The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - The Greatest Scam Ever Written | 1. Your Devoted Friend

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

What would you do if you got a mysterious letter promising to restore your health and vitality? Doreen Robinson wrote back and sent money to the French psychic named Maria Duval who’d written to her. As their relationship deepened, Doreen had no idea that she wasn’t the only one. In fact, hundreds of thousands of people had gotten a Duval letter, and gave an estimated $175m. How was this possible?  Unlock all episodes of The Greatest Scam Ever Written, ad-free, right now by subscribing to The Binge. Plus, get binge access to brand new stories dropping on the first of every month thats all episodes, all at once, all ad-free. Just click Subscribe on the top of the Smoke Screen show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. An ITN Productions & Sony Music Entertainment production. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to Smokescreen, the greatest scam ever written. Before you dive in, if you want to listen to the whole story uninterrupted, you can. Unlock the entire season, ad-free, right now with a subscription to The Binge. That's all episodes, all at once. Unlock your listening now by clicking subscribe at the top of the Smokescreen show page on Apple Podcasts, or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. I just literally remember my past lives. I just remember that I was this multidimensional being since I first came here,

and strangers would come up to me and just tell me things. It's a rainy day in late February 2024, and I'm sitting in a cozy living room at a home in Toronto's East End. I'm waiting for Tara Green, a well-known psychic in town, to start my reading. Tara's everything I'd imagine a psychic to look like. Dark flowing clothes and bright, almost sparkling green eyes that make me feel like she's looking right through me. She starts by smudging me to cleanse my aura. Smoke curls up from the bundle of sage leaves that she's holding in her hand. People come in with all kinds of stress, worries, and entities. So I just

want to clear all that for you. Tara's really trying here, but I just can't quite relax into this. Honestly, I'm not a regular psychic-goer by any means. This is not my natural environment.

But I want to see what Tara will say about the story I'm looking into. About a scam. A psychic scam. I'm really glad you came here today because you're going through one of the most critical transits in your life. Okay. Tara hands me a pack of tarot cards creased and faded from years of use. So I want you to shuffle them really well with your left hand and just think about whatever it is you want to know about. Will these cards reveal anything new to me at all? All right, so I'm going to lay out all the cards here. Tara flips three cards over. The Wheel of Fortune, the Chariot, and surprisingly, the Fool. This is the Wheel of Fortune.

You're dealing with millions of dollars here, right? So the center is money, right? And people being the Fool. And it's an international, that's Sagittarius, an international thing. So people all over the world have been affected. So you're, you know, kind of delving as deep as you can into what makes people of trust. Why would they hand over their money to someone in hopes of, you know, improving their lives, of course, or their situations, right? Tara's kind of right about my motivations here. As an investigative journalist, I do want to understand how the scam made so many people believe in it.

Because we all need to believe in something. That belief is what makes us human, but also leaves us vulnerable to people who might abuse it. I'm going to tell you the story of this scam, a crime of epic proportions that took almost $200 million from more than a million Americans. To put it into perspective, that's 60 times the number of victims of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. And it wasn't just Americans who were victimized. The scam found its way from Canada, across Europe, and all the way to Australia. The scam was carefully crafted, using the power of intriguing copy to lure its victims into believing that good fortune was on the way. It required multiple law enforcement agencies,

journalists, and citizen sleuths to peel back the layers of deceit. But there's somebody else I think that's, like, a wild card that you didn't expect at all. Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. A big wild card here.

Yes. It's going to be a bit shocking. The further down the rabbit hole I get with my reporting, the more my perspective shifts. What seems like a relatively straightforward scheme on the surface morphs into a crime unlike anything I've ever seen. One that taps into people's deepest, most personal desires. 1.4 million unique Americans were victimized. Now there's 330 million people in the United States, so that is one out of every 300 men, women, and children walking down the street.

If somebody says the right words, promises the right things, anybody can become a victim. I said, what? You know, obviously I'm in shock, complete and utter shock. What do you mean the DOJ? So he had a voodoo doll in his office and he had little pins on the voodoo dolls representing all the agencies that had gone after his company. I just thought okay this guy's different.

