So
Speaker 4: thanks to bringing us both laughter. Have a good day. Bye,
Speaker 4: hey again. Also, I would so buy a Sandalwood University
Speaker 4: T shirt, just saying please.
Speaker 1: Do those right.
Speaker 2: Yes, the dreamcatch.
Speaker 3: I like how Cocaine Bear brings families together.
Speaker 2: Really beautiful, so beautiful. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Good job for bringing that into this world. That's all
Speaker 3: I have for today. You can find us online at
Speaker 3: ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also on the internet. Email
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Speaker 3: Elizabeth Dutton and Sarah Burnett, produced and edited by cash
Speaker 3: Room supervisor Dave Cousten. Research is by Madame Marissa Brown,
Speaker 3: Psychic to the Stars and Zodiac enthusiast, and by that
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