A 61-year-old Florida resident who holds French and Israeli citizenship made his initial appearance before a federal judge in Miami on Monday, accused of running a mail fraud operation that prosecutors say collected more than $4 million from victims across the United States by sending letters disguised as personal messages from psychics. Mael Chemla had been arrested in Germany before being extradited to face the charges in the U.S.
Federal prosecutors allege that Chemla and co-conspirators targeted elderly and otherwise vulnerable Americans with letters crafted to look like individualized correspondence from psychics, according to Yahoo News. The letters promised recipients an imminent financial windfall, but only after they first sent money, prosecutors say. The alleged scheme ran from September 2016 through November 2020, with prosecutors saying it targeted victims nationwide, including many older and otherwise vulnerable people.
According to the indictment, Chemla and his associates opened U.S. bank accounts under the names of the purported psychics, deposited checks sent in by victims, and then wired the money to accounts in Europe controlled by an alleged co-conspirator. The U.S. Department of Justice says Chemla was extradited from Germany, where he had been arrested on May 13, according to Ynet, which reported that prosecutors accuse Chemla and an associate of collecting more than $4 million over approximately four years.
Charges and What Comes Next
Chemla faces charges of conspiracy, mail fraud, and wire fraud. He could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted on all counts, per the same Yahoo News report. He has not been convicted, and the charges remain allegations that prosecutors must prove in court.
The exact number of victims has not been disclosed, and the court documents made public do not identify the alleged fortune tellers or the European associate named in the case, Ynet notes. Those gaps leave significant questions about the full scope of the alleged operation still unanswered.
Part of a Broader Pattern of Elder Fraud
The case adds to a string of recent psychic-mail fraud prosecutions. In 2024, Patrice Runner was sentenced to 10 years in prison for a similar scheme that authorities say took more than $175 million from roughly 1.3 million Americans, according to Ynet's reporting. In June, federal prosecutors separately charged Frisco, Texas residents Bridgette Doreen Evans and Vinnie John Uwanawich in an alleged $2.5 million psychic fraud operation, in which one Washington state victim is accused of sending more than $2 million, Yahoo News reported.
Fraud targeting older Americans has grown sharply in recent years. The Federal Trade Commission found that Americans aged 60 and older reported approximately $3 billion in fraud losses in 2025, up from about $600 million in 2020, according to Yahoo News. Among people 80 and older who reported losing money to fraud in 2025, the median loss reached $2,000. The FBI has also pointed to a 2025 Internet Crime Complaint Center report recording more than 201,000 complaints from people over 60, with reported losses topping $7.7 billion.
The Chemla case was first reported by FOX 10 Phoenix, which cited information from the U.S. Department of Justice. As the case moves through federal court in Miami, prosecutors will need to prove their allegations, and much about the alleged scheme's inner workings — including who else may have been involved — remains unknown.