This has got to be one of the worst worst crimes in all of history. This is a story about belief, about wanting more, and how far we might go to get it. I'm Rachel Brown and this is The Greatest Scam Ever Written from Sony Music Entertainment and ITM Productions. Episode 1, Your Devoted Friend. I first came across the case we're about to get into back in 2020. And since then, I've been in deep. Because yes, it has all the usual elements I look for in a good tale. A cast of cruel villains and fearless heroes, eccentric characters, and strange twists. But this story is so much more than that. It's also about pure faith. The sort of faith I used to feel myself growing up in an evangelical Christian household in Canada.

That's a world I stepped back from long before I became a journalist. But it left its mark. I still feel that desire sometimes to put aside all my objective reporter instincts and just have faith in something. And I remain fascinated by what makes other people go all in on their beliefs. Our story includes millions of people all around the world who did just that. Hopeful people who put their trust into one woman they had never even met. People like Doreen Robinson. It's a sleepy morning in the late fall of 2009 in St. Albert, Canada.

St. Albert is the kind of town you move to when you want your life to slow down. It sits on the Sturgeon River, which is popular with cross-country skiers. Probably the most Canadian activity, and I can say that because I'm Canadian. On this frosty day on the fourth floor of a newly built condo near the artsy side of town, a bunch of mail slips through the mailbox onto the doormat. Doreen Robinson, a woman in her early 70s, peers into the bathroom mirror, preoccupied with the deepening wrinkles around her eyes. She straightens up when she hears the sound of the mail hitting the floor in the living room. She rushes to the door, eagerly picks up the pile of mail, and flicks through it to see if

she's received anything from her kids. Her heart sinks. All she sees is a flyer for a local pizza place, solicitations from a charity, eye-catching coupons. She goes to toss them in the trash, but then Doreen stops. She notices a clean white envelope in the pile. There's some handwriting scrawled across the top of the envelope. Doreen, you have to read this. In a sea of junk mail, Doreen can't believe someone has taken the time to handwrite a letter and address it directly to her. It's been so long since someone has written to her. Doreen's curiosity is piqued.

She slides her nail under the adhesive, eases the envelope open, feels the roughness of the ten or so pages in her hands. She opens them up and reads a few lines, taking in the careful, cursive handwriting. Dear Doreen, this is perhaps the most important letter you have ever received. It's a letter from someone called Maria Duval, who claims to be a psychic. Doreen isn't one to believe in all of that, but as she reads on, she gets more and more intrigued. Maria is offering her wealth, health, and spiritual guidance at no cost. She's trying to look out for Doreen. And most importantly, she has chosen Doreen. All these are actual words from real letters voiced by an actor. I, Maria Duval, am going to prepare your personal astral clairvoyant forecast

for the coming month for free. Seems like a no-brainer, right? And what Doreen needs to do couldn't be simpler. As soon as I have your photo, I'm going to be able to concentrate all my psychic strengths further. I will keep the photo with me for the months and years to come so that my contact as medium can be with you permanently, Doreen. All you have to do is grasp the hand of friendship. We are holding out to you. At the bottom of the final page, Maria signs off,

the ink of her signature glistening in the light. I am counting on you and send you all my friendship. Your devoted friend, Maria Duval. Doreen clutches the pages to her chest like a lifeline. It feels like she's been waiting for something like this for a very long time. Doreen doesn't know it yet, but this letter is the start of an intense relationship she'll have with Maria Duvall. And it will spiral into something much darker. It just pains me to know that such a

strong and independent and financially sound woman could fall victim to something like this. Doreen isn't around anymore to tell her story, but this is her daughter, Chrissy. I was born Christine, but over the years got changed to Chrissy. Chrissy spent the last decade of Doreen's life caring for her. She is, by her metrics, on the south side of 64 years old, with a tangle of blonde curly hair and bright blue eyes. A few years after I was married, we found a small farm out by Stony Plain. We kind of became modern pioneers on this farmland, trying to set up our dream home. I spent an afternoon getting to know Chrissy, who was on her three-acre farm in Stony Plain near Edmonton,

Canada. Her Chihuahua Aussie was glued to her side throughout the entire interview. She wanted me to understand what her mom was really like long before the first letter arrived. My mom was a very stylish woman. I remember as a little girl watching her, she would always put on the same red lipstick before she went out. And she wouldn't even look in the mirror. And she'd always have it in the lines of her lips perfectly. She even had go-go boots. Knee-high white go-go boots laced up the front. Although Doreen hung up her go-go boots in her later years, she still had passions that she wanted to pursue on her own. After her husband passed away,

she moved into a little condo and put space aside for all her creative projects. She specifically wanted a two-bedroom because she wanted the larger bedroom to be her craft room. She was enjoying her retirement. And then weird things would start happening. Chrissy and her brother noticed that Doreen's starting to forget things. First, small stuff like passwords and keyboard shortcuts. Then, one day, Doreen's car comes back from the mechanic.

