I Keep Getting Emails First She Said She Will Read My Future
Afterward two years investigating one of the longest-running frauds in history, nosotros finally met its central figure: Maria Duval. What would she have to say?
Videos by Jordan Malter, CNN
Callas, France — The gate opened slowly, offering a glimpse of overgrown gardens, weathered statues of naked mythical figures and a large white house with pale green shutters. We tried to soak it in quickly, not knowing whether the gate would snap shut as it had once before.
This time, we were immune within.
At the height of stone stairs leading to the house stood an elderly blonde adult female we recognized correct away: Maria Duval, the adult female nosotros had been investigating for more than two years.
Tracking the mysterious psychic Maria Duval
Nosotros had never before laid optics on her. But nosotros'd seen her face many times. In old news articles about her miraculous rescue of missing people. In videos of her talking near her psychic abilities. On letters sent around the world.
Information technology was the letters that brought us here.
They were written to elderly, sick and lonely people, and they promised that Maria Duval would use her powers as a world-renowned psychic to help solve their bug. They could recover from ailments, avoid terrible misfortune, win the lottery.
All they needed to practise was send coin.
At least i.4 million Americans fell for the scam, as did countless others around the earth. Some wiped out their retirement savings. Others lost money they had hoped to leave to their families.
On its face, this ruse sounded like so many others that prey on the elderly and take advantage of people with conditions like dementia.
But there was something special virtually Maria Duval.
The messages appeared to be handwritten and signed by the psychic. They contained personal details, like a recipient'south proper noun, age or hometown. It seemed as if the psychic had intuited this information. Information technology had actually been pieced together from "suckers lists" sold by companies known every bit data brokers and from information the victims themselves unknowingly provided in the past.
Seduced past Duval's promises, US investigators say, people paid effectually $40 each fourth dimension they corresponded with her in exchange for her guidance, lucky numbers and talismans. This seemingly elementary scheme became i of the longest-running mail frauds in history – infiltrating more than than a dozen countries, spanning more than xx years and raking in more $200 one thousand thousand in the United States and Canada alone. In America, it ensnared 60 times more victims than Bernie Madoff'due south infamous Ponzi scheme.
In 2014, US officials renewed before attempts to shut the scam downward. At first, they questioned Duval's beingness, and other investigators hypothesized that she was an invention, her photo a stock paradigm.
We learned otherwise. Not only was she real simply she was larger than life – having built a career as a local psychic in the due south of France long before letters were sent in her name.
Two years agone, we'd hoped to confront her simply failed to go past the ominous white gate to her home. We tracked down her middle-anile son, Antoine Palfroy, and convinced him to sit for a long and center-opening interview.
He told us his mother lost command of her name, that she entered into an sick-blighted business deal. She had once been a local psychic, he explained, who was paid for her consultations and sometimes worked with police force to detect missing people. That all ended, he said, when European businessmen approached her many years agone and she agreed to sell the rights to her name. At first, the business peddled star divination charts, he recalled. But the business model changed and a new scheme was born: the mass mailing of letters penned in Maria Duval's proper name.
He claimed she never intended to defraud people and hadn't written a single letter. She was too scared, he said, to intermission her contract and was herself a victim of the scam.
We were skeptical of this portrayal. Information technology was possible she'd entered a deal that spiraled out of her control. But she'd continued to sign new contracts. And information technology wasn't a question of whether she'd fabricated money – only how much.
For a fourth dimension, we accepted that her son was the closest nosotros would ever get to the elusive psychic. Just in the months and years that followed, nosotros worked on a book about the scam and renewed our attempts to see her contiguous.
Now, we were standing inside the gate, in the same identify where the key US investigator had stormed in with French constabulary just a few months before.
They were searching for money and documents. Like us, they besides were interested in the businesspeople behind the scam.
Our initial investigation showed that Duval was not operating the business or mailing the letters – every bit so many victims had been led to believe. Instead, a complex network of international crush companies and front operations had been used to hide the letters' true origins from investigators. Eventually we identified ringleaders on the beaches of Thailand and in the secrecy havens of Switzerland and Monaco – and determined that the operations had passed through an endless number of easily over the years.
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This complicated business web fabricated it difficult to determine the telescopic of Duval's involvement, though there was concrete evidence connecting her to the scam. Her signature not but appeared on the letters simply on trademark applications and on a recent document from a civil instance that finally shut down the scam in the Usa. We uncovered business filings showing she received at least ane payment for around $200,000. And she traveled the world promoting the letters.
It was Duval'south name and confront that made the fraud possible.
What would she have to say?
