The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - The Greatest Scam Ever Written | 7. Call Me Blade

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Our host writes a handwritten letter to the mastermind behind the Duval letters in 2023. He’s impressed and reaches out. He’s never spoken to a journalist before. They start exchanging emails and calls. Eventually she visits him behind bars. Soon, a jury will decide his fate. What will he reveal to her? And how can Rachel be sure it’s the truth?  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. Right from the very first time Patrice Runner called me,

I knew I had to handle the relationship delicately. If you remember, I had sent off my handwritten letter to him back in February 2022, and I kind of assumed I'd hear nothing back. After all, this man was sitting in prison in Brooklyn, accused of running a serious criminal enterprise, a massive scam that tricked millions of Americans. He had never spoken to a journalist before, and now, awaiting trial, would not be a sensible time to start. So I'm surprised when I see an American area code pop up on my phone. I think, there's no way. This call is from a federal

prison. It is Patrice. And he launches straight into a long spiel about how my handwritten letter had intrigued him. The criminal mastermind running the Maria Duval scam is actually calling me. It's so out of the blue that I don't even have my notes at hand. As you can hear, I have to wing it. Well, I've been eager to connect with you for a while. As I mentioned, I have... Throughout that entire first call, I try to project breezy and professional.

But my stomach is doing backflips. I know I need to keep him talking. Developing a relationship with someone like Patrice is complex, to say the least. You have to approach him with caution, outwardly friendly, while always aware that he is a master of deception. Allegedly, anyway. It's a tricky balance, and I need to get it just right if I'm going to get answers to my burning questions. How and why did Patrice oversee this huge scam? What kind of life had led him to this point?

And how does he feel now about the people whose lives he destroyed? And of course, Patrice has his own reasons for speaking to me. Yeah, I'm pretty enthusiastic that you contacted me so that I have someone who's going to present not the truth, but say another perspective, my perspective.

The thing is that, unlike Patrice, I believe that there is a truth here. And we need to grapple with it, no matter how uncomfortable that might be for him. I'm Rachel Brown, and this is The Greatest Scam Ever Written from Sony Music Entertainment and ITN Productions. Episode 7, Call Me Blade. When Patrice rang me that winter morning, he was calling from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Known as MDC, it's this massive concrete structure that houses over a thousand federal inmates at any one time. Most of them are awaiting trial or serving very short prison sentences. Patrice tells me he and other inmates are often under lockdown, not allowed to move around freely, barred from accessing phones. Whether it's to stop inmate disputes or cover staff shortages, prisoners are never sure when a lockdown is coming. And at MDC, they happen a lot. When Patrice does get the chance to call me,

there's a 15-minute time limit, and he has to fit me in around conversations with his family or his lawyer. And at any moment during these calls, we would get cut off with a few seconds warning. Okay, well, there's only a few seconds. I guess we'll... Okay, it's okay. But as the months pass, Patrice and I speak on the phone regularly, and we exchange many long emails. Emails he loves to write.

He is a veteran copywriter after all. So this episode tells his story using his actual voice and phone recordings from MDC and his written words voiced up by an actor. Of course, I'm eager to get answers to my big questions. But first, I need to build some rapport to get to know Patrice, starting with the basics. I guess I was curious about your last name, Runner. Each call begins with me checking in on Patrice's welfare, his health, his state of mind. How is it there? Is it busy? These are good, safe topics to encourage a source to see you as someone they can talk to. I also want to show him I've done my research on all aspects of his life, not just the scam.

I did look you up in Spain, and I did see, did you run the Ibiza marathon in 2018? Oh, why, am I there? Yes. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, that wasn't half the marathon. Patrice is keen to get to know me in return. Just a question like this, just because I'm curious. Yes, yes. How old are you? How old are you? I am 31. turn. It's always strange when a man asks your age. Is he being patronizing, trying to flirt,

or just curious? Patrice is in his late 50s. I wonder whether he sees me as a naive young woman and whether that could work to my advantage. After a few more phone calls, I ask him directly about the scam for the first time. I've been curious to know when you first heard about Maria Duval. Patrice won't talk about anything sensitive over the phone, only if we meet face-to-face. This deflection is extremely frustrating. My harder questions will have to wait until I get down to New York and visit him in person.