She didn't have it for about maximum four or five days. When she got it back, she complained that it didn't go into reverse. She called my brother. He came out to have a look. He says, Mom, it's fine. And it was as if she had forgotten how to drive in those four days. Chrissy, overcome with worry, makes an appointment with a doctor, and it's bad news. Doreen is diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

She's in her early 70s. The doctors put her on medication to slow the progression of the disease. But Doreen's memory keeps getting worse. Chrissy realizes that her mom needs help day to day, especially when it comes to handling her money. It became evident that I had to take over my mother's finances because she was unable to remember where to fill in a check, so she couldn't pay her bills.

In 2012, Chrissy stays over at Doreen's condo, sitting down to help her sift through all the paperwork that's been building up in ever-growing piles around the apartment. And that's the moment when something odd catches her eye. When I was studying her accounts, and I noticed on her bank statements, the bank would give her a copy of all of the checks that have gone through. And I noticed that there was all these checks, usually for $59, to Maria Duval. Maria Duval. Chrissy had never heard of this woman. And yet her mother has been sending her regular payments. Sometimes days apart, sometimes a week apart,

but all of this $59. And, of course, I asked Mom, you know, what are these payments for? And she either couldn't remember or perhaps didn't want to admit what it was for. Whenever Chrissy asks Doreen about Maria Duvall, she becomes secretive, erratic. Maybe it's her Alzheimer's that's prompting this reaction.

Or maybe something else is going on. So Chrissy sits down and begins an investigation of her own. So I started getting all of her bank statements together. And here I am with a yellow highlighter going through all these current statements the last three or four years. I added up that she had paid out almost $5,000 to this Maria DeVelle.

As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder?

I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. Chrissy is floored. It's completely out of character for her mom to spend that kind of money on anything that isn't essential. As a business owner who managed the family's finances when Chrissy was younger, Doreen's always been incredibly responsible with money. And yet here she is, sending thousands of dollars to a woman she's never mentioned to Chrissy before. Has Doreen made a new friend?

Seeking more answers about who this woman is, Chrissy goes through her mom's mail, and the same name crops up again and again. Maria Duvall. The letters would start, Dear Doreen, You know, I hope you find comfort from your lucky numbers this week or whatever it was to get more goodwill. Please send $59.

I don't know exactly how it went, but that's pretty much the gist of it. Doreen has never been one to seek out psychic help of any kind. She was not one to believe in ghosts or mystics or psychics or what have you. If she couldn't see it, it didn't exist. It was just nonsense. Chrissy's unsure when Doreen received the first letter. All she knows is that her correspondence with this woman has been going on for a while. What Chrissy doesn't know is that there's been a steady stream of these letters from Maria Duvall for three whole years. And it's not just the letters. Maria's been sending Doreen gifts as well. Chrissy shows me one while we're talking.

It's a heavy gold-colored ring. It's huge. It wouldn't fit anybody but a giant. I don't know what one's supposed to do with it. But she would get these in a little velveteen pouch. You can hear the metal as it clinks here. And I remember cleaning up her house one day and came across this, opened up the little pouch, and I said, can I throw this away, mom? And she clutched it to her chest. No, no, it's so important, no.

And she popped it into her jewelry box. Chrissy thinks this is junk, junk from junk mail. But Doreen believed these were sacred objects, blessed by her own private psychic, her very own totem. These gifts from Maria would arrive with more letters, which would instruct Doreen on how to use them to bring her luck. And of course, ask for more money. Chrissy starts finding trinkets everywhere around the condo.

Doreen begins wearing one around her neck. She truly believed that somehow this was going to save her mind from going further into the depths of dementia. It's disgusting. It's a useless trinket. Doreen's deepest desire is to regain her mental capacity, and she genuinely believes that Maria's gifts and words of affirmation will help do that. This realization devastates Chrissy. She no longer recognizes the woman she grew up with. Her mom is now under the influence of a force Chrissy can't understand.

