The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - The Greatest Scam Ever Written | 4. The Swiss Swindlers

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

To find out how the scheme is operating in the present, we go back to how it all started. We know that two Swiss businessmen had bought Maria’s name and image to add legitimacy to their mailing scheme and launch letters across Europe. But who were these men? What motivated them to cheat hundreds of thousands of people out of their life savings? And where are they today? 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

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. It's the day after Christmas, or Boxing Day as it's known in England.

The year is 1998, and we're in Sunderland, a gray industrial city in the north of the country. The accents are strong, and the weather is brutal. Local police officer Kim Maynard has drawn the short straw, manning the phones over the holidays. He pulls his coat a little tighter around him, watches the cloud of his breath waft into the air. They never turn the heating on in this damn station. Officer Maynard is startled as the phone suddenly rings. He picks it up, hoping it's not news

of another drunk driver who needs to be escorted home. But the voice on the end of the line is strained, high with panic. There's a teenager struggling in the River Weir, the river that cuts through this port city. The caller doesn't know how long she's been in there. But in this freezing weather, the river is deadly. Officer Maynard slams down the phone and charges out through the station doors. Arriving at the riverbank, he squints desperately into the darkness of the winter evening. He sees nothing. Perhaps the girl has made it to safety. But then he hears it, a blood-curdling scream coming from the middle of the river.

Officer Maynard has no other choice but to jump in, the icy water winding him of his breath. He pushes on, and now he can make out a shape. The girl is floating in the water, face down. He finally reaches her, cursing the currents for slowing him down, and pulls her back to shore on dry land. He checks for a pulse. Nothing. It's too late. Waiting for the ambulance, Officer Maynard checks the girl's pockets,

searching for anything that might identify her or explain how she ended up here. But all he finds is a crumpled-up letter, now soaked through. He carefully unpeels it. At the bottom of the handwritten page, a blurred name. Maria Duvall. Maynard has no way of knowing, but the girl he just pulled from the River Weir is another victim of the scam. And on this occasion, no one can claim the letters were only harmless fun

or much-needed comfort. For 17-year-old Claire Ellis, their effect was fatal. A subsequent investigation would later find that Claire had been writing back and forth with Maria for weeks, believing the psychic had magical powers. Claire had become obsessed, and when her desires weren't being fulfilled as promised, the despair became overwhelming.

We now know that Claire was never really in touch with Maria Duvall. Her mother even told one newspaper that they continued to receive letters months after Claire had died. She was sold a lie, just like countless other victims. What kind of person would profit off the desperation of a teenager? In this episode, we're going to discover who's hiding behind Maria Duval's name and how they built this vast scam empire. He said we do the same way what churches do. People are unlucky and sometimes desperate and we help them to feel better.

I'm Rachel Brown, and this is The Greatest Scam Ever Written, from Sony Music Entertainment and ITN Productions. Episode 4, The Swiss Swindlers. The story of Claire Ellis sticks with me when I close my laptop at the end of the day. It's so striking in many ways. Up until this point, so many of the victims I'd read about were elderly people, like Doreen Robinson. Claire Ellis was only a teenager when she was found floating in a river. Claire's family declined to take part in this podcast, but her mom, Linda Ellis, told a local newspaper that she believed Maria was the source of her daughter's anguish.

Linda noticed a change in Claire's behavior once the letter started arriving and claimed she spent a fortune buying lucky charms and pendants from Maria Duvall. The letters sparked something within her. Her mom told the paper, quote, Claire used to be a happy girl, but she went downhill after getting involved with all this. We can never know if the letters led directly to Claire's death, but this story serves as a stark reminder of the power of the writing. It was clear that Maria's promises could be alluring for anyone, at any stage of life. To understand how a Maria Duvall letter may have ended up in Claire's pocket, I feel it's important to go back to the very beginning of the scam.

I got some of the story from Maria's own son, Antoine. He told me about those two Swiss businessmen who made a deal with Maria. She was approached by some businessmen in Switzerland who were looking for a new venture. So things went very well at first, but then they said, yes, but you understand, we want to buy your name. In Antoine's telling, they not only exploited Maria's reputation, but they also threatened her. She felt she was in danger. She had two big dogs, Rottweilers.

