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WORK TITLE: A Deal with the Devil: The Dark and Twisted True Story of One of the Biggest Cons in History
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Denver
STATE: CO
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
https://www.cnn.com/profiles/blake-ellis
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Graduated from Kenyon College.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Investigative reporter. CNN Investigates, senior investigator.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Blake Ellis is an investigative reporter. She is a senior investigator for CNN Investigates, where she has covered a range of stories, including sexual abuse in nursing homes and consumer fraud. She graduated from Kenyon College.
With coauthor Melanie Hicken, Ellis published A Deal with the Devil: The Dark and Twisted True Story of One of the Biggest Cons in History in 2018. Expanding on their five-part online story on the CNN website in 2016, the authors look into an international mail scam that resulted in the loss of $200 million from over one million victims in the United States along, plus those in other countries. The head of this scam was psychic Maria Duval, who has evaded capture since starting the scam in the 1980s. Duval purchased names and addresses from data brokers in order to write personalized letters to the would-be victims asking for money while promising shared wealth and friendship. Hicken and Ellis introduce a range of secondary characters to this drama, including a U.S. postal inspector who carried a gun and tried for years to shut down this scam; an alien-worshipping businessman whose companies were responsible for mailing out Duval’s many letters; and a number of other psychics. The authors also look at the victims’ cases, to show how they fell for the scam and how it affected their lives.
A Publishers Weekly contributor found the book to be “meandering.” However, the reviewer concluded that the authors “provide an entertaining exposé of an epic episode from the chronicles of consumer fraud.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews observed that Ellis and Hicken’s “uncertainties, questions, and disappointments figure largely in their discursive narrative.” The same reviewer reasoned that “it’s a fascinating story of widespread malfeasance, but readers hoping for crisp, incisive reporting will be disappointed.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2018, review of A Deal with the Devil.
Publishers Weekly, April 30, 2018, review of A Deal with the Devil.
ONLINE
CNN website, https://edition.cnn.com/ (August 22, 2018), author profile.
Blake Ellis lives in Denver and is a graduate of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. With Melanie Hicken, she is an award-winning investigative journalist with CNN. Their investigations have uncovered everything from nursing home abuse to widespread consumer fraud.
Blake Ellis
Senior Writer, CNN Investigates
Blake Ellis is an award-winning investigative reporter for CNN. Her work has exposed everything from widespread sexual abuse in nursing homes to one of the longest-running scams in history. It has also inspired legislative action and government investigation. Email her at watchdog@cnn.com.
A Deal with the Devil: The Dark and Twisted True Story of One of the Biggest Cons in History
Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken. Atria, $26 (288p) ISBN 978-1-5011-6384-5
In this meandering true crime account, journalists Ellis and Hicken investigate a decades-long international mail scam that bilked over $200 million from its 1.4 million victims in the United States alone. The mastermind behind it all was an elusive, self-proclaimed psychic who went by the alias Maria Duval and has never been apprehended. The authors, who first wrote about Duval for CNN in 2016, detail the methodology of her scam, which dates to at least the 1980s and involved mailing personalized letters to recipients, whose names and addresses Duval purchased from data brokers. Their investigation leads to a bizarre cast of characters, including a gun-toting U.S. postal inspector hell-bent on shutting down the scam, an alien-worshipping businessman whose companies distributed Duval’s mass mailings, and a handful of zany psychics. The book gets sidetracked by frustrating dead ends in the inquiry—a chapter devoted entirely to a psychic named Patrick Guerin, for example, ends abruptly when the journalists receive no reply to one brief e-mail. While the authors never conclusively identify the person behind the Maria Duval alias, they provide an entertaining exposé of an epic episode from the chronicles of consumer fraud. (July)
DETAILS
Reviewed on: 04/30/2018
Release date: 08/07/2018
Ebook - 978-1-5011-6386-9
Book - 978-1-5011-6385-2
A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL
The Dark and Twisted True Story of One of the Biggest Cons in History
by Blake Ellis & Melanie Hicken
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KIRKUS REVIEW
On the trail of a French psychic who ran an international scam that preyed on some of society’s most vulnerable people.
In their first book, Ellis and Hicken, investigative journalists with CNN, build on their five-part online piece that first appeared on the CNN website in 2016, and the narrative morphs into a meandering tale full of dead ends, frustrations, and irrelevant details. The authors doggedly pursue the story of a long-lasting con targeting the lonely and credulous with promises of riches and friendship. Their investigation involves an unwieldy cast of characters, which the authors helpfully identify at the beginning of the book. However, many readers will still struggle to follow this Byzantine journey to uncover more information about Maria Duval, a self-proclaimed psychic whose name is on the millions of letters sent out to extract money from the gullible. The scam is reported to have affected more than 1.6 million victims in the United States and Canada, along with uncounted more across the globe. Ellis and Hicken provide a clear picture of the mindset of victims, showing why they were taken in by the scam and how their lives and those of their families were affected. These poor men and women, often demented and elderly (a demographic that loses “nearly $3 billion to fraud and other financial abuses every year”) and often mired in poverty, believed that by mailing money to Duval, they could change their lives for the better and become fantastically wealthy. The authors’ account of their attempts to track down Duval is less engaging. Their search for Duval is a wild-goose chase made difficult by their language limitations, by quirky email leads that do not pan out, and by unanswered correspondence and unreturned phone calls. Their uncertainties, questions, and disappointments figure largely in their discursive narrative.
It’s a fascinating story of widespread malfeasance, but readers hoping for crisp, incisive reporting will be disappointed.
Pub Date: Aug. 7th, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6384-5
Page count: 288pp
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 28th, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15th, 2018