A conman who defrauded more than $175 million from 1.3 million elderly and “vulnerable” Americans in a 20-year mail fraud scheme has been jailed for 10 years.
Patrice Runner, 57, carried out an international mail fraud scheme in which he posed as a psychic and promised wealth and happiness to those who sent him cash in the mail, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Runner, who has dual Canadian and French citizenship, was convicted in June 2023 of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and multiple counts of mail and wire fraud. He was found not guilty of four counts of mail fraud.
Runner, who had been prosecuted by authorities since 2014, was given a 10-year prison sentence by a New York judge on Monday.
The United States Postal Inspection Service, which investigated his crimes, said after his conviction that Runner’s “extravagant lifestyle, born on the backs of millions of elderly and vulnerable Americans, has come to an end.”
Four other co-conspirators had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud in connection with his massive mailing fraud.
Patrice Runner, 57, (pictured) has been sentenced to ten years in prison after defrauding more than $175 million from 1.3 million elderly and ‘vulnerable’ Americans in a two-decade mail fraud scheme
Using Maria Duval’s name and image, along with that of another French psychic named Patrick Guerin, Runner and his co-conspirators sent letters promising recipients that her psychic guidance and talismans could help change their lives .
The fraud scheme, which started in 1994 and ran until November 2014, targeted the elderly and those in desperate positions trying to get back on their feet financially.
Using Maria Duval’s name and image, along with that of another French psychic named Patrick Guerin, Runner and his co-conspirators sent letters promising recipients that her psychic guidance and talismans could help change their lives.
The fraudsters obtained the names of the vulnerable and elderly by renting out mailing lists and trading them with other mail fraud schemes.
When a victim responded to one letter, Runner and his co-conspirators allegedly bombarded them with dozens of additional letters, with some victims receiving as many as 100, according to prosecutors.
Each of the additional letters also reportedly appeared to be a personalized written communication, with portions of it apparently handwritten, requesting further payment from the victim.
Victims were instructed to send a payment — often ranging from $5 to $50 — to purchase various so-called “unique and supernatural items,” which were in fact cheap, mass-produced trinkets, the indictment alleged.
They were also urged to make a payment to receive “personalized astrological services and studies,” which were never actually returned.
Prosecutors say neither Duval nor Guerin played any role in sending the letters, did not receive the victims’ responses and did not send the additional letters after the victims paid money.
Runner, who has dual Canadian and French citizenship, was convicted in June 2023 of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and multiple counts of mail and wire fraud. He was found not guilty of four counts of mail fraud.
The letters sent in response were addressed to a New York-based company where employees “threw the vast majority of victim responses into the trash,” according to a criminal complaint.
According to the Justice Department, Runner used a series of shell companies registered in Canada and Hong Kong to conceal his involvement in the scheme while living abroad in multiple other countries, including Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Costa Rica and Spain. .
Infogest Direct Marketing benefited from the letters, court documents show.
They were printed in Canada and trucked to Albany, New York before being shipped in large batches of up to 50,000 at a time.
Runner denied breaking the law, telling The Walrus Magazine last year: “Maybe it’s not moral, maybe it’s nonsense… But it doesn’t mean it’s fraud.”
He also bragged to the magazine about his writing skills, claiming that he could “get someone’s attention, and at the end, after a few minutes, that person sends a check to get a product, to an address or company that he or she has. Never heard of it’.
A grand jury in the Eastern District of New York indicted Runner in October 2018, and the following year he was arrested in Ibiza in April before being transferred to a prison in Madrid.
He was extradited from Spain to the United States in December 2020 and was found guilty by a federal jury on June 16 last year.
In 2019, United States Postal Inspection Service investigators said they were able to return more than $200,000 worth of cash and money order payments sent in by nearly 6,000 victims.
Together with current checks and credit payments that were stopped, the investigation saved the victims approximately $827,000.
As of June last year, most victims had not received any money back, and officials said it is incredibly unlikely that most victims ever will.
Prosecutors say neither Duval nor Guerin played any role in sending the letters, did not receive the victims’ responses and did not send the additional letters after the victims paid money.
Each of the additional letters also reportedly appeared to be a personalized written communication, with portions of it apparently handwritten, requesting further payment from the victim, according to prosecutors.
Inspector Chris Nielsen of the USPIS Philadelphia Division said in a Monday news release announcing Runner’s sentence: “The conviction and federal sentencing of Patrice Runner is the appropriate punishment for someone who routinely preys on vulnerable and elderly Americans.
“Postal inspectors will continue to work tirelessly to ensure that you can trust that US Mail is free from these types of predatory schemes.”
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, chief of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, added, “This case demonstrates the Department of Justice’s Consumer Protection Division and its partners in the USPIS are committed to investigating and prosecuting transnational fraud schemes targeting U.S. consumers.
‘The global nature of this plan meant we had to rely on law enforcement agencies from around the world to provide evidence of criminality. We would like to thank officials from France, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Canada, and in particular the Canadian Competition Bureau, for their assistance in securing evidence in this case, as well as Spain for Runner’s arrest and extradition, which enabled justice to be served. ‘