A woman she's never met and knows nothing about. Doreen's special friend is promising to change her misfortune and help her think straight again. An idea that she has become fixated on whilst all other thoughts slip away. Chrissy makes the difficult decision to intervene. With her mother's best interests at heart, Chrissy takes away her checkbook. But this doesn't stop Doreen sending money to Maria. I had discovered that mom had walked down to the bank, it was about three blocks away, had pulled some money out, I can't remember how much, but a few hundred, came home, and she tried to send off $59 in paper and coins. It was mind-boggling, gobsmacking, just, oh. It's like these letters were, I don't know, a type of addiction for Doreen.

She was hooked. And as her health deteriorated, her relationship with Maria only deepened. Chrissy never quite understood what compelled her mom to continue this relationship with Maria Duvall, even when she could barely remember her own children's names. But maybe Maria simply gave her mom something to believe in, something to hope for. Mom would go down to the foyer of the building to collect her mail, and she would just get so excited to open up her little mailbox, and she'd be packing her arm full of mail. And it just, it was making her day. And in moments of clarity, did she also realize that this was a scam or did she get embarrassed sort of in those brief instances where maybe she realized what she was doing?

I'm not sure that my mom ever realized that this was a scam. Perhaps in my lecturing her, she might have understood for half an hour, but later in the day or the next day, it's all forgotten. Doreen passed away on September 20th, 2014, surrounded by her three kids in a local nursing home. Chrissy's two brothers tried to close the chapter and forget about Maria Duvall. But Chrissy had taken on most

of Doreen's care in her final years, watching helplessly as those letters stole her mother's attention, took away her focus, and her hard-earned cash. She can't move on so easily. A few days after Doreen's death, Chrissy decides she needs to know who this Maria Duvall woman really is. So she shares her story on an online message board where people swap information about scams. And I sat down and I just angrily banged out, I don't know, two or three paragraphs

about my experience, my mother's experience with it. She waits, wondering if anyone will reply. Chrissy doesn't know it yet, but this scam goes way beyond her mom, way beyond the city of St. Albert, and way beyond even Canada. And she's not the only one seeking answers about Maria Duvall. I get hurt in the pit of my stomach when I see people being victimized. I'm not going to let anybody else fall for this.

And did you ever try digging around, researching, figuring out who's behind the letters? I phoned the police. I phoned the post office. And neither one was of any help. When the police tell me, well, it's buyer beware. Your mother should have been aware. It was, oh, okay, end of story. I can't imagine the frustration of feeling like every door has been slammed shut in your face when the people you assume will be there to protect you refuse to help.

But help can come from the most unexpected places. I got this letter in the mailbox addressed to myself personally from Maria Duval. It was like a huge package with about 10 pages in it and pictures of tokens, magic tokens, that if you got this token and sent her $10 or whatever it was, $20, she would provide you with more things to help solve your problems. So you just happened to get this letter in your mailbox? Yeah, everybody in my, I live in a townhouse community with about 40 units and every single one of us got it. This is Dr. Terry Polivoy. He's a 79-year-old retired pediatrician based in Waterloo, Ontario, a couple hours outside Toronto. Terry has spent his life working to protect people and not just patients in his medical practice.

He's taken to spending his spare time working as an amateur scam buster, a vigilante of sorts, hunting down and exposing fraudsters and con artists online. It's his life's passion, and he could spend all day telling you about it. Trust me, I know. All you think is that if I had not been working all these years trying to expose scams on the internet, life would have been a lot simpler for me. And I don't think I'm going to stop doing it, even though my wife wants me to stop doing it. And so when Terry receives this big dossier in the mail

from someone named Maria Duvall, his spidey senses are immediately tingling. It was an out-and-out scam from somebody you never heard of. And as soon as you see the name psychic pops to mind, you say to yourself, I'm not going to let anybody else fall for this. I'll do my best to try and stop people from falling for it. Terry's outrage sparks him into action. At first,

Terry goes down the same route Chrissy does and tries to report the letters to the authorities. And so I took the package, the whole entire package I received, down to our local postal distribution center, and they looked at me really funny, saying, you really expect us to do something about this? With the postal service a dead end, Terry takes matters into his own hands. So I was in the blog-making mode in those days. He goes onto his blog and puts out a plea for any information about the mysterious Maria Duval. And 2,000 miles away in St. Albert, Chrissy has come to the same realization.