The psychic behind the gate
As we walked toward the stairs to her house, we noticed her perfectly dyed blonde hair was still styled as it was in the videos we'd seen. Only her fashionable and expensive-looking clothes were replaced with bright blue Crocs, cartoon-covered socks, faded leopard-print leggings and a worn black sweater. Her eyes looked confused; her plumped lips most deflated; her lipstick was fatigued outside the lines.
We mentally ran through the questions that had driven our pursuit for two years:
How much money have y'all made from the letters? Where is that money at present? Why did you sign that kickoff contract? If you lot didn't agree with how your proper noun was existence used, why did yous promote the messages and appear in YouTube videos? Why should we believe that yous are the innocent victim your son claims you are?
If yous are truly a psychic, how did you not run into this all coming?
We never thought this moment would go far, and we continued to doubtfulness the coming together would occur even as nosotros deplaned in Nice for a 2d fourth dimension and drove the winding roads to Callas.
Ii years ago, the first time we stood outside her gate, we knew a lot nigh the scam only niggling about Duval. This time, we had a motion picture of who she was, gleaned through interviews with people who knew her well or only crossed her path. But we wanted to know more than.
Businessman Jean-Claude Reuille, whose quondam post-order company had long overseen distribution of the Maria Duval messages, still claimed he had zip to do with the creation of the scam (and he hasn't been charged with whatever wrongdoing). He acknowledged that he knew Duval, however, proverb he believed in her powers and remembered her equally an honest woman – but one who was concern savvy and knew what she was doing.
Nosotros too heard from a human challenge to exist Reuille's babyhood friend. Reuille said the man gave us a simulated name and could not be trusted, though he best-selling he had introduced him to Duval many years ago. The man told usa he knew Duval well, that she had been very wealthy and spent much of her money on "stupid things and young men."
"To be so high, and become and then depression"
An Argentinian man, Luis Alberto Ramos, claimed Duval had conned him in a country deal. Decades ago, he said, he sold her a plot of farmland with cows, mechanism and a waterfall on it, but she stiffed him. The few payments she made, he said, came from strange bank accounts around the world. "She was a quite adept-looking, mannerly woman," he wrote. But she used this charm in stray means, he said, likening her to a tricky character – a "scaramouche." Palfroy would afterwards tell us that as he remembered it, it was his female parent who lost coin on a land sale gone wrong, though he wasn't certain if it involved Ramos.
The most detailed depiction of Duval came from Françoise Barre, her sometime private secretarial assistant who as well had served every bit mayor of the small boondocks where they lived. At her home in Callas, right effectually the corner from the town hall, she still kept a number of mementos from Duval, including photos, messages and a pendulum.
From what Barre said, information technology seemed Duval may have understood the gravity of the scam perpetrated in her proper name – at least as it evolved over the years. She said Duval mentioned her concern about getting in problem with the police because of the letters' exaggerated claims.
She gave as an instance the assertion that Duval had met with the Pope. "She's been to the Vatican, yes, but on a normal trip, and she certainly did not meet with the Pope. She told me, 'One of these days I'll become in trouble for the things they say almost me.'"
Co-ordinate to Barre, Duval frequently said she had never seen the "color of the checks"—suggesting she believed she should have made more money than she did. Barre said Duval was always very entrepreneurial and showed united states of america a letter the psychic wrote her in 2014, the year the U.s.a. government attempted to shut down the scam, asking Barre to be her partner in a new business venture which she described only as a "project" that wouldn't accept much of her time. Barre didn't pursue the offer, so she never learned more.
Barre was also deeply concerned virtually her friend and former boss, who she believed was a true psychic who had used her powers for adept. She said she was devastated to come across her quondam friend get wrapped upwardly in such a destructive scheme.
"She was really important to a lot of people," Barre said. "And now she is reduced to—to a state of being elderly… and so we need to permit her be. To be and so high, and go so depression."
Beyond family and acquaintances, at that place was some other group of people who idea they knew the real Maria Duval: her victims.
Nosotros hoped to tell Duval about Doreen Robinson, an elderly Canadian woman whose story was like and so many others nosotros heard. She once was fiercely independent and practical. Simply the letters arrived in her mailbox equally she adapted to life without her husband of more than than twoscore years and began a painful struggle with dementia. She secretly wrote "help me" over and over in her accost book, ordered junk from catalogues and responded to every single solicitation she received – including the Maria Duval letters. She amassed tens of thousands of dollars in credit carte du jour debt and sent several thousand in response to the Duval scam in a single twelvemonth, according to her daughter, Chrissie Stevens.
Doreen Robinson died in 2014. Years afterwards, we asked her daughter what she would say to the psychic behind the scam.