But in fairness to Patrice, prison calls are often recorded and can be used by police and prosecutors in some circumstances. It's reasonable for him to be careful, especially in the lead-up to his trial. He's also rightly cautious of me as a journalist. After his arrest, his face is all over the internet. And there are many stories speculating about who he really is. I'm just curious if you'd seen all of the press coverage that has come out.

Yeah, I've seen about 15 of them. It's pretty bad. So that's something I wanted to tell you. I'm going to prepare a report, okay, by the end of the week. I'm going to extract some claims that I got from the media that are totally false, and then I write to you what's the truth. Patrice's desire to control the narrative stretches even to the smallest details.

He has issues with the photo the British Daily Mail newspaper used when talking about his arrest. The picture captures him with a slight smile, dimples in his cheeks, and his hair spiked up, mimicking the palm tree in the background. It's a photo that my father took in Ibiza a few years ago, and he got super upset. He says his father is upset the Daily Mail used that photo. And Patrice isn't a fan of the write-up either. You know, the British press, they have no limit. They steal, they lie. That's the only one that I read that was really kind of bullshitting about myself.

The irony of Patrice being concerned about a paper printing lies is not lost on me. While Patrice has hit pause on my questions about the scam, I use our conversations to start digging into one of my other big questions. How has his life led him to this point? Patrice was born in 1966 in Montreal, Canada. It's the largest city in Quebec, where the provincial language is French. When I was a kid, my parents divorced when I was six years old. I never got any supervision from my mother about my studies. She never checked if I was doing my homework, for example. He always seems strained whenever he talks about his mom.

She was unconventional and didn't pressure him to follow rules, even ones that might have been good for him. I was never studying. I was reading or playing on time. And even before school was not that important. She's a very strange person. so that's how I grew up. His mother was a writer and his father was an economist, who also, Patrice says, worked in the Secret Service. It's a claim I find difficult to substantiate. He tells me more in a follow-up email, voiced here by an actor.

When I was 11 and started high school, my mother started to share with me the monthly family cash flow, how it was hard for her to reach both ends. At that time, I had no idea what type of work I wanted, but it was clear I wanted to get rich, so I wouldn't constantly struggle financially like her. His impulse to feel safe financially is very relatable. But it was more than this.

He was desperate to be rich. I remember one day that said to one of my friends, I think I was 12 years old. Do you know a simple way to become a millionaire? No, I answered to him. It's easy. It seems that even at 12, Patrice had understood economies of scale. It's this logic that made the Maria Duvall letters so successful. I'm not sure if he's lonely in prison or he just enjoys talking about himself, but it's not hard keeping up the conversation over emails and phone calls.

I'm just holding out for a meeting in person so that he will talk about the scam itself. Finally, the opportunity arrives. I've been commissioned by a magazine to write a piece about him, and he's happy for me to come in for the interview. You can come and meet me here. Both of us are going to be way more comfortable to speak freely. And the problem here is that the visits are only for one hour. Visits may be just one hour, but I leave him under no illusions that I'll be arriving prepared. We have a long list of topics for when we meet face to face. We're fast in one hour. It has taken months of back and forth. But now I'll finally be able to sit down with Patrice Runner and hear his side

of the story. Maybe it's not moral. Maybe it's bullshit. But it doesn't mean it's fraud. Our first face-to-face meeting is at the height of intense COVID restrictions at the prison. They still have regular visiting hours, but we have to wear face masks and sit at a table with a plexiglass divider. Patrice walks in with some confidence, tall and a lean physique. He still has his signature long brown hair, although not in a ponytail now. His face is pale and deeply wrinkled, but his dark eyes still shine under the fluorescent lights. I'm not allowed to record inside the prison, but I'm not sure you'd be able to hear much anyway. It's so loud in the visiting room that Patrice and I sometimes have to lean around the divider,

almost shouting at each other through our masks. He likes to joke around, which I find surprising given the circumstances he's in. But it gets us both through the initial nerves. And I ease him into the interview by asking about how his obsession with copywriting started. This is what he said to me, edited for clarity, voiced by an actor. It's a long story. I was fascinated with copywriting since I was 15 years old. He's reading a magazine when an advertisement catches his eye. I noticed that as I was reading the ads, I thought, wow, the way it's written, it's very powerful.