She's going to get no help from the authorities in getting justice for her mother, Doreen. The truth is, the police see this as a classic case of buyer beware. Doreen willingly sent the money in exchange for a service, so the fault lies with her. And so Chrissy, in her fury and grief, also turns to the internet for clues about the woman who had taken over the final years of her mother's life. I opened up my laptop

and I went to a site called ripoffreport.com, which I believe is a consumer awareness site. Now, my first instinct from the very start of all of this would have been to go straight to Google and type in Maria Duvall. But you have to remember that at first, Chrissy genuinely believed in Maria Duvall. She may have had deep misgivings about her mother sending money to this mysterious woman, but she had no reason to think that her mother's pen pal was also sending personalized letters to dozens of other people, let alone hundreds of thousands of other people. Chrissy had seen Maria's scrawled writing in black and white, the handwritten signatures, the details about her mom only an intimate friend would know. But now, finally, Chrissy finds herself typing in the name Maria Duvall on a scam complaint website and hitting search.

It's a total shot in the dark. She waits as the browser loads. And that's kind of when my eyes were opened. Chrissy takes in what's on the screen in front of her and realizes this is much, much bigger than just her mom. Across the world, thousands of people have been receiving the same letters and responding by sending their life savings to the exact same Maria Duvall. Doreen had given a chunk of her own savings to Maria, but it didn't leave her destitute. For many others, it was a different story. I am so absolutely sick of receiving letters from Maria Duval.

She can never have enough. She wrote to me and said that she had good news for me and that I'm special. I've been getting them now for over 10 years. She was eagerly waiting on my disability check. And to send her money and she would send me three gifts. She is the biggest scammer ever. And I believed and I sent more money. She should be in prison immediately so she can die there.

And none of the crap she boasts about has happened. Shame on you, evil woman. I wished she would just leave me alone. When I saw the scope of these victims, people who couldn't afford to pay their electric bill or their water bill, they'd been without water for two months, or they couldn't afford to get their groceries. And all they wanted in return was whatever it was that Maria Duval was promising them, health, wealth, and happiness. could attack people that are vulnerable and are wishing for something so bad that they will cling to this ridiculous notion of amulets and lucky numbers.

Like, oh my goodness, this has got to be one of the worst, worst crimes in all of history. Back in Ontario, Terry also realizes that so many people saw Maria Duvall as their personal psychic, helping them and them alone. So I have a couple of dozen maybe people from around North America, I think even including Australia, that posted short notes about, oh, I got the exact same package you did. As the weeks go on, Terry's inundated with messages from across the world. It's not just America. It's England, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia. The same message again and again and again.

It's an impossible amount of letters. How could something so insidious make its way into people's homes and through their trusted mail system so easily? My mother would have been getting 30 to 40 letters in a week. Terry and Chrissy have individually had their eyes open to the scale of the Maria Duvall operation, but they're no closer to figuring out who this woman is. I was angry and upset and feeling jilted on behalf of my mother. I wanted to know who was responsible for this. I assumed it was Maria Duval. Beyond a few old articles and some complaints in online forums,

there was very little information out there about her. We know she's a French psychic with a skill for developing deep personal relationships with Americans, and they're sending her boatloads of money. Does this Maria know the damage she's done to Doreen and so many others? And how on earth can one person be masterminding this giant psychic fraud? My search will take us on a journey from a tiny village in the south of France to dumpsters on Long Island.

With the help of a gun-toting investigator, an alien-worshipping businessman, and vigilante scam hunters, we'll reveal the inner workings of one of the greatest scams ever written. Next time on The Greatest Scam Ever Written, Maria, psychic to the stars. When I was a child, I had this gift. But I thought it was something that everybody had. It was only after several years that I finally understood that I was different because I realized I wasn't like other people. podcast channel. Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you'll get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts, all ad-free.

Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series. That's all episodes, all at once. Just click subscribe at the top of the Smokescreen show page on Apple Podcasts or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of The Greatest Scam Ever Written was hosted by me, Rachel Brown. Our sound designers are Luca Evans and Sam Cassetta. Our mixer is Jay Rothman. Our assistant producers are Luca Evans and Leo Schick. Our producer is Millie Chu. Our story editor is Dave Anderson. Voices by Nevada Red, Gregory Burks, Kate Weir, and Marisha Serafin For ITN Productions

our production manager is Emily Jarvis Our executive producer is Rubina Pabani For Sony Music Entertainment our executive producer is Catherine St. Louis