Maria Duval Scam

Maria Duvall, a supposed psychic with extraordinary abilities, became the face of a massive direct mail scam that defrauded millions of people worldwide. Victims received personalized letters from Maria, promising good fortune and protection in exchange for payment. The scam played on emotions like fear and greed, and targeted vulnerable individuals, mostly elderly. While Maria lent her name to the operation, her actual involvement remains unclear. Authorities launched an investigation, but much of the money had already been funneled through offshore accounts. The aftermath raised questions about the responsibility of institutions to protect vulnerable populations from scams. Maria's family claims she was also a victim, having lost control of her name in a business deal. Investigators found no evidence linking her to the scam. The case serves as a cautionary tale about the power of psychological manipulation and the universal desire for hope. Welcome to Serials and Schemes. I'm Sam and I'm Sandy. This is a true crime and conspiracy podcast. Our podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Hi and welcome back to Serials and Schemes. If you're new here, hi I'm Sandy and I'm Sam. Today I'm unmasking one of the most prolific and bizarre scams of the 21st century. A scam that spanned decades, defrauded millions of people and left countless victims in its wake. Not to sound insensitive but this is one of my favorite kind of cases. I love this shit. This is some scammy bullshit. This is a story of Maria Duvall. Psychic scam. A global scheme built around one mysterious woman, false hope and a so-called psychic network. My husband and our awesome podcast editor has our coffee sorted for this evening. So fuck actually Matt, where are our fucking coffee bitch? So grab your coffee, settle in and let's unravel this unbelievable tale. I'm going to start by going over the early years. I mean I'm not really going to go over many early years. It's basically she was born in Milan, Italy in 1937 and I'm just going to go over how she rose from obscurity to become a name whispered in both awe and skepticism. Maria Duvall's story is one shrouded in intrigue. She claimed to possess extraordinary psychic abilities, predicting futures, locating missing persons and offering mystical guidance to thousands. Her journey began humbly, gaining mobile recognition through small readings and media appearances. But soon her reputation skyrocketed, fueled by newspaper headlines and radio interviews, positioning her as a trusted spiritual advisor to many. However, as her name spread across borders, so did the controversy. Was she truly gifted or was something else at play? In this episode, I'm exploring how Maria Duvall built her empire, the believers who swore by her insights and the skeptics who questioned everything. And this is true of scams. Some people are going to be scammed and some people are going to be like, absolutely not. So it was a bit of that, I think. And she kind of started at a level of people did trust her. She was a trusted psychic in her area and she grew from there. The greed got the better of her. So let's step into the world of psychic phenomena and deception where reality and illusion blur. Our story begins in the 1970s in the south of France, where Maria Duvall first emerged as a celebrated psychic. Maria was well known for her clairvoyant abilities, claiming to have solved missing person cases and even helped law enforcement. But how much of her psychic prowess was real? That's debatable. What isn't debatable is how Maria's name would go on to become a tool for one of the largest mail fraud operations in history. By the 1990s, Maria Duvall had become the face of a massive direct mail scam. It worked like this. Millions of people received personalized letters from Maria, claiming she had foreseen something extraordinary about their future. These letters promised good fortune, wealth and protection, but only if the recipients paid her for her services. Victims desperate for answers or looking for a stroke of luck often paid small sums of money, usually starting at $30 or $40. But once someone replied, the cycle began. Additional letters followed, each more urgent, asking for more payments, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, sorry, sometimes hundreds or thousands of dollars. The scam wasn't limited to France. By the late 1990s, it had gone global, operating across Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia. And even though no one notices New Zealand, I thought I'd also add that her letters did make it to New Zealand as well. The mastermind behind this wasn't Maria herself, but a shadowy network of companies including including a firm called Astroforce. Wait, this included corporate companies? Yeah, no fucking way. Yeah. So Astroforce and similar companies automated the scam. So they used Maria's image and a collection of pre written generic letters designed to look personalized. Think about it, a single template could be mailed to millions with minor tweaks like adding someone's name or referencing a vague detail like a recent hardship. That is diabolical. Yep. And you send