"Shame on you. You lot've taken advantage of a sick, old, solitary woman," she told us. "Shame on you, Maria Duval."
The 81-yr-erstwhile psychic wore a blank stare as we approached. "Here is my mother, Maria Duval," said her son, Palfroy.
Instead of berating us for our critical stories nearly her, she stuck out her mitt and greeted us with a smiling.
Her son soon cut through the uncomfortable silence, beckoning us to follow him inside for a tour. Joining u.s. was his girl, our camera coiffure and our interpreter.
A sliding glass door opened directly into Duval'southward personal role.
This, Palfroy explained, was where his female parent had worked on her books and other writings. The room was crammed with three-ring binders on cheap metal shelving, each labeled in sloppy cursive or capital letters. Projects. SEX. Moscow. Brigitte Bardot. VATICAN.
The raid and the search for millions
A gold Hindu statue sat in i corner; in another, three small clocks displayed the time in New York, Paris, and Tokyo, though they appeared to be set to the wrong 60 minutes. On her desk was a vase of simulated roses and a large calendar for 2017. Documents were piled everywhere. A cartoon of a naked man and an ape hung on the wall behind a blimp kangaroo. There were two photos in the room, identical shots of a middle-aged Duval, her chin resting on her hand every bit she peered into the camera.
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Palfroy led us into a more than spacious office where Duval once gave personal psychic consultations. Nosotros immediately recognized the room from the YouTube videos used to promote her letters, with the same aging statue of a young, robed woman staring out from behind the desk. "People very frequently ask me how I can work by correspondence," she said in ane video, staring straight into the camera. "You tin can balance bodacious that I look at the great majority of your letters." She spoke conspicuously and confidently – almost as if she were reading from cue cards.
Like her personal office, this room was a time capsule. There were photos of Duval as a young daughter and as a immature woman traveling the world. A Reagan/Bush-league 1980 campaign button leaned against a plaque from the 1979 Globe Congress of Science and Organized religion in Rome.
Glass shelves held books virtually star divination, sexuality and philosophy, including "Astrology and Personal Development for Dummies." Strange spiritual paintings lined the walls. Pots of fake flowers dotted the floor. On the other side of the room, sliding drinking glass doors opened onto her sprawling backyard, filled with countless statues.
A money-sniffing dog had roamed for hours in the overgrown gardens, Palfroy told us, on a Thursday morning in March after French police and a U.s. investigator arrived with a warrant to search the belongings. Duval'due south family was there taking care of her, so they apace ushered her to her room and attempted to larn exactly what was going on. "They told me that there had been a complaint filed in the US regarding the US post, and that's all I know," he told us. "That's all I know."
The Department of Justice and US Postal Inspection Service wouldn't comment on annihilation Duval's son told usa, just the USPIS acknowledged a criminal investigation into the scam is ongoing. Palfroy named the agency's chief investigator, who he said came to the house, and he showed united states the business card of an chaser he said besides traveled to Callas. Nosotros recognized the name as the lawyer involved in the earlier civil case.
A son'southward defence: "She trusted likewise many people."
Police force rifled through drawers and tore through files, Palfroy said. They looked nether rugs and mattresses and garden statues, though some of the statues were too heavy to lift. They seized stacks of documents – seemingly interested in annihilation that might point them toward Duval's dealings with the businessmen running the scam. They likewise took her figurer.
Palfroy believes authorities came in search of money, but says they found null simply pocket change in Duval'southward purse. He also says they went to the bank to check Duval's accounts and a personal rubber where she had once kept valuables like jewelry. They fifty-fifty searched his family unit's accounts, he told us.
But, according to Palfroy, the accounts held little coin, the safe was empty, and and then was the house.
"Everyone thinks she had millions but no, she didn't," he said. "The companies had a lot of money, that's truthful, but my female parent didn't fifty-fifty have 1%."
Nosotros had found that the hundreds of millions of dollars generated by the scam had been spread amidst endless shell companies and businessmen behind its day-to-twenty-four hours operations. The one payment we could place as being made to Duval was for around $200,000, and even her son acknowledged that she had received others. If her earnings even came close to one%, they would have amounted to several million.
Palfroy recounted this dramatic mean solar day to us equally we walked from room to room. He and so excitedly changed topics and brought u.s.a. to Duval's desk-bound, where he pulled out a pile of folders stuffed with press clippings. Duval'due south face was everywhere: in horoscope columns, on the pages of French Vogue, on clippings about Television and radio shows throughout the 1970s and 80s.
Equally nosotros looked through the articles, Duval watched us silently. Eventually, she slowly flipped through some, likewise, proudly pointing to old pictures of herself.