She used to say, you'll understand if ever anyone was to come, they can defend me. And I said, but who's going to come here? Oh well, you never know. These men exist in the shadows, shapeshifting through different company names and countries, moving on every time someone gets too close to them. When you're investigating people like this, it usually takes work from several journalists

to piece the whole thing together. This scam ran pretty much undisturbed for more than 20 years. I'm going to need the support of the reporting that came before me to give you the entire story. Let me walk you through the breakthroughs these journalists made and show you how their work laid the groundwork for mine. Here's the top line. The two men who created the original Maria Duval letters

are named Jacques Maillan and Jean-Claude Roy. I'm working on my French. Each of these men bring their own skills to the table. Jacques is a copywriting genius, and Jean-Claude is a successful mail-order businessman. They met in the 1980s and set up a company called Infogest. You can think of this as the kind of mother company that sits above all those confusing shell companies we dug into last time.

Let's zoom in on Jacques. The first person to connect him to the scam was Willem Bosma, a journalist writing for the oldest daily newspaper in the Netherlands. Willem was investigating the Dutch arm of the network back in 2007, and he got a hold of someone who was distributing the letters locally. I've asked him, you work on behalf of Maria Duval, where can I reach her? At one moment he said,

you should try Jacques Maillon. Willem had already seen Jacques' name on some paperwork, but hadn't realized just how crucial he was to the whole scheme. Willem manages to extract Jacques' phone number from this Dutch accomplice. Before calling him, though, Willem wants to be armed with all the information he can find. That's when he comes across Jacques' interesting side hustle. He's known as a writer of books, self-help books, how to be sexually successful, how to get rich. And he was a copywriter in a sense. What is this writer of obscure self-help books doing overseeing the Maria Duval scam?

But the more Willem thinks about it, it starts to make sense. Jacques is a copywriter who makes a living off writing persuasively. It's exactly what the Maria Duval letters are, a good bit of persuasive copy. When you're a copywriter, you can become very rich by simply producing texts. They have a very sophisticated way of persuading people to do things they shouldn't. Naturally, Willem wants to grill Jacques about the letters, so he dials the number he's been given. And to his shock, Jacques actually picks up and answers Willem's first few questions.

In fact, he admitted that it was a profitable business. An admission, but no guilt? Willem tries to tease out more information about how the scam actually operates. Jacques begins to clam up. He was not very keen to go into detail about the business. No. Then Willem challenges him about the morality of the letters. Is this all even ethical? He said literally some people think it's criminal what we do,

but on the contrary, we help people feeling better. He said we do the same way what churches do. People are unlucky and sometimes desperate, and we help them to feel better. Jacques says he's providing a service no different to faith organizations. The letters help desperate people feel better. Willem probes Jacques further, trying to get him to understand the harm his letters have caused. But the call is over. So he was definitely affirmative about having a role in this scam,

without calling it a scam himself, of course. Even so, Jacques' confession feels like a pivotal moment. Here's someone integral to the scam saying, yes, I ran it, and it was profitable. In a sea of people pointing the finger elsewhere, this feels almost refreshing. After speaking to Jacques, Willem walks away from the investigation.

He could tell that this would be a huge story to unfurl, and frankly, he didn't have the time or the resources. But almost ten years later, in 2016, he gets a call. It's the middle of the night in the Netherlands when the phone rings. The voice on the other end of the line has big news. Jacques has had a motorcycle accident. He's dead. The people on the other end of that late-night 2016 phone call are Melanie Hicken and Blake Ellis.

They're investigative journalists working for CNN in the U.S. They work as a duo with years of experience looking into big cases of financial fraud. They've been doing their own investigation into the Maria Duvall scam. And unlike Willem, they have the resources to go in deep. They found out that Jacques died by contacting a kite-surfing school in Brazil that had featured his photograph on their website. So now, the CNN journalists have turned their attention to Jacques' partner in crime, the elusive Jean-Claude Roy. I spoke to Melanie and Blake during my research for this podcast, but in the end they couldn't take part.