Something about the language sticks with him. And just like that, he's introduced to the magic of copywriting. And I realized it was a real profession, like being a lawyer or physician. His father notices his interest and gives him a French weight loss ad to look at. Patrice discovers it was written by a man from Belgium believed to be the best copywriter in the world. He was making millions of dollars a year. Later, as a young man, Patrice comes across an advertisement from Maria Duval in her letters. This is the original European scam run by Jean-Claude Roy and Jacques Maillan. He's entranced by the ad, the power of the words to make money, and he's intrigued by the

mysterious figure of Maria Duval. He surrounds himself with books about copywriting. I learned everything in books at the library about copywriting and direct marketing in general. Raymond Janssen was my private copywriting teacher for several years. He starts developing mail-order business ideas with Janssen. We wrote many ads together in the early 90s for a client who was one of the first to have mail-order operations in Eastern Europe market. So just after the Berlin Wall fell.

They launch all sorts of products together, including an oil that you put on a fishing line as bait. It was a product called Catch Z All. It smells strong and is illicit in fishing competitions as it provides an advantage. Our conversations about copywriting naturally lead us to where I want to go. The Maria Duvall scam. Janssen gave me the idea to go direct to her. Cut out the middleman.

Patrice says it was his mentor, Raymond Yansen, who saw the opportunity. And Patrice was already familiar with the story of Maria Duval. And then comes the first moment in our interview that changes my understanding of the case. Because Patrice tells me it's actually all the way back in 1994 that he first went in search of Maria Duval, way earlier than I thought. While in France on a business trip, Patrice goes to a phone booth and looks for her name in the white pages.

Maria Duval. There it is in black and white. She picks up and he boldly asks if it's possible to come and visit her. He has an idea he wants to share. Maria replies yes, and Patrice and his girlfriend at the time head to her villa in Calas. Arriving at her grand home, he's impressed by the swimming pool and acres of land. And Maria is curious about him. I had the same haircut as Billy Idol,

dyed white. I wore tight black pants, colorful strange shoes, and a blazer with a crazy shape. She was probably thinking, who's this guy? Maria does a reading for Patrice's girlfriend, during which she seems to divine details that she can't possibly have known, including that Patrice's girlfriend had lost her father at age six.

Patrice's admiration grows lost her father at age six. Patrice's admiration grows. We connected very quickly. Maria then shows them the same book of news clippings Antoine shared with me earlier in this series. An archive of articles detailing her history as a famed psychic in France. I was very impressed by her press book. There were dozens of clippings. Lots to extract and so powerful and important. I was very impressed by her press book. There were dozens of clippings, lots to extract and so powerful and important. I couldn't believe it. His mind begins filling with ideas about the potential of all of this for the letters,

the stories he could weave. At this moment, Patrice devises the idea of sending out the letters as part of a chunky info package. Dozens of pages detailing Maria's achievements in the south of France and beyond. When people received the package, their first impression was the Saint-Tropez articles, and that she was a good friend of Brigitte Bardot. A claim we now know Brigitte Bardot disputes. He also notices a story in her press book where she used a person's hair to connect with them. I came up with the idea for the green envelopes.

Green means hope and stands out. Patrice pitches Maria the idea of translating the letters into English and sending them across Canada. I seduced her. She was so enthusiastic. License acquired. Deal done. The first letters land in September that year, 1994. By November, he launches his first big advertising campaign for the letters, with giant full-page spreads across Canada offering Maria's services, urging people to

send in their addresses for more information. Maria's striking headshot, coupled with Patrice's grabby copy, draws people in. I had spent the summer writing the mailings, translating them into English, and getting the lucky charms. The letters really take off, with thousands of people signing up. The letters launched across Canada before Christmas, and then to the US after Christmas. Again, Patrice's story is changing the way I think about the timeline of this scam. Because now we know that Patrice did not, in fact, inherit the business from Jean-Claude and Jacques.

Instead, he says he acquired Maria's name for the North American market while they still had Europe. So all three of these men were operating at the same time in the 90s. I asked Patrice if he personally knew Jean-Claude and Jacques. I signed Duval just before meeting Jean-Claude. It was at a fancy restaurant in Cannes. And they didn't make a good impression. Maillan was more of a hippie

and Jean-Claude was not a good copywriter. In Patrice's telling, Jean-Claude had been hoping to take the operation global himself, but hadn't been able to, quote, nail it down. Nevertheless, Patrice, Jean-Claude, and Jacques were all making plenty of money off the back of Maria Duval's name. I asked him if he felt like they were exploiting her.