out enough, half those people, 20% of those people gonna be like, Oh, I am going through a hardship or recent hardship or my husband died or whatever it is. It must be just how many people believe in, like, I'm one of the people who believe in like, I wouldn't believe a fucking letter that's mailed to me randomly. Yes. And whatever. But I can see how some like, six year old woman who maybe is widowed, who's desperate for like answers and yeah, you know, fuck that's so rough. Yeah. So the letters often played on emotions like fear or greed, like you're saying. One common tactic was to warn recipients about an impending disaster, something only Maria's powers could protect them from. Others dangled the promise of winning lotteries or finding true love. It was emotional manipulation at its finest. Victims were mostly elderly people, of course, often isolated or vulnerable. Some paid hundreds. Others lost their life savings. One victim in the United States reportedly sent over $40,000 in total payments over several years. Nah, absolutely. $40,000. Yeah, but I guess you're paying $30 and then $100 and then $30, you know, it all adds up. But if you think that you're getting answers, if you tell yourself you're getting answers, then you believe that shit. And then it amounts to $40,000 I guess so. And yet the scam wasn't just about Maria. There were other psychics, fake ones with names like Patrick Gurin and Tara who also assisted victims in exchanging, in exchange for cash. Here's the twist though. While Maria Duvall lent her name and image to the operation, her actual involvement remained murky. For years she maintained she wasn't running the scam and claimed she had been duped as well. Maria gave few public statements, but when journalists tracked her down in the 2010s, she was living a quiet life in southern France. By then she was elderly and reportedly unwell. Her family insisted that Maria had sold the rights to her name decades ago and hadn't been involved since. So was Maria Duvall a willing accomplice or was she a victim too? That's a question we may never fully answer. But what's clear is that her name became synonymous with one of the most successful fraud operations of all time. I follow a few psychic scam ones. But like, like if she was a victim, this is this cooked. Well, I'll keep going. But realistically, yes and no, she was. So she knew she did sign her name, the rights to her name over. But also, she's now got dementia. And so you can't get the proper answers out of her. Well, sorry for interrupting here. No, no, I'm just very like, wow. Yeah, it's, yeah, when I was reading it, I was like, this is juice. Yeah, this is some juice. And it went on for a while too. So in 2016, after years of complaints from victims, authorities in the United States launched a full scale investigation into the scam. So this is, she lives in France. But because everyone's being scammed, America was like, you know what, fuck this. Like we're going to sort this shit out. So the Federal Trade Commission, FTC, took action, shutting down multiple companies associated with the letters and seizing millions of dollars. They discovered, they discovered the operation had defrauded over 1.4 million people in the US alone, with total losses estimated at $200 million worldwide. But by the time the authorities caught up, much of the money was gone, funneled through offshore accounts and shell companies. Many victims never recovered a cent. The aftermath raised critical questions about the responsibility of postal services, banks and even governments to protect vulnerable populations from scams like this one. Despite the legal action, the Maria Duvall scam remains a cautionary tale about the power of psychological manipulation. How could so many people fall for it? The answer lies in a mix of desperation, trust and frankly, the universal human desire for hope. Maria's son Antoine and granddaughter Celine told investigators that Maria was also a victim of the mail fraud bearing her name. In a CNN interview with Antoine, he advised that his mother Maria Duvall had lost control of her name when she entered into an ill-fated business deal. She had definitely wanted to be a local psychic and had helped police to find missing people and she was paid for her consultations. But then a European businessman approached her and she sold the rights to her name, which after some time they pinned her name in the mass mailing of letters, obviously these were scam letters. Maria had never written or signed a single letter, Antoine said. Antoine then quoted, everyone thinks she had millions but no, she didn't. The company had a lot of money, that's true, but my mother didn't even have 1%. However, if she had had 1%, this would still have amounted to millions. I was just gonna say, you can say that, but 1% of what? Yes, yeah. When US investigators arrived with French police to her property though, in hopes of finding money or documents linking her to the businessman behind all of this, because they're hidden, like they can't find shit, there's no paper trail, there's nothing, they're smart. Yeah, of course. They found nothing in her accounts, her safe, under mattresses, under