So I'm going to take you through what their diligent reporting unearthed. Like Jacques, Jean-Claude is a talented copywriter. He started his career writing and selling books with titles like Destination Success and Le Massage Erotique. And it wasn't just these literary masterpieces. He became a mail-order entrepreneur selling all sorts of knickknacks via the mail, like shoe insoles that could help you lose weight, and a device that instantly ages wine. He was also a follower of a New Age religion, Ryalism. If you haven't heard of it before, you're in for a treat. Ryalism is an obscure UFO-based religion, or a cult as some people call it, that started in France in the early 1970s. It hinges on the belief that aliens created humankind.

Raelism followers believe in a prophet called Rael, who's a failed pop star turned spiritual messiah. Oh, and they're really involved in the human cloning community. In 2003, they claimed they had successfully cloned a person, but they refused to show the clone, a baby they called Eve, to anyone. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler even immortalized this moment on SNL. Now, your group claims to have the first successfully cloned baby. That's right, Tina.

And she's just adorable. Her name is Eve. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. So where is the baby right now? Her new home, the planet Earth. Anyway, once the CNN journalists establish all the bizarre details around Jean-Claude, a whistleblower contacts them through LinkedIn. This person, whose identity they protect, tells them that Jacques and Jean-Claude cooked

up the whole operation as far back as the early 1990s. Having been impressed by Maria's ability to locate missing people, they saw an opportunity for their independent mailing activities to expand into psychic services. It's the perfect scammy meet-cute. Jacques and Jean-Claude quickly decide to set up a new mail-order business together,

Infogest. According to the CNN journalist's research, Jean-Claude's involvement in the scheme is less clear-cut than Jacques'. Where Jacques would sometimes speak publicly and even went with Maria to various press events, Jean-Claude kept a much lower profile, running the distribution of the letters, but ensuring his name was left off of all the company documents. Nevertheless, the journalists managed to track him down. They find out he's been living in Thailand for the last few years. The CNN journalists put their questions to Jean-Claude over email,

and they say he told them that, yes, InfoGest was indeed his company. However, he claims that he sold the business in the mid-90s. He continued receiving payments from the sale until he retired in 2006. But after that, he told CNN, he's had no involvement in the business. When the journalists ask Jean-Claude if he ever met Maria or Jacques in person, he claims to have shared only a handful of meals with them, quote, a long time ago. I find it hard to believe that Jean-Claude had such limited interactions with his business partner of several years and the woman who fronted their best-selling product. And if he really thinks they did nothing wrong,

why is he so quick to distance himself? In the end, the CNN journalists don't manage to link Jean-Claude's name to the recent operation of the Maria Duval scam in North America. Their work revealed how the scam was born and how it functioned early on, but not how it's been running in recent years. They wrapped up their reporting in 2019. But now, when I come to the story, I discover some new evidence. As I study the hundreds of financial and legal documents related to the scam, I find something that brings Jean-Claude's previous claims into question. Okay, are you recording your end?

I'm recording on both my microphone as well as on my voice note. Okay. I call my producer Millie to tell her about this new evidence. This is the first time I'm seeing like a diagram that basically shows us how the scam operated financially. Okay. Let me get it up on my laptop right now. It looks like they're naming Jean Claude specifically. So he was getting all the revenue and then paying out funds. Right. So this essentially proves that Jean-Claude was profiting off the letters as late as 2012, way after he says he left the operation or had nothing to do with it at all. So this is pretty incredible.

When Jean-Claude spoke to CNN, he claimed he had left the business in 2006. But this paper trail shows he benefited financially from the letters as recently as 2012. He has to know more than he's letting on about who's running the scam now. So I start my search for Jean Claude by using one of the most powerful tools a journalist has in their kit. Facebook. And after everything I know about Jean-Claude and his careful attempts to stay anonymous, his profile is a bit surprising. I don't understand why he'd have all these social media accounts

if he's actively trying to avoid being, like, connected to the scam. He has a really open and detailed Facebook profile. Granted, it hasn't been updated as far as I can tell since July 2020. He has a Twitter handle, a Pinterest, a LinkedIn, and an Instagram handle as well as a website. So I can't really say for sure, but the way this all looks is kind of something that a lot of people do when they're trying to evade detection from law enforcement or even journalists, that

kind of thing. They create other types of websites, blogs, things online about them that then push down any negative articles like the CNN article or other news articles that mention his involvement in the scam. It looks like he's really trying to, I guess, repair his image. I can't really say for sure, but everything here seems super calculated, like he's really trying to hide something. And everything on Jean-Claude's Facebook profile indicates he's done well for himself. All the private jets and tropical holidays. The money must be good, whatever he's up to.

