MEMORANDUM & ORDER Patrice Runner (the “Defendant”) is charged with operating a nearly twenty-year long fraudulent psychic mail order scheme that obtained more than $180 million from approximately one million victims. (Indictment, ECF No. 1.) The alleged scheme involved sending letters, purportedly written by world-renowned psychics, to victims in the United States and Canada to induce payments for personalized astrological services and supernatural objects. (Id. 1.) Presently before the Court is Defendant’s motion to dismiss the Indictment. (Mot., ECF No. 37.) For the reasons that follow, Defendant’s motion is DENIED. FACTUAL BACKGROUND According to the Indictment,1 from January 1994 through November 2014, Defendant, together with others, engaged in a direct mail operation based in Montreal, Canada which sent fraudulent letters to consumers throughout the United States and Canada (the “Direct Mail Operation”).2 (Id.) As early as 2000, a Canadian corporation doing business as Infogest Direct Marketing (“Infogest”), administered the Direct Mail Operation. (Id. 2.) Defendant managed the Direct Mail Operation and directed Infogest’s employees to handle many of the scheme’s daily activities, including working with third-party vendors to print and mail the letters, tracking responses and payments by victims, maintaining and updating mailing lists, and identifying new victims by renting and trading lists with other direct mailers. (Id.) Defendant and his co-conspirators used a series of different shell companies to hide their participation in the Direct Mail Operation. (Id. 3.) The shell entities included two Canadian registered corporations which were doing business as National Parapsychology Center (“NPC”) and Zodiac Zone (“ZZ”), as well as two Hong Kong-registered entities, Destiny Research Group, Ltd. (“DRG”) and Destiny Research Center, Ltd. (“DRC”) (collectively, the “Shell Companies”). (Id.) Underlying the mail scheme were letters written and edited by Defendant, together with others, that were sent to victims who were often elderly and vulnerable. (Id.
5-6.) The letters fraudulently represented that those victims would receive personalized letters from one of two world-renowned French psychics, whom are identified in the Indictment as “Psychic A” and “Psychic B.” (Id.) According to the letters, the psychics had visions or used their psychic powers to determine that the victims could achieve great wealth and happiness or avoid illness and bad fortune, with the psychic’s assistance. (Id.) As such, the letters directed victims to make monetary payments to purchase various unique and supernatural objects, or personalized astrological services and studies. (Id. 8.) Many letters also asked victims to send personal items, including photographs, palm prints and locks of hair to be utilized by the psychics for other personalized rituals. (Id. 9.) Contrary to these representations, the renowned French psychics were not involved in the sending of the letters nor did they receive responses from victims. (Id. 7.) Although the psychics’ letters appeared personalized because they referred to recipients by name and appeared handwritten in certain places, in actuality, the letters were mass-produced by Defendant and his coconspirators by renting and trading mailing lists with other direct mailers, including other fraudulent psychic letter mailers. (Id.