statues, like she's got this beautiful estate and she's got statues, like heavy leg statues, there's nothing under them, there's nothing. Nothing but pocket change. I don't think it's funny, like, and this is not a famous for every bit of law enforcement in America, but, like, don't you love that, like, when it comes to, like, for example, John Bonet case, how the police were fucking business managing everywhere, right? The second it involved scams and money, like, while on Mars. Yeah, yeah. I think that's hilarious. Yeah, and even, you know, you, yeah, you can see it when it's being done in America and they're over there and they're sorting shit out, but to even get on a plane and go, I'm gonna fucking find this lady, we're gonna sort this shit out, we're gonna search her property, I don't even know how legal that is, to be honest, but they were there, they were doing it. That's why I'm saying. This scam was a full-blown business that exchanged an endless number of hands over the years. Ringleaders were eventually found on the beaches of Thailand and havens of Switzerland, sorry, and Monaco, but because of the size of the business and the secrecy of its leaders, it made it harder to determine whether Maria Duval was involved at all. Her signature appeared on letters, certainly, but it also appeared on other documents in more recent years as well. So, yeah, yeah. Maria Duval, the actual person, not just the name, had YouTube videos promoting her letters. So her facts, so she was in these YouTube videos where she sat there in her office and talked about her letters. So one of her quotes from her videos was, you can rest assured that I look at the great majority of your letters. So even if she wasn't involved, she was promoting them. Yeah. So she was saying that there was truth in them. She's also written a lot of books and in her books that she's written, she described in detail that she was bestowed these powers, these psychic powers, from her uncle who was a priest in Italy. I almost never heard such blasphemy. Right. But when questioned in later years, like face-to-face about those powers, she can't remember. She doesn't know. She doesn't know how she got them. Dementia does funny things to our minds. Isn't it funny that dementia can affect a psychic person? I know. You can all see that coming. Surely you would have written this shit down because you saw this coming, right? Yeah, that's an excellent point. As an all-seeing, all-powerful, bestowed-upon-a-priest vibe, you can predict the effect of dementia? Or she went, fuck yeah, I'm going to scam everyone because I'm going to get dementia and no one's going to know if I actually fucking did it. I'm not even going to know. Oh my gosh. So Maria had built her fame on her own accord. Whether her psychic powers were real or not, she had built hope and provided support and help to many people. The estate that she owned in France, she had purchased that before all this led to scam. So she already had money. She did have a name for herself just based on her psychic abilities. But at some point along the way, her wealth and fame had not been enough for her. So the scam was built upon a desperate desire for more and she trusted the wrong people, really. Yeah. Human beings, they're always innately designed to always want more. This estate, I haven't seen it. I've seen a couple of pictures of little parts of it, but this is an estate. I don't know how much shit goes for in that area, but yeah, it wasn't cheap. So she had a name. She was a celebrity, but she just needed more. I might ask her about it. Sorry? My friend's French, like French. I might ask her about it. Yeah. Yeah, you should. So before we continue, there's a few questions to think about. Why do you think scams like this work so well? I mean, we touched on that before, but like, yeah, people who are desperate, like financially desperate, grieving, going through a breakup, some kind of loss, like some kind of hardship. And obviously the letters are targeted in that way. You're going through this hardship, you're going through that hardship. We can help you. It's, you know. I think like the way the letters were done was almost like, we know that you're going through this hardship, so we're going to help you. So people were like, oh, they know me. Oh, they know what I've, like, she must be psychic. And you know what's really sad is how many people that are struggling financially are the ones most likely to give, you know, to be like, oh, I can pay $30 and then I'll get some answers. Like I'll do it. They're just, not only at the bottoms of their asses, some of them, but they're at their wits end. Like they just want help to be, and they just. Even like with church timings, sometimes it's like the poorest people that donate the most money. Yeah. Well, there's a story in the Bible. I don't want to get all religious and biblical and shit, but there's a story that, so a rich lady comes along and gives, say, you know, in the context of things, rich lady comes in and she gives like $5,000, which is a lot of money. And then there's a poor lady and she comes along and she's like, I don't have much. And Jesus was like, you