I eventually find some phone numbers and an address from a source in Thailand. So I try calling and then update Millie in London. Okay, hey Millie, I know it's late for you over there. I just wanted to tell you that I tried that number that I got sent that's supposed to be Jean Claude's number. I can't really say publicly who it is, but I did get a bunch of numbers that are supposed to be Jean Claude's. A bunch of them didn't work, but there is one that keeps ringing. So I'm optimistic. No one picked up, but I've sent a WhatsApp message basically saying this court document has shown us Jean Claude's name and we'd love to talk to him about it. But it looks like my WhatsApp message is only showing one tick, like one check mark. So I think maybe he's already

blocked me. I'm not really sure. Do you want to try? And I'm sure he'll be maybe more willing to hear from a UK number. We get all excited when Millie's call goes through. But when she starts explaining who she is, all she hears on the line is a woman's voice with what we think is a Thai accent saying, why did you pick up? Right before the line goes dead. Then Millie's number gets blocked. One by one, the production team are all blocked by the same Thai number. We even send a registered letter to the address my source gave me in one of Thailand's most touristy hotspots. The person who signs for the letter puts down their name as Coke Coco, definitely fake. And then all we get is radio silence. So I go back to the internet and start clicking

through posts on Facebook again. And that's when I notice something. There is a comment here. Huh. Hi, JC, Jean-Claude. This is Steve Rust, your ex-driver in London. How are you? That was five weeks ago. So that was like the end of March 2024. And then another comment two weeks later. So April 2024. I see you're having a good time from Steve Rust in London. And then there's a phone number here. Okay, I'm going to try calling this number. Oh, hi, is that Steve? Yes. Hi, Steve. My name is Rachel Brown. I'm a journalist from Toronto, Canada, working on a podcast series about a man named Jean-Claude Roy. I saw on his Facebook that you wrote that you were his driver at one point. Does that ring a bell? Yes. Do you have a few minutes for me to ask you a few questions

about him and what it was like working for him? I can tell you it was fantastic. I had a great time. Oh, he was a good employer? Yeah. He was just very caring. He always paid me more than I was due. And I don't know, he was just very sad to me. Satisfying seems a strange word to use for a former employer, but I like how instantly open Steve is.

He tells me that he worked for Jean-Claude for about three years around 2016 when he was living in London. He would drive him around nearly every day in a flashy Mercedes that Jean-Claude bought him. Did you know what he did for work? Did he ever talk about his business? Yeah, briefly, yeah.

He used to sell, I don't know, some kind of books or medication or something like that. I did ask him how he does it. And he said it's all about people buy stuff from him and he just mails it out. So just using the mail? Yeah, I think it was today or something like that, yeah. Steve only had a vague idea of what Jean-Claude did for a living, but he could see that business was good, not just from Jean-Claude's generosity, but from his lifestyle too.

While living in London, he's staying in a large apartment in a super exclusive neighborhood, dining out almost every night. Every kind of restaurant he would eat in, I couldn't afford to. Let me put it this way. He was quite well off. Why did you stop driving for him? I went to call him one day, and his numbers didn't work. Oh.

And I thought, that's strange. Oh. I didn't understand it. So he'd obviously got his English telephone numbers cut off. He left. Steve sounded genuinely upset that this client who'd become his friend had abandoned him. After three or so years of seeing Steve every day, Jean-Claude vanishes. So while Steve has given me some more details about Jean-Claude's lifestyle, even he can't get in touch with him. Since Jean-Claude and Jacques left the picture, the whole operation has only gained speed. The model that they set up in Europe has been rolled out across Canada, the whole of the United States,

with letters even appearing in Russia and Australia. It's gone global. So who's in charge now? And how have they not only kept the business running smoothly, but also supersized it? To answer these questions, I spoke to someone who knows how these fraudsters work. The good mass mailing fraudsters are without multiple decades and country borders, law enforcement agencies around the world get to know each other. It's similar to the intelligence sharing we do as journalists.

