In their book A Deal with the Devil: The Dark and Twisted True Story of One of the Biggest Cons in History, investigative reporters Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken exposed the complex inner workings of a case of psychic fraud that spanned several decades and bilked over $200,000,000 from the mostly elderly victims. Their tale reveals how easy it is for anyone to be taken in by con artists and how seemingly small scams can explode into something much bigger and far more sinister. For their achievement, they have been awarded the 2018 Robert P. Balles Annual Prize in Critical Thinking by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI).
A Deal with the Devil emerged from Ellis and Hicken’s fraud investigations for CNN Money. They found that many elderly Americans had been giving away enormous sums of money to a woman named Maria Duvall who claimed to have psychic powers. Through personalized letters, Duvall made promises to grant the recipients health and riches—if they sent her money. “The letters appealed to the most base emotions of fear, loneliness, and hope—making it nearly impossible for victims to resist,” wrote Ellis and Hicken, who discovered that the scam was much bigger than letters from a sketchy psychic. What Ellis and Hicken revealed is an enterprise in consumer fraud on a massive scale, involving the buying and selling of personal information from data brokers, the emotional manipulation of vulnerable populations, and even the adoption and expansion of the con by organized crime.