know, just give whatever. And she's like, I'll give you my last $5. Like that's all I've got. And he is, and Jesus is like, this poor lady gave more than what the rich lady did. And he's like, no, how can that be true? The rich lady gave $5,000. And he's like, the poor lady gave everything. Yeah. I know the story. Yeah. And I'm like that, oh, it's true. And, you know, I think that the Bible is, it's a living book and a lot of the stories in there are relevant to this day and age. And I think that's, yeah. When you're talking about tithing and things like that. And yeah, that's a lot of the poorest people, they give from, but they're giving from their heart and that's why. A hundred percent. And then with the people that are desperate and looking for some kind of comfort or reassurance from whatever force or power that may be. Yeah. Yeah. How do you think we can better protect vulnerable people, especially the elderly from scams like this? I mean, fuck, that's an age old question, right? Because it's going on all the time. Yeah. And in different ways as well. And that's in New Zealand, we've got an elderly and disability act to protect them because so many, even their children are stealing their fucking money. It's elderly abuse and all that sort of thing. And plus it's like, I don't know if you've seen these videos on TikTok, but there's like AI programs now where you can like fake a phone call. Like for example, like these parents reported getting a phone call from their son saying he's in a horrible character and he's going to die. And it's in his voice and, oh, sorry, if he died, it probably isn't in his voice. No, no, no. He's saying that he's going to die soon if they don't help him, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, it's like the parents, it sounds so, and his scream, his cry, everything sounded so much like him, but why would they question it? Yes. Yeah. I've seen that too. And it's terrifying. Yeah. So I don't know how we can better protect other than putting acts in place like that. But then it's like, even then they're still, they're still a victim to what's happened. They might be compensated and et cetera, but it's like, it doesn't change the fact that they were violated. Also, and a lot of this is not just, yes, they are being taken advantage of, but they're making their own choice to do that. Exactly. The fact that the letter came in, that's where the scam is. The next step is the elderly person are making that choice to then send money or to do this. And, you know, and you've got ones that, you know, have dementia and things and they don't remember that they've done something or whatever that that's not helpful either. What's helpful to the scammers, I suppose. I nearly got scammed last year. Just an NZ Post tracking link. Yeah. Yeah. Didn't even think twice about it yet. Didn't think twice, thought it was, thought it just needed to be pushed through somehow. I didn't even think about it. I did it and then I got a call from a bank, like fairly, like really quickly after. So I imagine like a lot of banks have these things in place where if it looks unusual, they're like, Hey, that's weird. Yeah. Yeah. Which I appreciate. Yeah. Yeah. It's good that the banks do pick up on some stuff. I, my credit card was used, that's what they spent some Indian rupees on my credit card. And I was like, guys, come on. But the banks are so quick to sort things out. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about the victims of Maria Duvall. Many of them were elderly, living on fixed incomes. Some were grieving the loss of loved ones or facing financial hardships. So then these letters weren't just scams. They were lifelines, a promise of hope, a way out. Imagine sending your hard-earned money, believing it will unlock some great fortune, only to realize it was all a lie. One victim was Canadian Doreen Robinson, an elderly woman who received the letters after her husband passed away and she struggled with dementia. She responded to every single solicitation that she received, like in her mailboxes, all of it, including the Maria Duvall letters. She ended up spending several thousand dollars in response to the Duvall scam, survival scam, in a single year, according to her daughter. She had like tens of thousands of dollars of debt on her credit card when she passed away. The psychological toll was immense. Some victims were too embarrassed to tell their families. Others kept sending money, convinced that the next payment would bring results. The victims believed in the promises of the letters. Duvall believed in the promises of businessmen. She wasn't entirely innocent. She signed on the dotted line in hope of more fame and fortune. As her son says, the legacy that she leaves now will be the Maria Duvall name. The name. The letters. It's Maria Duvall. It's Maria Duvall who stole from this lady or the next. The same idea will always remain. Shame on you, Maria Duvall. Even today, variations of the Maria Duvall scam still exist. Forces have adopted the new technologies, email, social media, and even text messages. The lesson here is clear. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Scams thrive on desperation and trust, but education and awareness are our best defenses. When CNN reporters visited Maria in her home, they noted that she was now in the depths of dementia and the full truth has died with her memory. However, they noted on their way out of her offices, upon leaving, a newspaper headline taped to the wall, exceptional lives have their price. And below that one was another newspaper clipping that read, don't tell anyone. Wait, so is Maria Duvall still alive though? She is. Well, the last reports were 2018, I believe. So she was alive then. But she had dementia. So they went in, she had to have naps between their talks. But her office, she's got two offices in her house. And they're all still just got all her stuff, all of her psychic, her books and her notes and all sorts of shit going on in there. I can confirm that she has passed. Oh, she has? She passed. Wait. I might be. Oh, no, it is. Yeah, it said that she died in October of 2001, 15th of October. Yep. Okay. That's helpful. Well, she was kind of fabulous. Yeah. I was looking her up. Yeah, she's fancy. She was actually quite a bougie lady. And also when I saw that photo for the first time, I remember that, you know, she's the picture of psychic. Like, you know, when you look at a newspaper column and you're like, you know, psychic, blah, blah, blah. That's what she looks like. Well, that's what it looks like. That look. Yeah. That's so bougie. But she was, yeah, she was fancy. And she was a celebrity around those areas and stuff. It wasn't just in France. It was offshore as well. People knew who she was. Yeah, she was internationally known. Yeah. Yeah. So they, the CNN reporters had been, I think they went to her property. They must have gone in 2016. And then they said, no, she's not here. Blah, blah, blah. They went the next day. They said, no, she's not here. And then they went back in 2018 when her son said, fine, you can come. We'll do a report. Oh, we'll do it. Yeah, we'll do a talk. Because that was just after all the French police and the U.S. police had gone and raided her house, basically. And they said to the CNN reporters, you know what? Come. Well, let's just talk. And when he said, you know, was she here in 2016 when I came? Because, you know, the lady at the gate said that she wasn't here. She was in Greece. And her son laughed and said, oh, that was her. That was her that told you that she's not here. That's so meek, I guess. But also, she was of sound enough mind to make that up in 2016. And then by 2018, memory gone. Off and on. Like they would say, you know, ask her a question. And she'd be like, oh, yes, I did. Blah, blah, blah. And then they would ask her a little bit more and then she'd be like, oh, I don't know. Was that me? You know, like, so yeah. But also, I mean, I mean, kind of like the Tom and Erica Girardi case, right? Like, yeah, Tom is only seven years old, you know, he's gone through the court system and they can't find any money anymore. Yeah. And he's doing his time. Yeah. But he's got dementia. So what they would really know. Yeah, exactly. If, you know, if he really did do anything. And I'm going to air quote the dementia. You can't tell. There's nothing. There's no also after they die, right? Yeah. Oh, Alzheimer's is after. Yeah, after they die, which you can't see it. And you can just tell from. So, yeah, pretend you've got it and your secrets stay with you, right? Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, there was knowledge or some sort of thing of a $200,000 payment to Maria. So there's definitely she definitely was paid. Yeah. At some point at points, but I just couldn't work out how much she'd been paid. They asked her. She's like, I don't know. And her son doesn't know. And who the fuck knows where the money is. So, yeah. I do remember like back in the mid to late 90s, getting like chain mail sort of like in the post and be like my friends or whatever, because they would have received it. And then if you don't send it to eight people, then your buddy cat's going to die or some shit, you know, those sorts of ones. I remember those. And I remember I'm shutting it down straight away. I got my first one. And mom was like, absolutely not. We do not. We don't. We don't comply with this or shit. You just rip it up, put in the bin. That's not something that you're going to continue on. And I, that was good. Even on TikTok today, it'll say, I know, like, you know, spirits telling you that you're going through a really difficult time. Yeah. And you scroll to the next thing and it's like a phone number and a website. And, you know, even just the share this with three people, tag, repost, you're going to receive infinite amounts of luck. As soon as you do that tomorrow, you're going to receive. Yeah. I'm like, as soon as I see the first thing, I just swipe. I'm like, I'm not. And, and because my mom set that foundation when I was a kid and was like, no, we don't do that. That's yeah. Look, I'm a woman girl. Yeah. And like, even I, like, I know that there's like intention guys and it's all in the wording. It's like, if you don't do this, this isn't going to happen. That's fucking manipulation. Like it's