This week on The Perfect Scamp.

They appeared to be very personalized, like the letter was written directly to you, like this was a friend writing you, and many people wrote back.

There would be thousands of Christmas cards that would come in from

victims who are writing Christmas cards because Marie Duvalves on their Christmas card list.

That's awful.

That just shows the extent of the quote unquote personal relationship they thought they had with this person.

Welcome back to the perfect scam. I'm your host Bob Sullivan.

Sometimes justice takes years, even decades.

Five years ago we brought you the story of psychic Maria Duval, who many believed was a famous

French clairvoyant who had helped solve many crimes. She claimed to have even helped track down Bridget Bardot's missing dog.

Well, criminals using her name and image blanketed America, the whole world really,

with letters promising a good future in exchange for regular 30 or 40 dollar payments, and threatening disaster for those who ignored the solicitations.

The scale of the fraud is hard to fathom.

Federal investigators figure roughly 1 in 300 Americans were victims of this scam.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service finally put a stop to the letters in 2014,

but, even when we did the story back in 2018,

the ringleader was still on the run. But things have changed. So today we'll check in on the story to see how the fight for justice is going and maybe more important to understand how technology played a big role

and why the Maria Duval letter scam was able to ensnare so many people and to talk about how to prevent that from happening now.

I remember a story.

One of my inspectors came back after he had done around traveling around

Pennsylvania talking to victims and he took pictures inside

the individual let him take pictures inside the house he had all of the pictures from all of the

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