Nosotros'd once thought the claims made in the letters – about Duval's media appearances, television set fame, and international glory status – were nothing more than than a copywriter's wild creations. Eventually, we determined she had accomplished some notoriety equally a small-town psychic. But until nosotros saw all the press clippings, from different countries and spanning decades, we hadn't grasped the magnitude of her fame.
Whether or not her psychic powers were fake, her glory was real.
She'd already become famous – and wealthy plenty to purchase this large estate – earlier she sold her proper name. As predatory as the messages were, there had been some semblance of truth in all the lies.
Duval was led to her sleeping accommodation upstairs to rest while we explored the holding. We battled a thick cloud of mosquitos as we wandered through the long grass surrounding her house, peered at a pool (which Palfroy said was damaged in a storm final yr) and encountered a series of foreign black-and-white paintings in a run-downwards guest bathroom. They appeared to describe ghosts having sex.
When word came that Duval was ready to talk, we joined her and her family unit in her office.
She saturday downwardly in a chair beyond from us.
Duval seemed unfazed past what was happening. She rattled off a bones audio check, counting upwardly with the ease of someone who had appeared on photographic camera before.
Nosotros were far more anxious, and not just considering this was our 1 opportunity to speak with her.
For months, equally we pursued an interview with his mother, Palfroy would occasionally engage but generally evaded us. He would go dark for weeks and months. He threatened to sue united states for invading his family's privacy. He told united states his mother was ill.
But after the raid, he'd changed his heed and invited us to visit. He said his mother wished to speak with u.s.a..
We feared it might be as well belatedly.
In recent months nosotros'd begun to suspect that Duval had dementia – based on the accounts of people shut to her and the 2014 letter to her friend Barre in which she said she was taking a dementia medication.
Two attorneys from the Department of Justice, nosotros learned, had also fabricated the trek to Callas in March. They wanted what we did – to question Duval.
The problem, according to Palfroy: Duval was unable to speak with constabulary. She could non fifty-fifty tell them her proper noun.
"When she speaks it'south very difficult because she mixes the future, the by and today," he told the states in English.
This was the first time he'd admitted that she had dementia. She suffered a stroke in 2010, he said, and was offset diagnosed with dementia in 2013. He said it had recently worsened.
Information technology seemed convenient: The woman whose proper name and epitome helped propel a massive scam could no longer call back her own proper name – much less the details investigators needed. According to Palfroy, law insisted on taking his mother to a physician for an contained cess.
"Shame on you. You've taken advantage of a ill, quondam lone adult female"
After this consultation, Palfroy said, Maria Duval was deemed unable to sit for a law enforcement interview.
Instead of sitting face-to-face with the adult female they had flown to France to interrogate, investigators were forced to pose their questions to her son.
Palfroy said he spent near of a six-hour coming together defending his mother. He said investigators also zeroed in on the three businesspeople we identified in our investigation. Would he be willing to testify in whatsoever legal proceedings that may take place in the US, they asked. Yep, he told them, he would.
He wanted desperately for the focus to turn from his mother to the people who he felt used her. And nosotros suspected he wanted us to see his mother equally he did: some other fragile and elderly victim of the scam.
The soundcheck ended, and it was time for us to brainstorm. We hoped Palfroy had exaggerated the severity of his mother's condition, that we would be able to get the answers we were seeking. He told us she was assigned a judicial proxy, which is essentially a legal guardian, and, citing privacy concerns, he would not reveal who it was. Those records are non public in France but the guardianship constabulary does not limit a person'due south ability to make decisions – including the decision to be interviewed.
We decided to continue cautiously.
Nosotros began by asking Duval to state her name. She did. Then nosotros asked her the date. She didn't know and turned to her family for help.
Maria Duval speaks
We asked about her psychic powers. In her books, she describes in detail the bestowing of these powers from her uncle, a priest in Italy.
Where did they come up from? How was it she received this gift?
She couldn't say.
And she had no idea what we were talking about when nosotros asked about one of her most celebrated rescues, in which newspapers said she used a pendulum to direct a helicopter to the exact spot where a missing person was found barely alive.
The simply proper name she brought up was that of Brigitte Bardot. She repeated a story we had seen in the messages: that she had found Bardot's missing domestic dog. We would later attain the actress, who talked to our French colleague in the hope of promoting her book about beast abuse. Her dog was constitute drowned in a pool, she said, and the psychic had nothing to do with the discovery. Duval'due south claims, she said, were false.
Duval spent virtually of our chat sharing her thoughts about dear. She said she loved life and hoped the earth would remember her for doing everything with love.