brainwashing, you know? And so you have to be able to tell those things apart when you are receiving emails or when you are looking at like a psychic that you want to go and see. And that's absolutely fine. No problem with that. Yeah. But like check everything, check every conversation, don't give them fucking anything. If they're a psychic, they'll know who you are, where you've come from, you know, all of that stuff. All they should need from you maybe is your birth date. You know what I mean? Like that's it. Yeah. So like, please guys, be really careful when you're going to go see a psychic or talk to a clairvoyant or whatever the fuck it be. Or scrolling mindlessly on social media and believing things. Yeah. Pay attention to the wording, pay attention to the language that's used. Yeah. Um, I mean, obviously they couldn't find the people behind all this and Maria wasn't much help and she obviously wasn't arrested and now she's passed away. And, but do you think that scams like this should carry harsher penalties for those involved? I mean, obviously in this case, who the fuck knows who was involved? So there's no penalties that could have been enforced because yeah. I mean, what, what else, what, when, what constitutes harsher, right? Because you can, you can have someone pay, um, reparation, but like, if they don't have the fucking money, they can't pay it. Yeah. And then you can send them to jail for life, but that doesn't stop another scammer from doing the same. If I don't think, I don't think they should be, I don't know if I didn't necessarily as harsher as the answer, but perhaps like more, more work done on the people that run firewalls and who, um, check like, I don't know, maybe more advances towards technology to pilfer through that stuff now, because obviously where we are now, you're gonna get a random fucking letter from a sidekick. You're gonna get an email, you're gonna get a DM. Like I think maybe more for lack of a better word, filtration on those systems. Yeah. And I think some of the things that people questioned or even looked into were, um, should the banks have been more at fault? Should the mail system have been more at fault when you're picking up 50,000 fucking letters? Why isn't someone saying something, but it's not on them. But also like, we have to understand as well, and I'm not defending banks and shit like that because they're guilty for many other things, but that said, like there are people, actual people, and now I guess they're automated systems and maybe it'll go faster now, but we have to understand that in 2016 and before human beings were pilfering through scam, um, alerts and through red flags. And it takes a long time. Like we talked about this commander case where there was one man running that fucking scam department, you know? And so it took him ages to get to this commander. Yes. You know, and I think the same goes with the time in which this all happened. I think there were probably weren't enough resources to compete with the amount of population. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Now with AI threatening to take over 40% of people's jobs in the next five years, I imagine it'll be a lot faster. So there's that. And also though, can go the other way as well with AI also being part of that sort of scam side of things as well. Exactly. Hopefully there's, yeah, I think there needs to be more regulation with regards to the internet. Yep. Yeah. It's hard, especially when, when things are happening because of technology and social media and that sort of thing, it's all happening offshore. Normally that sort of thing back in those days, it was far easier just to keep it within the country that you're in or the state or whatever. Now it's so easy. It's, it's straight away. And again, not forgetting that like the population cannot compete, like the, like the foot traffic on the internet, it can't be competed with, matched. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just like, it's like, yeah, like, you know, again, as I was saying, like you could bring in these tighter restrictions on the internet, but then there are also hackers who used to work in those fields who are now one step ahead. And sometimes when you start putting that sort of stuff in, it just makes, it actually makes it easier for them because they're like, Oh yeah, we know how to use this. Yeah. It's like a never ending loop. I think realistically, like what you were saying before, it's really to do with educating the people rather. Yeah. And yeah, educating, education and just making sure that they're not falling to it and looking out for your elderly relatives going through their mail, not opening it because that's illegal, but just going through it and just helping them out and stuff and making sure that they're on the right track. Disclaimer, the podcast series and games do not encourage breaking the law. Yes. Yeah. Anyway. So yeah, that's it for today's episode. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review and remember stay skeptical, stay informed and stay safe. Yes. Until next time. Until next time. Bye. Thank you guys. 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