British fraud investigator Richard Clark has been working for decades with our friend Clayton Gerber, the U.S. Postal Inspector. After a 40-year career in law enforcement, Richard is finally considering retiring. Yeah, I think Clayton's next and then I think it'll be me. Yes. Okay, let's see if I can help you out here, guys. Richard is the lead investigator for the Trading Standards Scams team in the UK. They help make sure consumers are protected when purchasing products, which means he's looked into many mail order scams over the years. I'm hoping he'll give me a fresh perspective on how these types of structures function on a broader level,

reveal patterns and links that might show me a way forward. You've got to look at what, you know, what have you got? Is there parts or components of what they are doing similar to what you've seen previously? And yes, we do see it. The similarities from the mailing and the contents of the mailing right down to the envelope and how it's prepared, that's Invest investigation 101. Through our investigations it was clear that there

was a network of people that knew each other, shall we say, and so you'd get a copywriter here in the UK and yes these these people were employing copywriters to write the messaging. So copywriters would normally hire other copywriters, like ghostwriters for ghostwriters. And there was commonality and links between them all, along with mailing destinations as well, where those mailings were being sent to, which were invariably not to the bad actors directly, but they were through third parties, which would be serviced offices, mailboxes, etc. This decentralized structure is crucial to the success of the Maria Duvall letters. And it's also what makes it so hard to pin down the orchestrators.

What Richard is saying reminds me of Kiesa's role in the scam. Culpable in part, but also a fall guy. Not at the top, but somewhere tangled in the web. I think Clayton would have probably agreed with me, and has probably mentioned to you, that there is an element of organized crime within this. They are serial offenders. They will continue to do it. They're the archetypal larger-than-life characters that have no conscience in what they do.

Like organized crime syndicates, they share clients. But instead of dealing drugs on a large scale, they're dealing personal data to other scammers. We have noticed they all sell amongst themselves. So you get a Maria Duval letter. It goes out to a victim. They respond, Maria Duval and the people behind it made some money. And then from there, they can then say to the people

that are offering so-called lottery wins, hey, we've got these really good details. Give me X for the list of people. You go and work those. And so it goes around. In the business, they call these databases of likely targets, suckers lists. And of course, they can obtain them legitimately and illegally. They are looking for a demographic of an individual, so it will be age.

It will be, are they of a certain financial grouping? Do they live on their own? Have they got health issues? By targeting these people specifically, the scammers have a higher chance of success as opposed to blanket mailing the letters across the entire country. It is that social isolation and that circumstantial vulnerability that I think still allows it to be profitable. Preying on the vulnerable in the name of profit is not a new business plan.

But I do find the whole thing quite disturbing. I asked Richard how difficult it is to stop these types of scams. As law enforcement puts pressure on their ability to do what they do, they try and distance themselves from being caught. Because of the profitability, historically, these guys are still trying to do what they're doing, or they've moved on, or they've been arrested, etc. And other people have stepped up to the plate. The people at the top of these organizations are always maneuvering, building on what came before. They don't just come out of nowhere and go straight into running a long con like the Maria Duvall letters.

Understanding that, Richard says, is key to investigating them. If they can't push tin or they can't sell cars, they'll try and do this, you know, or the next big thing. Certainly on some of the characters that we've seen, that appears to be their background. That, you know, a copywriter is probably well-versed at marketing and trying to sell toothpaste one minute. So what's the difference if they just try and sell a clairvoyant? What makes the Maria Duvall letters so devastatingly effective is not Maria herself or the psychic services being offered. It's the slick and professional operation behind the scenes, a business model that's been honed over decades.

If Richard's analysis is right, then whoever has taken over the scam must not be new to all this. I imagine a career criminal with a sharp entrepreneurial instinct. Clever, ruthless, elusive. This person has avoided conviction for over 20 years. But again, that's exactly why teams of journalists and law enforcement agencies from across the world work together on cases like this. And back over in the U.S., Clayton is on the verge of a major breakthrough. We became aware the letters were being entered into the mail stream in Albany, New York. Once we figured out what was going on, we stopped one of the vehicles

at the border. That's next time on The Greatest Scam Ever Written. Unlock all episodes of Smokescreen, The Greatest Scam Ever Written, ad-free, right now by subscribing to the Binge 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. Voice by Jean-Luc Fontaine. 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. And special thanks to CNN journalists Melanie Hicken and Blake Ellis and Willem Bosma for their reporting over the years on this story.