She seemed unaware of the pain the letters had acquired or why we had been so desperate to speak with her.
Victim's daughter: 'Shame on you, Maria Duval'
We asked if she had whatever regrets.
"Regrets, I certainly have some," she said. "We tin can always have regrets merely currently, I can say that I think I'k actually proficient. I'm good. I'm good in my life, expert in everything I'm currently doing."
We'd wanted to give Duval the take chances to tell her side of the story. Simply the business concern nosotros had about her land of listen and her power to defend herself deepened as we talked.
The articulate, confident woman nosotros had seen in videos – the woman with the answers to our questions – was gone.
Information technology was clear we would never know the total story nearly Maria Duval. How much money did she make, and how could she non have known what she was signing up for when she sold her name? If only nosotros had gotten to her earlier, before her affliction progressed and the answers became locked inside.
Two years ago, we had tried. On that visit, a adult female briefly opened the gate to tell us Duval was in Rome. Our French-speaking colleague, Julia Jones, was the only ane to get a glimpse of her earlier the gate slammed shut. The next day, we'd returned to the house and heard the same story from a man claiming to exist Duval's gardener.
This time, afterwards our talk with Duval ended, we sabbatum across from Palfroy and his girl, Solène, and asked whether Duval had actually been in Rome when nosotros came knocking.
"She'due south the one who answered," Palfroy said equally he and his daughter looked at each other and laughed. "She didn't want to receive you lot."
We were expecting him to say she was hiding within, not that she was the 1 who answered the door.
"Await – she'due south the 1 who came to the gate?"
We remembered the calm voice on the other side of the wall.
"Yep."
Two years ago, her listen was abrupt enough to concoct a prevarication and throw us off her trail. Maybe she knew that we had uncomfortable questions for her, or perchance she had something to hide.
All of this made it even harder to believe she was just a victim.
We told Palfroy and Solène we had something we wanted to share. And with our laptop facing them, we pressed play.
The tearful phonation of Chrissie Stevens, the victim's daughter who had a bulletin for Duval, spilled from the speakers.
"Shame on you, Maria Duval."
A granddaughter's pursuit of the truth
Palfroy looked away; tears filled his optics.
"Unfortunately, my female parent has nothing to do with this," he said. "She'south not involved… that's terrible but… that's the only matter nosotros tin say."
Does she know people feel this manner well-nigh her?
"No. No she would have never agreed with this… We can't do this, stealing money. There is no word for this."
What would she say to these people?
"Today she wouldn't understand and yesterday if she had seen that kind of thing, she would accept been revolted… Even for money, you tin't steal people'south money like this."
We asked how it felt to know that the messages preyed on people suffering from dementia, just like his mother.
"Information technology's not tolerable," Palfroy said.
He continued to defend his mother, just finally acknowledged that she wasn't entirely innocent and had trusted the wrong people.
Her wealth and fame had not been enough for her. She'd wanted more. And that'due south what the scam was built upon: a desperate desire for more, and a willingness to believe in promises too good to exist true.
The victims believed in the promises of the letters. Duval believed in the promises of businessmen. She trusted people who wore fancy suits and drove expensive cars, and hoped that signing on the dotted line would bring more fame, more fortune.
She didn't need information technology, just she wanted it. That was her conclusion, and hers alone.
"She actually loved to be flattered," said Solène, who, subsequently reading our investigation, embarked on her own search for answers about her grandmother and others involved in the scam.
"That was… that was a sin," Palfroy added.
Has she talked virtually regrets?
"Yep, almost what happened, yes, yes," Palfroy said quickly. "Sometimes, she has told us that she completely disagreed with what was happening but that, unfortunately, at that place was no way to cease this, to slow things downwardly."
Finally, we asked the question to which we already knew the answer.
What will Maria Duval'south legacy be?
Palfroy pointed to the sound recording on the calculator.
"That'south her legacy, the picture she volition go out," he said. "It's Maria Duval. The letters: It's Maria Duval. Information technology'due south Maria Duval who stole money from this poor lady. Information technology's Maria Duval.
"Whatever we say today, it will always be Maria Duval… I think that's terrible. Terrible for the victims, terrible for my mother, too… The same idea will stay: Shame on y'all, Maria Duval."
The psychic was in her sleeping accommodation when our interview with Palfroy and Solène ended. Nosotros roamed Duval's offices ane more time, drastic for any concluding clues.
On our way out, we noticed what looked like a newspaper headline taped to the wall.
"Exceptional lives take their cost," information technology said in French.
Tacked beneath information technology was another clipping.
"Don't tell anyone."
Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2018/07/investigates/maria-duval-psychic-scam-invs/index.html
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