She was pretty involved and received 5% net sales from the letters from the business. She was happy. Patrice says that Maria was especially close to Jacques Maillan. He was the only one who could manage her. He managed her like a Hollywood star. He really believed in her abilities. I'm inclined to believe Patrice here. It does seem that Maria had the power to make the North America deal with him herself,

possibly against the wishes of Jean-Claude. This just doesn't mesh with the impression Antoine had given me, that his mother was a naive woman being used and intimidated by the businessmen. The most likely story is that they were all in this together. And in case you're thinking, why should we trust a single word this scammer is saying? I'm with you. But I've fact-checked every claim Patrice has made to me since the start of our relationship. And so far, everything he says checks out.

But all this in no way excuses Patrice for his role in the scam. I ask him about all the green envelopes found in those Long Island dumpsters, the victims who were paying for psychic services and not receiving them. Did he know that people's personal requests and their locks of hair were being thrown in the trash? His answer takes me by surprise. These green envelopes were sent to Maria Duval regularly, in boxes, to the point that she complained to me when I visited her at her place that there were too many boxes. At the end of each in-person visit, Patrice leans in for one of those French two-cheek kisses and waves as he walks away with the other inmates. He's getting familiar, even sharing his prison nickname with me. Everyone calls me Blade.

After the film, Blade Runner. He's starting to think of me as a confidant, talking to me about the conditions at MDC, giving me updates on his family, and slowly sharing more and more of the inside story of the scam. He's given me the whole history of how he got involved in the scam, and now this recent revelation that Maria was receiving the letters herself, at least to start with. He says that as the volume of replies

increased, she just couldn't handle the workload. It became impossible for her to be a psychic pen pal to that many people. I took multiple trips to Maria's home and big boxes of envelopes were sent to her. She asked me to stop them, but I said no. It's part of the whole operation. He tells me what happened next in an email. In 1998, I moved to the West Coast with my family. We started to subcontract all of the tasks related to the mail opening to a data entry company based in Long Island. To run the greatest scam ever written, he had to outsource.

And I know this part is true because we can trace the year that the caging service began handling the Maria Duval mail. And it's 1998, just as Patrice says, the same year Claire's body was found in the River Weir. So this was the moment Patrice scaled up and took the scam to new levels. Business was booming, and he wasn't going to let the fact that Maria was no longer willing

or able to reply to the letters stop him from raking in the cash. But this is also the moment that a shady direct marketing operation became an outright scam. Because if Maria was no longer responding, people were no longer getting what they were paying for, personal psychic services from Maria Duval. For me, the most troubling aspect of this scam

is the fact that victims believed they were developing a real relationship with Maria. As well as sending money, they shared their deepest hopes and fears. But when I put this to Patrice in an email, he sees no problem. It's not Duval who wrote the letters. But that's not the point. He goes further in a follow-up email. When a politician sends mailings to prospects for their fundraising campaigns, it's not them who sends the mailings or receive the mail with payments,

even if they sign. They have usually not been written by them, but by their staff in charge of communication. But it's not the same thing. Political campaign contributions are spent on, well, political campaigns, not supercars and five-star hotels. And he understood exactly what compelled people to reply. There's an intrinsic need of human beings to get good news about the future. This good news was something he had crafted and refined to such a level that it became almost formulaic for him. One email he sent me had the subject line, The Golden Rules of Copywriting. First, grab the attention of the reader.

Usually, and especially if the photo is well chosen. The photo is what is going to attract the eyes at the first second. Maria Duvall's photograph, right at the top of each letter flashes through my mind. Second, make to the readers an offer so good they would feel stupid saying no. Three, the ad is not there to talk about the amazing characteristics of a product, but to present the benefits and positive changes it will bring to its new owner's life. 4. Credibility.

I raise an eyebrow reading that last one. Patrice then goes on to write copy for a specific, hypothetical product from a made-up company to show me the techniques in action. Find a great name, like the Ninja MasterChef Laser Blade Knife, used by MasterChefs in Japan and around the world who swear by it. Those chefs would have paid many times the amount it is offered, for a limited time, only 79$. Today, you can get the same authentic Ninja MasterChef Laser Blade Knife for not even half of that price,

for only $39. But that's not all. We'll include in your package, for free, a set of 12 mini ninjas. If you call by noon today, we'll include a second Ninja MasterChef laser blade knife to your package. So don't risk arriving too late and regret that you have missed this unique offer. Call right now while you have it in mind. All you have to do is grasp the hand of friendship. We are holding out to you.

