Second Circuit keeps supernatural Canadian con man behind bars for $175 million scheme

MANHATTAN (CN) — A federal jury was right to convict Canadian fraudster Patrice Runner, a Second Circuit panel ruled Wednesday, rejecting Runner’s argument that it was his customers’ fault for believing false claims of “magic” from his astrology business.

The appellate court found that federal prosecutors sufficiently proved that Runner’s company, Direct Marketing Concepts, “advertised goods and services it never planned to deliver, and otherwise intentionally lied to trick customers into paying money.”

“No more was needed for the jury to find fraudulent intent,” the three-judge panel ruled in a 30-page order.

Prosecutors say that, for roughly 20 years, Runner sent letters to millions of people impersonating well-known purported psychic Maria Duval. The notes, which promised recipients great wealth and fortune in exchange for a fee, appeared to be personalized with handwritten annotations.

In reality, they had been mass-produced and sent weekly by the tens of thousands.

Recipients also had the opportunity to respond to these mailers to get a psychic reading from Duval. But if they wrote back, they’d also receive dozens of additional mailers advertising supposed supernatural goods — charms that guaranteed purchasers good luck.

“These were all lies,” the court found. “There was no psychic who had read the customers’ letters (or cashed their checks). It was Patrice Runner and his business, Direct Marketing Concepts — the mass-mailing enterprise he had founded in Montreal, Canada — that did all that.”

One letter advertised an ancient statue, which Runner claimed to be from the Thar Desert in India, that would bring “substantial sums of wealth” to its owner in exchange for just $90.

“None of this was true, and the statues that were sent came from China,” the court said.

Another mailer offered recipients a 5-million-year-old “Vibratory Crystal” that promised positive energy and luck in games of chance in exchange for just $45. But the court acknowledged that those came from bulk goods store PartyMart, and were also shipped from China.

Prosecutors say that, between 2014 and 2024, Runner’s scheme raked in more than $175 million from more than 1.3 million victims in the United States alone. He’s currently serving a 10-year sentence after a federal jury in Brooklyn convicted him of mail fraud, wire fraud and other crimes related to the scam in 2023.

Arguing to the circuit court earlier this year, Runner contested that his customers got exactly what they bargained for: hope, entertainment and a sense of mystery.

“They have a First Amendment right to believe that, to engage with a company who sells that,” Runner’s attorney, public defender Allegra Glashausser, told the court. “The Supreme Court is clear that the intangible loss of some belief is not criminal fraud.”

Runner tried to cement this theory by emphasizing the number of repeat customers his business had, and through testimony from experts who said that product values can be subjective.

“The government only points to the lack of psychic magic as what they didn’t receive,” Glashausser said during appellate arguments on March 5. “There is no evidence that they didn’t get something of value.”

But the Second Circuit wasn’t convinced, finding that Runner’s jury was only required to prove that he intentionally lied for money, even if some customers were satisfied.

The panel behind Wednesday’s ruling was the same trio who heard those arguments in March: U.S. Circuit Judge Sarah Merriam, a Joe Biden appointee, U.S. Circuit Judge Guido Calabresi, a Bill Clinton appointee, and U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin, a Barack Obama appointee.

Prosecutors say most of the customers who believed in Runner’s scam were elderly and low-income recipients of the letters, many of whom suffered from dementia.

According to the Justice Department, Runner and his co-conspirators collaborated with other mail fraudsters by sharing and trading mailing lists that contained personal information to better target the letters. Some victims lost thousands of dollars as a result.

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