3 ms·
Canadian Man Convicted in $175M Psychic Mass-Mailing Fraud Scheme
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoThe strangeness includes, the fraud was that the letters weren't personalized as promised. They were mass mailing. So if they had been personalized letters from an actual psychic then no fraud?! Or anyway not prosecutable.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago> So if they had been personalized letters from an actual psychic then no fraud?! Or anyway not prosecutable. No, the fraud involved convincing the customers that they should send more money to the fraudsters because the customers would thereby become rich. It's just an advance-fee scam by mail. I don't understand why you thought it had to do with the personalization, or lack thereof. It was a fiancial crime, and four of the counts were wire fraud; one count was conspiracy to commit money laundering. This had everything to do with the fees he was extracting from the clientele and very little to do with the content or originality of the messages.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoI guess I thought that because of the repeated insistence on that theme throughout the document. E.g. The letters falsely purported to be individualized, personal communications from so-called “psychics,” including Maria Duval (leading this type of fraud scheme to be referred to as a “Maria Duval Scam”), and promised that the recipient had the opportunity to achieve great wealth and happiness with the psychic’s assistance, in exchange for payment of a fee. Once a victim made a single payment in response to one of the letters, the victim was bombarded with dozens of additional letters, all purporting to be personalized communications from the psychics and offering additional services and items for a fee.