Even while locked up in one of America's most notorious jails, Patrice is able to effortlessly knock out the 13,000 characters of this make-believe ad. And I know plenty of people who might buy a knife because of ads like this. But reading the formula in action, I can see that Patrice isn't really a great writer. He's just an extremely effective copywriter. He knows how to sell things. And as we've learned, it doesn't matter to him what those things are. By the year 2000, Patrice had moved away from Montreal. He claims he relied on Mary Thanos and Phil Lett to run things. Day to day, I was not very involved at all. I delegated. I was really reliant on them. For 10 years, they organized the logistics and data management

as the money poured in. But Patrice was the boss, and the boss gets paid the most. As I sit with him in federal prison, the two of us do some rough math and estimate that he personally made tens of millions of dollars. The Maria Duval scheme was the most lucrative business he'd managed in his career by far. It brought in incredible sums over two decades. At its peak, $23 million in one year. He could shop, dine, and live in some of the fanciest places in the world,

all funded by people like Doreen Robinson. People cobbling their last dollars together just to make payments for the cheap little trinkets and the fake Maria letters that Patrice was selling. I've been speaking to Patrice for over a year when he gets news of his trial date, June 5th, 2023. When I ask him how he's feeling about it, he's defiant, almost upbeat, flatly dismissing any possibility that he could be guilty of fraud. This was one of our phone calls. In a follow-up email, I ignore his conspiracy theory and press him on his denial of fraud. After all, he clearly lied to his customers. His reply is again voiced by an actor. We say that deceit doesn't equal fraud. Our customers bought a product,

and if they weren't happy, they got a refund. And most of them bought again and again. I'm sure tobacco companies say the same thing about their customers. But repeat customers aren't necessarily happy ones. As we heard from Chrissy Robinson, Doreen was essentially addicted to the letters. She had no control over herself when replying.

And yet every time I confront Patrice over his victims and how they suffered, he responds in that same way. They were customers and they wanted his product. His belief is so unwavering that it feels delusional, like he can't allow himself to see the truth. Looking back over the many conversations I've had with Patrice, my feelings are mixed. In some ways, this complex relationship has got me the answers I wanted. I understand much more now about Patrice's life, how he got involved in the scam, how he took it to new heights, and how he justifies it all to himself.

And I understand why he did it. Money. Pure and simple. Our interviews, combined with some heavy fact-checking, have also changed the way I think about several other aspects of the case. Most importantly, the fact that Maria is likely to have been a key figure in the operation herself. Not just a name that was bought and exploited. But I also still feel some frustration. It's been hard to truly hold Patrice to account for what he

did to all those victims. He just can't see that he might have done anything wrong. He can't see himself as anything other than a successful businessman who simply sold people what they wanted. But now, with the trial fast approaching, the unstoppable force of Patrice's self-belief is about to run up against U.S. Postal Inspector Clayton Gerber. He thought he was going to talk his way out of these things. And I had to explain to him, welcome to the United States. Let me explain to you how our process works.

It is unusual that we see someone who is deceitful to their core. It's a striking phrase. As I said, in all our interactions, I've never once caught Patrice in an actual lie. And believe me, I've tried. But I know exactly what Clayton means. Patrice is a man who tries to use everyone and everything as part of his story. A story where he is the hero.

Going into his trial, I know it will be more of the same. More of him trying to control the narrative in a way that might elicit sympathy from the judge and jury. It's the most important tale he'll ever tell. But will it work? Will they buy what Patrice and his lawyers are selling? His final act of persuasion. We pay a magician to experience magic. He's not defrauding us out of our money when he lies about the magic? Deception, yes. Fraud? No. He intends to deceive us, to trick us, and he intends to take our money. Or will Patrice be revealed as a fraudster? In the very first letter he sent out, he didn't say,

are you interested in information about psychics? No. He started on the scam right away. Runner's first letter looked like it came from Maria Duvall. That's a lie. That's next time on The Greatest Scam Ever Written. Thank you. 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 assistant sound designer is Sam Cassetta. Our sound designer is Luca Evans. 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 Bruce Kennedy, Nevada Red, Max Laramie, and Robert Pierce. 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.